HJG

Could anyone point me in the right direction of finding out about bringing classic cars into Australia. I know it is normally not financially viable to bring in modern cars - but classic cars can be part of the family!!!!

HJG

MarkMC

Im interested too, I have a kit car though, not a classic only worth about £3K

vics

We bought our 2 classic cars with us nearly 2 years ago - I would bet that the import system has changed in some way since then! It also depends on what state you are going to as what you have to do before you can get your car on the road over here.

If you are happy that this is going to cost you quite a bit of money, then the first step is to get yourself an import approval. Sorry but I don't know the website - just google Australia Car Import Approval or something similar and I'm sure it will all come up.

When we moved you had two choices on the import approval - we went the pre-1989 car route, which was easy to do in the UK but the fun started when we got the cars here (i.e. compliance work on the cars to get them to australian design standards applicable to their year of manufacture, and that was before they could even go to the pits to get tested for roadworthiness).

The other option was as a personal import, where you have to prove you have owned and used the car for more than a year. We could have gone this route, but for some reason we didn't (probably due to me not wanting to do anymore paperwork in the UK as I had enough after our visas!!) As we didn't do it then I'm afraid that I don't know anything about what happens if you go this way.

We shipped the cars with PSS - in a 40ft with our furniture at the end. Easy as it could be, and PSS were great. My hubby was happy that they bought the container to the house and he got to drive the cars up the ramps and in, then saw how they closed up the container. He would never have taken the cars to the docks to be loaded.

One word about shipping - if the car isn't completely spotless (i.e. there can't be a spec of dirt anywhere within 5 miles of it) then you will have to pay for quarantine to steam clean it - which costs $$$. (We didn't have to pay it on ours as the hubby scrubbed them and painted the entire underneath of the cars as well!)

Hope that gives you a bit of an idea. You can pm me if you like, but as I said this was 2 years ago now and its bound to have changed like all red-tape things do!

HJG

Thankyou for taking the time to respond. I will do a bit more homework as you suggest.