# Importing cars from UK to Oz



## sgrebosz

Hi guys...

While my partner and I are waiting for the de-facto partner visa which is estimated to take up to 26 months we started focusing on more positive stuff like trying to plan our settling in in Australia.

As the cars in Oz seem to be more expensive than in UK we're thinking about importing our own vehicles into Oz. Has anybody done it yet? Is it really worth it?
Many thanks for any advice on this.


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## Schtoo

Hiya,

I'm new here and this is a very late reply but yes, we've just completed bringing our car with us.

Bringing a car with you? It depends on a lot of things, but unless you can make a valid case ($$$ and head, not heart) for bringing YOUR particular car with you then I'd probably suggest to sell it for whatever you can get and buy something when you get here.

We bought ours from Japan, so the costs will likely be more from the UK but not by a huge amount. The full door-to-door cost for bringing our car with us was;
$800 incidentals in Japan (transport from home to the dock, deregistration, permit, etc.)
$5500 transport from the dock in Osaka to off the dock in Melbourne, taxes, etc.
$800 for engineer/RWC/permission for it to be allowed on the road.
$1200 for 3 months rego, plates, stamp duty (treated as new car), etc.

Total of $8300, which is a little more than I expected or wanted it to be, but for all that still within making sense $$$ wise because...

The car is just under 4 years old, bought new but with a greatly diminished value in Japan. We paid about $38,000 for it in Japan, but the best we'd get for it would have been about $15,000. Similar examples locally sell for $25,000. The value of ours is less because personal import, but goes way up because ours does have features that are missing from the local version of the same age and still missing from the newest version of it sold here.

So taking the $15,000 we'd have got from selling it, adding the $8,300 we spent getting it here we'd be able to 'maybe' buy the similar spec model here lacking some pretty unique-to-our-vehicle features. 

And we're not talking a special colour or trim here, it's significant safety tech. Stuff still not broadly available at any price on Australian versions of the same vehicle, nor in similar vehicles from other manufacturers. 

So $$$ and sense wise, it made sense to bring it with us, but only just. 

If it's an emotional decision, then take your costs and make sure you have enough spare cash to make it work and go for it. That wasn't really a factor in our case, as it's a family bus and not exciting at all, common as mud everywhere and boring as bug poop. 

But when it comes time to sell, we'll be in front $$$ wise and for right now we get to transport the kids in a reliable and very safe vehicle which was why we bought it in the first place. 

However, if I was buying the car with intention to personally import it, I would have added more than a few additional options. It's unique enough as it is, but it could have been significantly more 'unique'. As it is, I wouldn't be surprised if someone makes and offer to buy it off us once they work out what it is.


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