Tom Sawyer

I'm moving back to the UK in July and am looking into shipping my car over from Australia due mainly to the depreciation hit I would be taking if sold here - it is only 18 months old. Shipping costs are not too bad using a RoRo car ferry option being about A$2300 to Southampton as there is not enough room in our household shipping container. No tax or duty to pay as car has been owned by me for +12mths and I have lived over here for nearly 10 years. My main query is regarding the VOSA IVA compliance testing. The car is an Audi S3 2012 so should not be any major headaches with getting it through - even the speedo has a digital MPH reading option. Has anyone any experience in this such as timescale, pitfalls, did you arrange all yourself or use any of the companies that can carry out the complete collection, compliance and registration for you at a cost? What I have read it all seems pretty straightforward, but would be interested in anyone's experiences.

uk_grenada

Dont underestimate the complexity of type approval. E.g. Your car nay be able to display mph but your car has to display mph and kph all of the time for european approval. Thats why vw audi here all have unstopppable digital kph displays and analogue mph. You may be able to get a garage to reprogram the digital but the analogue is ver expensive to swap. If your tyres dont have the right eu text, they arent acceptable either. Make sure its very clean underneath, they can force you to pay them to clean off foreign bugs muck etc.

I know someone in the us who did it, but it cost far more than the car was worth.

Tom Sawyer

Hi Bob, I'm not under estimating the complexities, but so far it has been straightforward. I'm using a company in the UK to deal with the VOSA IVA compliance and collect car from Southampton, working out about GBP1200 all in. Should not be any mods required, digital speedo is acceptable, tyres all have "E" stamps, rear fog light fitted and car is built to Euro standards including alarm, seat belt points and the list goes on......Shipping from here including UK customs clearance is about $2.5k plus all risks insurance based on car value, which I got through a shipping insurance broker. It is booked on a RoRo car transporter from port Kembla for later in June.
All in all I should just about break even if I keep car for about another 18 months looking on Autotrader at equivalent values, certainly not losing as much if I had sold the car here after paying out the finance.....not that you ever win when it comes to car values!

Carrianne

Tom,

I am considering the same I have a VW Tiguan only 5 months old and want to ship in August, got similar quotes, but my speedo is Km's not miles, all other european fitting etc are the same. Who are you using in the UK I could so with their info, to see if its worth it for me. Thanks

Tom Sawyer

Hi Carrianne,

I'm using www.shipmycar.co.uk based in Milton Keynes for the UK end of things. As I said they are collecting car from port, pre-inspecting car for any modifications required, arranging the IVA, taxing and registering with DVLA for about GBP1100. As your car is Euro built should not be too many problems. Check it has rear fog light fitted ( I think it has to be on the right as well), tyres have "E" mark stamped on them and headlights dip to the left.

I would have thought that the Tiguan should have the facility to select the digital speedo display through the menu settings as VW is in same group as Audi so technology is similar. There is a guide here how to do it http://volkswagenownersclub.com/vw/s...-Speed-Display , but it is dependent on car model as well. If it hasn't got this option, you can get replacement speedo dials here http://www.lockwoodinternational.co.uk/tiguan-c536.html . It is not too big a job to do them yourself. Not sure how you would change the odometer to display total miles rather than KM's though, maybe find someone before you leave with VAG COM as they should be able to change the unit of measurement. If not, shipmycar can do this level of work anyway.

Let me know if you need anymore info.

Carrianne

Thank you very much.