astera

In addition to the shipping costs, what other expenditures are to be expected once the car arrives in the UK?

Any duties, taxes, etc. that need to be levied in order to register the car?

Has anyone gone through the procedure in recent years?

Beoz

I knew a guy who shipped a Commodore to the UK and wrapped it round a tree. Sorry can't help on the other bits.

rammygirl

Guessing the speedo will need changing to mph. Didn't have to do that the other way round as uk cars have both kph and mph displays.

brits1

Hi
Not sure really about the costs but in the past I had read it can be quite expensive. Is there any particular reason you want to ship your car over?

Bermudashorts

We wish we had shipped ours over now. It was seven years old, noting special but we did like it a lot and wouldn't have swapped it had we not moved. Ended up spending a lot on a newer car once we were here, plus a run around. We now wish we had just got the run around to tide us over until ours arrived from Australia.

I hadn't thought about the speedometer issue though.

spence501

Hi there, I did it a few years ago. As far as I remember we had a bit of an issue with the speedo. Depending on your car you can have a sticker placed over the dial in mph. Ours wasn't so simple and we had to get a convertor fitted. I think it had something to do with the voltage going to the speedo. Wasn't too expensive. Couple of hundred pounds to get fitted. Oh and I had to get a rear fog light as well think that was around a hundred or so.

We had a sticker placed over the K in km/h so it just said m/h. That was a requirement from the guy at the testing station to get it through the sva test. The guy at the test centre also scraped all our brand new window tint off the two front door windows. Too dark apparently.

Don't think the sva was more than two or three hundred I can't remember. After that it was just getting reg plates made up and fitted.

One thing I wasn't too happy about was that I couldn't provide exact date of manufacture even though I had all the receipts etc, I bought the car from new, but without a letter from the manufacturer they put the date back from July 06 to Jan 1st 06. Effectively putting the registration back from an 06 to a 55. Minor thing I know but it was a pain needing the car Mot done around Christmas later on than rather in the summer.

One other thing is it isn't so easy to get insurance it's not impossible but quite a few won't look at it even some of them who say they specialise in imported cars. You will pay slightly more for insurance. A bit annoying as our car was identical to the UK version. On the flip side we paid a special import rate for road tax so we clawed most of the higher insurance cost back through that. Don't know if the tax rule applies so much nowadays though

astera

Many thanks, so there is no import tax/VAT/etc. as would be the case when importing a car from outside the EU to most EU countries?

I want to take the car because it was bought brand new and if shipping is my main cost then I'm willing to do so. But if all sorts of tariffs and levies come into play then it's a completely different ball game...

FWIW I have heard that UK nationals can bring a car back without the whole tax/duty merry-go-round, but that was ages ago.

spence501

As far as I remember you had to have owned your car for 6 months to avoid paying vat. Worrying time for me as I had only owned it for 5 months when we put it in the container. Luckily the time it was on the boat counted toward the 6 months so we didn't have to pay anything

I think you are barred from selling it for a certain amount of time from when you import it as well or then you are liable for the vat

Shirtback

I assume you've already read this?
https://www.gov.uk/importing-vehicle...he-uk/overview

astera

Thanks guys for the info and the link.

Seems like I fit all the criteria to get the car over without VAT/duty except for one possibly vital one which might sink my plans altogether: the car is actually registered in my dad's name.

Am I SOL here?

Tom Sawyer

Shipped my Audi about 18 months ago with no major problems. Didn't have to pay any import duty or tax as I had owned it over 18 months, however you can't sell it for 12 months after it's arrival into the UK. The only thing I had to actually do for UK compliance was remove the tint from the front windows. The car had a selectable digital speedo which was acceptable for compliance, but I did change the disc for a dual mph/kph display which are easy to get hold of on eBay.
Can recommend Taurus Shipping for the actual shipping, shipmycar.co.uk in Milton Keynes for arrival into the UK as they will collect from port and arrange VOSA test and such like. You'll also need specialist marine shipping insurance which I got through AIS brokers in Melbourne.
Oh.....and do take everything loose out of the car! I had a few things go missing including strangely the rear wiper arm.........but the car was not damaged in any way. Took about 6 weeks shipping and a month getting compliance. Cost was about GBP4500 from memory.

Big 'X'

In 2005 I returned back to the UK, i couldn't get a good deal for a 2004 brand new Ford Focus so decided to take it back. Apart from the issues around registration, there was no additional costs. The car is considered an unregistered car so it gas to go through a more thorough test.
To make it interesting, we came back to Aus and that was where having original purchase disc showing we had laid taxes came I handy.

Shirtback

That's a very important piece of info which may indeed cause problems.

ozzieeagle

I'm not really into cars.... but this thought has crossed my mind. I don't know why but I'd love to take one of these onto UK roads.



Anyone else got an Aussie Car they would like to take onto UK roads ?

Beoz

Earlier I mentioned my mate who shipped at Holden Commodore over and wrapped it round a tree. He's English and lives in England and felt compelled to have a Holden Commodore in the UK.

It was all "hotted" up so I guess it would be a head turner and spark a few WTF is that.