Purchasing vehicle

You are not allowed to bring a new vehicle into Canada

If you choose used you are okay. Now I don't know about registering it in the US first. I would think you would need a permanent address to do that.
For the correct information you should get in contact with the American licensing department as well as the Canadian Ministry of Transportation.

Know that we will have to pay for tax etc . I don't think we can license it with our prov plates until we have it go thru border crossing etc. I know when we bought a truck in alberta instead of home prov of sask we were given a 24 hour permit to get the truck home and then had to to make an appt within a certain timeframe to have truck inspected. Just wondering if we would be able to put Arizona plates /permit on it and use it until we get back home . One of reasons of wanting to do this is our selection of smart cars are very very limited here at home .

Grandpere wrote:
You may have to pay an import tax also.

yep if you are doing this to avoid some taxes, I don't think it will work. except you would be importing a used vehicle if that matters, and might not meet canadian requirements?
bumpy

You may have to pay an import tax also.

I would think that you could buy one and license/title it in Canada to your home address.

bumpy