Nodge

Hi folks,

We are in Cairns at present, and we're looking for a bit of advice on shipping.

We bought a Toyota Rav4 Cabrio here and my partner is keen to hang on the car as she loves it bits.

As it looks increasingly likely that we will be going back to the UK next November is taking our car with us a financially viable option?

Has anyone else encountered something similar??

fitz

i too have a rav4 which i'm shipping back to the uk.
to make it viable to take back i.e.not pay import tax,you have to have owned the vehicle in australia for six months and have been residing in australia for at least a year,you will have to modify the car to eu standards,
change instrument panel and have fog lamps fitted,you can have this done in oz or uk,the car will also have to undergo an s.v.a.test in the uk,
i'm shipping my car back with my household contents in a 40ft container,
i think overall it will be worth it although i'm uncertain about insuring car in uk,
it seems it's a specialised insurance {grey import}it can be expensive,
also not sure about new increase in tax for 4by4s in the uk

Nodge

Eeek

Technically I'm not sure we'll have full ownership of it? We took out a loan with GMAC (I think?) to purchase the thing in the 1st place and we are paying it back in installments. By the time we are planning to go, there should be another 6 months worth of installments on it.

Does that kind of thing prevent you from taking it out of the country?

I don't think the instrument panel or fog lamps are much to worry about to be fair, I'll look into this SVA test and "Grey import" insurance.

To be fair I forgot about the higher fuel tax on the 4x4's.

Sham Williams

I had a grey import Rav 4 when I lived in the UK (it was one made in Europe imported to UK and sold new if that makes sense!!??!?!?!) we had major problems getting it serviced by toyota dealers, they wouldnt touch it!!

Also the insurance was considerably higher than for a normal Rav 4, roughly about £170 a year!!

AND finally when we came to sell it the depreciation value was far higher than a standard Rav 4!!

My advice dont take it, its not worth alllll the hassle!! Sell it here and buy a new one there!!

Mitzyboy

For what its worth I have owned a grey import car for some 9 years. Originally it was imported from Japan.

It went through a simple SVA test and the changes came to nothing over a couple of hundred pounds. Headlights, fog light were the main things ... didn't have to have a speedo change strangely.

The insurance has been fine and despite it being a performance sports car it was less than £300 on last renewal before I moved away.

Depreciation, well it varies from car to car but mone depreciated 10k in 9 years but its true to say that greys resell normally for less than UK cars.

If anything does put you off though, dont let the reason be that it is a grey import, just consider the cost of shipping and what you can get one for over in the UK