Hi to all you in the know out there; would we be better to take a car to Oz or buy there?? I'm talking 'bout a Rav or a Honda CRV- 4 wheel drive type cars Could we easily get parts, are warranties honoured & as we have a private plate would we need to re-register it? Thanx Michele x
Michelle
at a guess you should wave goodbye to your private plate, I am confident that registrations are different wherever you go and that you would need to re-register your car when you got there in accordance with whatever rules they have.
As for parts etc, Australia is sooooooo much closer to Japan, everything for Honda and Toyota is freely available.
Got to balance the cost of transporting the vehicle as well. Do a search for your year of car over there and see of it is worth the additional several thousand dollars it will cost. I think you will find it is not worth the hassle of importing one.
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i looked into this, unless the car is like a member of your family i would,nt bother,if i remember correctly it costs about £1500 to ship it ,you have to pay customs 20% of the value of your car and before any of that you have to get a vehicle import permit ,bang it on ebay
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Location: From Bury,Manchester To Jimboomba, Brisbane
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Not sure if you can bring your private plate,i did briefly look into it and it didnt seem like you could transfre it ,we bought my son one when he was born and i didnt fancy selling it incase he ever wants to go back,but knew id not remeber the retention fee every year.I asked a good friend if he would put it on his car(even thou it says zak!)and added him on the plate cert as another owner.A year on and he's still driving round with it!!!Private plates are different and cheap here,you can easily go and buy one at dept of transport,,
Cal x
We are in the same boat as you and also have a cherished number on our car. Unfortunately the registration number is unique to DVLA and can only be registered to a car in the UK. As ours only cost £250 we'll end up letting it go with the car. If your plate cost a lot I would suggest selling it through one of the numerous car registration plate companies.
As for shipping your car, I wouldn't bother unless your vehicle has extreme sentimental value to you or is a classic. I too am after a medium 4X4 and have looked at the various car sites over there and they are cheaper and there is plenty of choice. So the bottom line is "get shot of your motor!"
Good luck.
KK.
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Arrived in Melbourne 21 Jun 08....at long last!
Unless you have a special car or a car over 30 years forget it -
The main reason is all cars in Australia must have a compliance plate fitted for the year of manufacture This states that the car meets all requirements for an Australian car manufactured for that year. The rules are covered in the Australian Design Rules or ADR the first thing they check when you go to register a car is the compliance plate no plate no rego you can get a personnel Import plate a fixed to an imported car but this means things like seat belts must be changed Window Glass and the list goes on You can go to the National Transport website or state Registration Sites have the ADR rules listed Also there most likely Mechanical differences between the car sold in the UK and Australia - Radiators come to mind bigger in Australia
As For Number plates all states sell Special plates for a fee quite cheap -
NB Checking the compliance plate is a good way of making sure your buying the correct year model as the Salesman says it is Compliance plates are normally a fixed to the fire wall or the Radiator support if its stamped 2007 then its a 2007 car Do not buy a car without a compliance plate - walk away
Hope this helps
This one may already have been done to death, but here's my two penn'orth:
We had also looked into bringing our car with us (a very nice top end Volvo S60), and had found that shipping was only the start of the problems. It would only have cost us £1000 to ship, basically the difference between the 20' container that we needed for our house contents and a 40' container to fit the car in as well. We were told (though how true this is I don't know) that including the car in the container may well hold up shipment.
The best advice that we received was that if you have a prestige brand European car (BMW, Merc, Range Rover, Audi, Volvo but not Saab) , late-ish model but not brand new (so that it doesn't attract the luxury car tax) then it does economically speaking become worthwhile. But as has already been said, the cost of changing a large number of parts can make it a huge hassle.
Check the Red Book AU : Your site for New and Used vehicle prices website, and see if there is a huge difference in the value of your car between that and the UK. It seems that it is only worthwhile in a very small percentage of cases.
John - I think that saying that seat belts and glass will need to be replaced is scare mongering. I am well down the route of shipping my 05 Saab 9-3 cabrio and suggest that anybody interested in shipping a car takes a look at ther following website:
The site has an excellent guide to shipping with example costs and even a spreadseet to enable you to work out if shipping is in your favour.
It ain't an easy process to import a car to Oz, but selling in the UK is going to lose you money, maybe not as much as the costs of shipping, tax, compliance, import fees etc, but when you look at the second hand car prices in Oz, it could make sense.
