Yes, that was it! In my testing, I more than likely did NOT kill my initial session prior to running the export. I started from scratch, and had a much better looking XML file to import from. Tested both export and import. Much thanks for your assistance LucD.
Output from $vInventory now:
Count Name Group
----- ---- -----
2 Datastore {Datastore, Datastore}
2 ClusterComputeResource {ClusterComputeResource, ClusterComputeResource}
1 DistributedVirtualPort... {DistributedVirtualPortgroup}
15 Folder {Folder, Folder, Folder, Folder...}
1 VirtualMachine {VirtualMachine}