Av8r

Hi Iron Chef, Have done a bit of research, and found a few Audi/BMW/Bentley/Porsche models where the UK price is a third to half the red book dealer trade-in price. How much less is a personal import worth than an official Aus car, how much harder are they to sell, and what are the compliance costs typically like for luxury cars? What has to be done? Is it true there are horror stories getting the compliance plate for expensive cars as they know they have you over a barrel once the car arrives? Thanks again... Av8r

Hi again Iron Chef Apologies, but have now read the thread in full so please ignore the shipping question re RoRo/Container above. Like to replace it with the following though.... If you were to take a punt on which car to buy and import a year later purely for financial benefit... Or on the basis you couldn't afford to buy one there as a mere mortal.... What would be your thoughts on the following please? 1. BMW 745 2002-2005, BMW X5 or Z4 2003-2005 2. Bentley Arnage 2000 - 2003, vintage Rolls or Bentley 1950's to 1960's 3. Audi A8/S8 series, Audi A5 series 4. Porsche 911, earlier Turbo or later model convertible Or anything else where you see an opportunity for arbitrage with a UK purchase price of between £10K and £35K?

Hi Ironchef Great thread, very helpful. My wife is Australian and we are currently living in the UK. We're planning to move to Australia next year, and are now looking to buy a couple of cars to take with us. A few questions.... 1. We're planning to buy cars, ideally near the bottom of the depreciation cycle, and garage them for a year, only driving occasionally when the weather is nice, etc. Is it a problem if the mileage doesn't increase much during the 12 months of ownership? 2. What level of discount upon eventual resale is typically applied to imported 'grey market' cars versus original imports for luxury/sports brands? The cars we're looking at are those with a significant differential between AUS and UK prices, and often close to the bottom of the depreciation cycle. For example, 1988 to 1995 Porsche 911 Turbo, 1950's vintage Bentley S1, etc. Also possibly newer cars, such as 1999 to 2003 Bentley Arnage or the usual BMW/Merc/Audi suspects, but realise there is a bigger risk of depreciation to add to the currency fluctuation risk in the year we hold it prior to shipping. 3. Is it possible to bring anything else, such as motorbikes or boats? Is the limit one car per person or one vehicle per person? 4. When shipping, is a RoRo or container the better/cheaper idea and is it possible to load up other items either in the container or car? 5. The rough idea at this point is to take a 'dream car' each, picking in general terms what we can find the biggest price variance on, and either sell one to cover almost all the costs of both or hold both for a number of years to enjoy limited depreciation motoring. Is it possible to to get this to stack up financially, or do we find in real life it doesn't tend to work that way due to import costs and the discounted resale value for imports? Also can your company handle all the paperwork and process for personal imports, is there a difference in import taxes applied with various ages of car, and is it prohibitively expensive to get these types of cars certified once in Australia? Many thanks.