SimonR

Mm yes, thats what I was thinking too.
Then again, wonder how much truck hire costs?
Dont have a great deal of time now.

MrsFychan

think we paid a one way fee from Wellington Harbour to Porirua of $70. distance of 21.5 km

our costs from the firm that transported it from the UK to NZ was $809.09 and on top of that you have the Compliance Inspection (where they literally rip the car apart - was not happy) , the Registration, WOF costs and Custom costs

MrsFychan

just looked up bank account for that time and came up with
$552 for testing centre then another for $451.06. The latter price would be for the new Registration and WOF

can't find the payment for the Custom guys.

SimonR

Ahh, $70, what a big fuss some people have been making about nothing! Thanks.

Yeah, I know about the general 'in' costs, guess it's the rust cleaning I'm wondering about. If I get it done in NZ, can I get it done anywhere I want to provided I get it towed there and towed back?

Anyone ideas on cost? Guess I should budget about £1k ?

MrsFychan

can only say that was our cost using the shippers transporter so not sure how across the board that cost is.

As you have been in contact with the AA I would ask them. As for cost for getting it done, no idea. Maybe ask your mates in Auckland to see if they could get you a quote ?

nzl

To answer your questions directly.

• No, it will fail.
• Yes, you can use anyone you want to do the sandblasting, but sandblasting is not your problem (and having done it, be ready for sand in places they miss when they vacuum it out), it is the certifier's approval you must have, and in that you are up against a major problem. Once you are in their hands, you completely lose control. If you want their approval, you open your cheque book and pay.
• Your photos suggest your problem may be more than sandblasting which is cosmetic. The certifier may require new panels.

To help you understand what you are actually asking:

You are proposing to become a used-car importer where your only difference is that you have GST exempt goods coming in the same container, thus saving about US$1,700 on a RO/RO, the usual way cars are shipped by used-car importers. As I understood your first post, you said you can buy the car in the UK for NZ$16,000 vs $25,000 in Auckland. Let's reality check that:

$16,000
$ 3,000 15% GST on $16,000 (plus on 25% shipping cost of part of the container that is not exempt) plus fees
$ 1,000 Inspections, VIN, Rego
$20,000 for a perfect car that will pass VIN
plus risk
plus the value of your time

That lowers the spread, and the optimal word is "perfect". It also assumes you are comparing apples to apples. Asking price does not mean selling price. It also does not indicate condition. There is no road salt in Auckland, and many of the cars are recent imports from Japan where they have already passed the strict import rules. You may find an equivalent car for $20,000.

As a used car importer, you are proposing to begin with a car that has rust. This is brave, and will produce the following effects:

1) In addition to the MAF inspection (which is not so bad, everything that they worry about can be fumigated for a few hundred dollars), your car will probably be tagged as failing by the NZTA border inspection (this is bad, very bad). See Fact Sheet 44.

2) You will then arrange and pay for your car will then be towed by a truck from your devanning bonded warehouse (where it was unloaded), at your expense, to a VIN centre who will fail the car not only on the rust, but anything else that is of concern. You will pay for this and have a limited time to re-inspect before you have to pay the full amount for a 2nd try. Note that in each of these steps, you will probably need to take off from work and be physically present to make sure what needs to be done is what they do.

3) You will then call in a structural engineer to prescribe the repairs required. That person will bill you at an expensive, professional rate. Because you have no local experience you will not know which one to call, and it is unlikely those in the business will tell you because you are perceived as competition. If your Auckland mates know a good one, please publish it here, as we have not yet found a good one.

4) You will then pay to have the car towed to a repair shop of your choice. The shop will ask the structural engineer to write the plan and do several inspections - each one with a substantial fee. The engineer will see the rust and require the full underbody be stripped of all paint down to raw steel (btw, I recommend high-pressure water blasting, not sand blasting... same price, same result, no sand grit everywhere). The engineer will not accept patches. The job must look like it did when it came from the factory.

We went down this track where they first required I spend $1,000 having all the undercoat removed that had been applied before the car was shipped as part of a major restoration. Then they set out a plan, for which the total estimate was $20,000. And this was on a structurally sound car that had just undergone a US $3,000 repair of the panels they deemed unacceptable.

Make no mistake about it, as soon as you fail the rust inspection, these private consultants are in charge. Your only option at that time is to pay, sell the car overseas, stick it in a garage and hope the rules change, or to break the car up and sell it as parts.

5) When you are done at the panel beaters having paid at least $2,000, and easily more than the car is worth, it goes back to the VIN centre where, unless they passed these the first time, you may encounter other things... brakes, suspension bushes, leaking exhaust, etc. The condition shown in your photographs suggests this is not a perfect car.

If you want to get into the used-car import business, then this first experience becomes your education and is worthwhile. You will learn the ropes and even if the car is not worth getting on the road, as long as it is a popular model in NZ, you will do OK breaking it up (presuming you are good with tools and have the time and interest).

If you are doing this out of love of the car, then it is unlikely anything anyone will say will deter you, but not all love affairs have happy endings.

If you are doing this to save money, as I suggested earlier you are better selecting something that does not involve regulations. I gave an example of what we did that you replied to with sarcasm. Another alternative is to buy single-axle box trailers, pack them with your goods and pop them into the container. Overseas, we bought two new 5x10 trailers from a store dumping them for the equivalent of NZ$1,500 each. Carefully packed them so there was zero damage including delicate glassware and china. The container packing company, that normally quotes thousands charged to load, charged the equivalent of NZ$100 since it took two minutes to remove the tyres and slip the trailers in. In Auckland, the bonded warehouse wanted $750 to unload the container. We said we would pay by the hour. We paid $50 for the two minutes it took to haul the trailers out that we then towed home. We then sold each of them on TradeMe for $6,000, thus the move cost nothing.

I speak from experience. We brought in four containers with a lifetime collection of stuff and a house-lot of building materials, a 26' boat, two Alfa Romeo Duettos, three Bristols and a MB G-Wagon... all owned by us for over 12 months. None of the cars passed VIN. One racing 1969 Alfa and one 1971 Bristol 411 remain un-VIN'd sitting in my garage. The 1955 Bristol 405-drophead was sold back to the UK and the Bristol factory rebuilt it for the buyer for £85,000 over what he paid me to buy it. The G-Wagon cost $12,000 to pass, but as they were virtually unobtainable at the time, it was worth it. The other Alfa convertible cost $3,000 to pass, but as it was a wedding gift with sentimental value, it was worth it. Surprisingly the 1966 Bristol 409 was the easiest, but that was a show car I had kept in perfect condition. It just needed new certified lap seatbelts and a shoulder-belt exemption (that paperwork cost $800!). Later, we bought a Nissan March wholesale from Japan. Advertised as perfect, it needed $3,000 to get VIN. Since then when we need a car, I've bought from importers in the business who offer them with an AA inspection certificate. With them you pay and ten minutes later drive out with a running car that is legal, registered and allows you to get on with your life. Having said this, one day I hope to buy a Smart Roadster Coupe in the UK and bring it over, but again this is about passion, not practicality. Except for a few private imports, the Smart Roadsters are unobtainable here. Bottom line, if it's rare and passion rules over sensibility, do it.

In response to your first post, if you want to mitigate your risk, then buy a car that is like new. No rust, no evidence of deterioration, clean before you sent it to the cleaners, a car that will go through VIN in 48 hours and need absolutely nothing. This is what all the used-car importers do now. If you want to become one of them, even as a one-off, follow their lead.

Otherwise, if you bring in the car shown in the photos, please document every step of your car-import adventure on this web site. I have made this long post to pass on our experience so others may learn from it. It is likely you will have a good story to tell.

SimonR

Just reading through this, and it's brilliant info thank you .. but my main questions is .. NZL how do you know all this?

nzl

First go to the links and read what the government says. They provide good information if you read it carefully. Start with the link I provided in the prior reply.

Second, I went through it:

Imported four containers. One got lost in transit and when they finally found it had been all the time sitting on the Port of Auckland dock. They tried to charge me a month's demurrage because of their error (despite my calling every day to ask where my container was). When that container arrived, my car hauling trailer and some scaffolding was missing... seems someone nicked it at the loading port. Another container had a 20' container dropped on top of my 40' in the loading port, creating a 20' x 1 diagonal hole in the top. When it arrived three months later the hole in had acted as a funnel, collecting tropical rain that turned everything inside green. MAF was called thinking it was a chemical spill with the green oozing out. That one cost the insurance US$106,000 and destroyed some priceless antique furniture as well as soaking the two Alfa Romeos. On another car, the devanning people hooked a rope to the shock absorber which tore out the steel mounting... a $600 repair job. On the 411, the towing company clamped a very high-powered battery booster to start the car and fried a brand-new Webasto electric sunroof computer that it turns out is not replaceable. On the Bristol 409, the seatbelt engineers stole the original classic aeroplane seatbelts that they declared non-complying. I managed to retrieve one off the desk of the engineer when I arrived unannounced (he explained he wanted it as a souvenir), but the other is gone. One container had to be repacked for some reason I cannot recall, and in doing so some oaf put a spare tyre on top of a perfect paint job which then bounced and vibrated its way to the other end of the earth - that cost $1,200 to repair and meant multiple trips to Onehunga. With the two cars that failed VIN and are in my garage, one was left outside by one repair shop and the new $8,000 leather interior was water soaked. I had left a car trailer at that shop, and it disappeared as well. $10,000 later I had that car towed to VIN with a promise it would pass, and it failed massively. I took it to a panel beater where I had the engineer adventure. Then while it was there, a customer lost control of her car and did $20,000 worth of damage to the Bristol (it did however save the shop owner who dove behind the Bristol when the lady's car careened at him). Insurance fixed it (sort of), but at that point I gave up. Then in moving it, the towing company used the newly chromed bumpers to pull it out to load it using what must have been a grappling hook, thus bending the rear bumper and destroying the new chrome job. The shop working on the 69 Alfa lied about their work, billing me for stuff they did not do, and to make the job easier, sliced through the wiring harness which destroys the originality and creates a place for shorting to occur. They took the car apart, and lost rare parts such as the transmission mount. After about $12,000 there, I had that one towed home as well with several baskets of parts, and one day hope to put it back together (it was running when it went into the container and had just been restored for track racing). ...and these are just the horror stories I remember off the top of my head. Oh yes, there was one more. The Lloyd's agent gave me the wrong bank number to pay the insurance. When I filed the claim they said I never paid for the policy. Rather than argue even though I had proof of their error, I paid another £2,000 so they would not have an excuse to stiff me on the insurance. They then took 3 years to pay out and I spent a month every day at the bonded warehouse having appraisers come by to assess the damage. Thankfully, I had insured with an itemised list of every item and a value placed on it, so they could not weasel out. That was depressing, especially because at the time we did not have a car, and I had to commute by ferry and then bus to get to a very dismal place.

So all of this knowledge comes from the school of hard knocks. That's why I now buy cars where someone else has done the VIN.

The common thread with this is exposure. Any time you expose yourself to someone shipping, inspecting or fixing a car, you are at risk of encountering someone who is incompetent, sloppy or does not care. In my case, it seems I got an extra dose, but now it is all forgotten as I enjoy a wonderful life in NZ. Now, when I need a car, I watch TradeMe and jump when a good one comes up at a good price. We also have shifted to riding bikes into the village and to the city. I modified them with Chinese ebike kits; a lot less trouble and keep me in better health.

kodachrome

Im aware of that, I meant relatively compared to mild steel or what have you, SS is an order of magnitude better. There is also grades of SS, 304 vs 316 are the common ones, most aftermarket fitters use 304 but OEMs sometimes use 316, which is more resistant to corrosion.


What car is it anyhow?

wendy_woo

Thought I would chime in on this as we were thinking of buying a second hand motorbike to bring over and understand that you have to won a second hand vehicle for 12 months to avoid GST, and your Registration documentation will show it is new to you so you have to pay GST and NZ customs will charge it on the CIF value and THEY may well value the bike higher than the price you paid in the UK - so you could end up paying GST on the market rate for your car in New Zealand - we have dumped that idea and know where we can get the same second hand bike in a dealer in Albany - same goes with the cars, we have decided just too much hassle and are selling our VW in the UK and buying Asian in New Zealand - good luck and do keep us posted!

SimonR

Wow, thanks for all the replies. Have been pretty busy today but have been reading when I can. NZD, that's great info. Sounds like you had an absolute nightmare -some crazy stories to tell though! You must have got pretty fed up of hanging around the port and phoning up insurance companies.

One thing though - I have no intention of becoming a dealer or importer - I just want a car for our family, that's all, I won't be selling it for profit. The car is a manual, and they're hard to find in NZ (not a big fan of automatics myself), plus the selection of cars in NZ is pretty bad compared to the UK. I've done the sums and it does make sense, depending on any extra bills of course. So I'm not looking for money-making schemes, I'm looking for a car to drive.

The car is a well-built 2004 car, very different from your cars, NZD, which mostly seem about 40 years old, except the G-wagon. The model I want was stopped in 2005, so I don't have the option of a new one, and given the last few winters we've had in the UK, I would have thought rust-free is unlikely.

So, it seems like the NZTA process and costs (if you fail rust inspection) are:

(1) NZTA border inspection at devanning bonded warehouse ($ ??)
(2) .. if fail .. tow to VIN centre ($70-ish)
(3) VIN centre inspection for rust etc ($ ??)
(4) Structural engineer: prescribes repairs required ($100?)
(5) Tow to repair shop ($70-ish)
(6) Structural engineer: writes plan for shop ($100? )
(7) Repair shop: Strip car to bare metal - wirebrush/ water blast ($300?)
(8) Structural engineer: Inspect it ($100?)
(9) Repair shop: Replace parts as needed ($300?)
(10) Repair shop: Paint it with Waxoyl ($200?)
(11) Structural engineer: Inspect it ($100?)
(12) Tow car to VIN centre ($70-ish)

Which looks like it might come out at about $1500?
I know it's 'as long as a piece of string', but does that breakdown look right?

wendy_woo

I don't see your GST figure in your calculations - it will be based on CIF, which is the COST, INSURANCE, and FREIGHT, we were told by our shippers that the arbitary figure for a motorbike is £2,200 for the frieght element, add to that the cost, which may be what NZ decide it is, plus whatever insurance you would have paid to ship it, say 1.5% of the cost of the bike, add those together and that is what you pay 15% GST on - I would highly recommend you give your shippers a call and ask them about the GST on this shipment - as far as NZ is concerned, this will not be a family car but an import because you have bought it with the intention of importing it.

Good luck!

SimonR

OK we bought the car!
^ Will try & get it fixed up in the UK in the 2 weeks we have left!

SimonR

Sorry, just realised I left a couple of questions unanswered ...

The car is an Audi S4 cabriolet.

Wendy, you're right, that wasn't all my calcs, just the cost of repair, and yes, we'd have to pay GST I assume. Since we've just bought the car, I was told that I could just take the receipt of sale along as an indicator of value. If you're concerned, you could get a 'Parkers' or 'Glass' valuation of your bike model and year, might be worth doing (assume they do bikes as well as cars).

kodachrome

Nice, I had an S4 before too, but the model before that. And a 'vert with a nice soundtrack is a good place to be.


I asked a Classic car restorer (as he would know) the best way of stripping surface rust back, he said sand and water blasting are not ideal, but Sodablasting is perfect. Im just about to call a place, here is there write up on it: