Guindalf

Nope. IIRC, they are only producing the Ecoboost in RHD. However, I'm sure if they get enough interest, others may follow.

Steve_

That's not accurate, Ford does allow Canadians to buy new cars at US dealerships and the restrictions other manufacturers place on exports are usually only for Canadians.

I remember I was at a Jeep dealership in Florida once with a relative of mine who wanted to buy a Cherokee to take to the UK (this was before they started selling them in the UK) and the dealer even said that, "you know if you were Canadian I couldn't sell you this car".

Anyway as I recall (bear in mind it's been awhile) the car has to have type approval in the UK (I think this on the DVLA website somewhere) and HMRC inspects it at import (before it leaves the port) to make sure it is what you've declared it as and then you pay any duty or VAT, they release it, and you drive it to a place of registration. Not sure how that works nowadays. They have specialist HMRC inspectors, they check the car to see if it has been modified.

Even if it's new, it's not exempt from MoT, so that's the next thing you have to do and they will swap out various bits and pieces that don't comply with UK and EU regulations (or get you to do it and come back) and charge you a fair bit for it. The one thing I remember getting dinged for was having the headlights replaced because obviously you're on the other side of the road.

I stress the point that is on the CBP website - your car is not a shipping container. Stuff will go missing, it did out of my car.

Also bear in mind you have to get clearance from CBP to export the car, you have to give them 48 hours notice, send the original title to them and they run it through NCIC to make sure it isn't stolen.

Steve_

Oh yeah, you said Florida - my experience is that Port Everglades is less hassle than the Port of Miami. Just rent a container from P&O or whoever, I know a good freight forwarder if you decide to do it, I can PM you the details if you want.

Steve_

I don't agree with what it says in there, I found driving a LHD car way easier in the UK than a RHD car because people park their cars all over the place in the UK and if you're on a road with parked cars and wheelie bins (aka nearly every road in every city) you can navigate around them much more easily. It's very unnerving for passengers though.

Can't stand RHD cars. (Remembers another reason he will never live in the UK again) Oh yeah.

samati

Hey
Thanks for all the input, definitely too much hassle for me!
I will just buy a shoe sized car when I get back
Cheers

Awesome Welles

Nope - the only Mustang not available in RHD is the V6 - both the Ecoboost 4cyl and the 5.0 V8 will be available in the UK in RHD.

Awesome Welles

Well, actually it is accurate. US dealers are not permitted to sell US inventory knowingly for export. That applies to British made cars too. I have a good friend who is dealer principal at a Jaguar Land Rover dealer in Indiana - they are constantly having to turn away cash buyers (particularly for Range Rovers) who wish to export them and make a fast buck.
The industry does all it can to prevent this.
I have a new Dodge Challenger SRT on order and had to produce a whole stack of evidence to demonstrate I was an LPR with no intention of exporting the car, before they would take my $10k deposit.

I'm sure there are some dealers who ignore the manufacturers directives, which is why I wrote 'theoretically' - but they risk losing their franchises by doing so.

Gozit

O/T but if you buy a new iPhone to bring back to the UK all you need to do is take it out of the box and remove the plastic wrap and then it becomes "your mobile" and you won't be taxed for it.

Pulaski

Well that might enable you to circumvent the law, but that is tax evasion, which is a crime, and encouraging criminal behavior is something that we frown on here at BE.

FWIW If you arrive in the UK today with an iPhone 6 you cannot possibly have owned it for the requisite 6 months to legitimately avoid paying the tax.

Gozit

Ah yes

But would the officer notice/care? probably not.

Anyway i got a tad confused there as what I usually do is when on a visit back home i bring electronics for grandparents, new laptop/mobile etc and since im coming in as a tourist they assume i am bringing it back out but then i dont!

Pulaski

I wouldn't be so sure. UK Customs has a history of picking up on things such as electronics and other pricey gifts bought by people visiting/ coming from countries where electronic or such things are cheaper than in the UK, and then levying duty, VAT, and, I believe, penalties if the goods were not declared to Customs. Back in the late 1980's. IIRC, a senior politician was caught bringing an undeclared video camera in to the UK when he returned from a trip to Hong Kong.

Steve_

No it's not, you must have missed where I pointed out my relative doing it. In fact he did it twice.

Yes they are, their franchise agreement may say otherwise but it depends on the make. Ford definitely will do it. GM won't, Chrysler won't for Canadians but I'm not sure about generally speaking.

There's no law against it though.

Have a read of this: Canadian car buyers blocked from cheaper U.S. prices - Business - CBC News

As it says, Ford, Kia and Nissan will do it.

Well Jaguar and Range Rover is just one company, like I said, it depends on the franchise agreement.

Well it used to until it started getting enormous flak from Canada, so back in 2009 when Canadians were going berserk there was some movement on it, because until then a lot of manufacturers were making cars with slight differences to make them more awkward to export from the US, so they caved on that point, since 2009 the difference between Canadian and US-spec vehicles is basically just the speedometer and odometer.

Yeah that's Chrysler though. I'm here to tell you my relative bought a new Jeep Cherokee and exported it to the UK, but they are awkward about doing it.

The usual trick is to put it out as a loaner and put some mileage on it and then sell it as "used".

But anyway it's not a general rule was my point, depends on the make.

samati

Probably a dumb question with an obvious answer but why don't the Americans export all their cool cars to Europe?
I am sure they would transform their economy by selling GMC Acadias, Terrains, camaros, corvettes, new Ford Explorers etc abroad.
I know that they do sell some in the UK but they are usually crappy things that nobody wants.

Owen778

My guess would be for two reasons: one, for the larger SUVs and trucks, the demand mostly isn't there; two, sometimes for those, but more so for some of the muscle cars, they don't necessarily meet European emissions requirements.

Why do you assume that Europeans would want such large cars? The largest SUVs would be pretty much undriveable in rural English lanes, and the much higher taxes on European petrol compared to US gas make fuel economy more important.

Pulaski

They do, perhaps more than you'd realise. Corvettes and Caddies are imported officially by GM, but the Caddies are so dämn big that not many people would want to drive one. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw a RHD Caddy a mile from my mother's house last summer when I was back in Britain.

I think that a large part of the problem is that import duties and VAT, together with the dealers and manufacturers wanting to make a tidy profit, make them relatively much more expensive than they are in the US. When I bought my Mustang GT in 2001 I paid about $26,000 including taxes, which equivalent to about £16,000 was an absolute steal, being less than most Modeos and less than the "performance" Focus models too. Apart from the fact that duty and taxes alone would have pushed the price well over £20,000, Ford would not want to cannibalize it's own market so the price would be higher still.

Also some models couldn't be converted to RHD even if they wanted. I seem to recall that the engines in Corvettes, (or was it Mustangs? ) were, until a major redesign, positioned in such a place that the steering mechanism could not be located on the other side of the car.