I was just wondering how much an hassle will be to import a car from japan to europe. Someone had prior experiences, any japan-based exporter?
A friend has imported a few Skylines and an RX-7 from Japan using http://www.tau-trade.com/ - never seemed to have an issue with them. What are you looking for anyway?
Very big hassle, very costly if you're doing one car. You're better off going to an import dealer. Probably the easiest method would be: Learn Japanese (although you'll often find exporters can speak English at least to some degree, at a price) Find an exporter in Japan Choose a car Establish the price of the car Sign pro-forma Pay exporter (by bank transfer - N.B. bank charges apply and you may have issues when sending over a certain amount) Find shipping agent in your country Pay shipping fee (based on volume) Pay import duty (10% of car cost AND shipping fee) Pay VAT (on car cost AND shipping fee AND import duty) Pay customs clearance fee Pay port fee Pay clearing agent fee (may include port fee) Collect car Pay registration fee Register car Buy number plates Prepare car to be road legal Put car through whatever test it needs (e.g. MOT) - more cost Tax the car - more cost Find an insurance broker who will insure import cars Insure car *EDIT* To elaborate: Shipping to most ports in Europe should cost about $85 per cubic metre. Those ports include Southampton, Liverpool, Newcastle, Zeebrugge, Amsterdam (Antwerp & Rotterdam cost more), Le Havre, Bremerhaven, Barcelona... I think other ports in Europe would be a fair bit more. Expect most cars to be somewhere in the region of 10-20 cubic metres. So the shipping charge is going to be $850-1700. Cost-wise, let's look at getting it to the UK. - Cost of car from exporter: ? - Shipping cost: £55 x volume - Import duty: 10% - VAT: 20% - Customs clearance: £50 - Clearing agent fee: approx. £300 - Conversion (rear fog lamps, MPH speedo etc.): approx. £375 - IVA test: £199 - MOT: £45 - DVLA Registration: £55 - Number plates: £30 - Insurance: 2 or 3 times your normal insurance, probably! Two examples now: 1: 1991 Nissan Skyline GT-R. 2.6L, over 100,000 km. 9.8m3 £5,450 from exporter 2: 2002 Nissan Skyline GT-R. 2.6L, under 20,000 km. 11.14m3 £41,000 from exporter The 1991 Skyline costs £539 to ship. Import duty on £5,989 is £598.90. VAT on £6587.90 is £1317.58 = £7905.48 to get it into the country. We already know the stuff to do in the UK will cost about £1,054. Without insurance, our £5,450 car has cost us £8,959.48 to get on the road in the UK. The 2002 Skyline costs £612.70 to ship. Import duty on £41,612.70 is £4,161.27 VAT on £45,773.97 is £9,154.80 = £54,928.77 to get it into the country. Again, the charge over here is about £1,054. Without insurance, our £41,000 car has cost us £55,982.77 to get on the road in the UK. I've probably missed something out. One thing I can think of - the first car is over 10 years old and that might have different rules. Of course, we're assuming the cars are in tip-top condition! Incidentally, all Skylines are group 20 for insurance. I've seen drivers in their 30s and 40s with 10+ years no claims and a clean licence quoted anything from £500 to £3,500 for insurance! Expect it to be around £1,000-1,500 if you're in that group. A youngster would easily be over £2,000.
Europe is luck to have the option to do this. I wanted to export my GT-R to the U.S., but they are blacklisted. I would have to take the whole car apart piece-by-piece and list it as parts, not a car. Anyhoo, carry on..
Yeah, US is totally fucked in this department. Apparently Aussie's have it the easiest, although they have some wonky law (tax break?) where you can ship 1 car per X years extremely cheap. Not sure if they still have it or not, but there used to be a business that would pay Aussies to do it.
I would have thought that Australia is so close, they would get a lot of their cars from Japan, anyway. I don't see how such businesses would profit from that much - unless someone wanted more than one Japanese car per year, they could have had the importer ship the car in their name, anyway!
From what I understand you can blame Mercedes Benz for this. They got pissed that people were importing cars that they were unable/unwilling to. So they formed some BS safety group and lobbied congress to change the law regarding personal imports. Now except for rare circumstances you can't import anything unless you pay for the same safety testing that all manufacturers do when they bring in a new model. It also gets a pass if it is 25 years old which from the safety standpoint that MB was lobbying makes oh so much sense. After all, Why trust the safety of a 9 year old Japanese car when you can put your faith in that of a 25 year old car made in Soviet Russia? Sorry about the rant but this is one of those asinine laws that really piss me off.
Yeah, anything imported into the US has to be 25 years old or older. Which is fine by me, as all I really want is a Sanitora.
It could be worse... Good smile racing with COX is an official Super GT (GT300) team and it is an official Porsche works entry...
hello guys, thanks a bunch for the info and the links i was thinking that this thread was going to end with 0 posts btw, I'm falling in love with the skyline r34 gtr, only problem would be right hand drive (I'm in italy), but as a sunday car, would be ok
