Buying Car - Importing vs Local

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BinaryLimited

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#133596 27-Oct-2013 19:25

Has anyone had any experience with importing a car?

Does it work out cheaper?
What are the importing fee's and additional costs
what are the common problems / issues?
How long does it take to arrive?

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DravidDavid

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#922666 27-Oct-2013 20:13

From what I've heard, it works out about the same price or sligntly more expensive, but you get a car in a much better condition with less milage. A $30,000 dollar car local might have 45,000Kms or 8,000Kms imported, for example. Or it might be the same Km's, but be in much better condition (ie: engine not hammered to within an inch of its life before sale).

BinaryLimited

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#922668 27-Oct-2013 20:17

DravidDavid: From what I've heard, it works out about the same price or sligntly more expensive, but you get a car in a much better condition with less milage. A $30,000 dollar car local might have 45,000Kms or 8,000Kms imported, for example. Or it might be the same Km's, but be in much better condition (ie: engine not hammered to within an inch of its life before sale).

what country would you recommend importing from? or know of any websites one can browse?

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kingjj

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#922670 27-Oct-2013 20:22

My wife's step father used to run a car shipping company that mainly operated out of Japan and did both company and private imports. From conversation with him, time frame was generally 6-8 weeks depending on whether car needed to be sourced or had already been sourced. A lot of that time was processing/certification once in NZ. On higher end cars the savings on importing versus local could be as high as $5000-8000, it was really dependent on the car of course. You would be best to work through a vehicle sourcer/importer to get all the paperwork etc done correctly, they'll generally charge a fee in the low thousands to arrange it all. This would include all required fees, with shipping and certification being the two large ones.

I looked at importing a car a few months ago but settled on one through a wholesaler instead, freshly imported and priced lower than what you would expect through a car yard.

Edit: Speeling's

BinaryLimited

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#922673 27-Oct-2013 20:32

kingjj: My wife's step father used to run a car shipping company that mainly operated out of Japan and did both company and private imports. From conversation with him, time frame was generally 6-8 weeks depending on whether car needed to be sourced or had already been sourced. A lot of that time was processing/certification once in NZ. On higher end cars the savings on importing versus local could be as high as $5000-8000, it was really dependent on the car of course. You would be best to work through a vehicle sourcer/importer to get all the paperwork etc done correctly, they'll generally charge a fee in the low thousands to arrange it all. This would include all required fees, with shipping and certification being the two large ones.

I looked at importing a car a few months ago but settled on one through a wholesaler instead, freshly imported and priced lower than what you would expect through a car yard.

Edit: Speeling's

What companies /websites would you recommend ?

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jeffnz

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#922709 27-Oct-2013 21:08

DravidDavid: From what I've heard, it works out about the same price or sligntly more expensive, but you get a car in a much better condition with less milage. A $30,000 dollar car local might have 45,000Kms or 8,000Kms imported, for example. Or it might be the same Km's, but be in much better condition (ie: engine not hammered to within an inch of its life before sale).

I don't agree but would depend on where you import from, from my experience you have no idea what the car has done or what type of driving its had. If its Japan there is a fair chance it hasn't been serviced much no been on long trips only town running.

Caveat Emptor would be my suggestion, at least local cars you can see what it likes and get an inspection done.

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richms

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#922714 27-Oct-2013 21:12

Buying locally means you get to fall back on all the consumer protection if things go bad with it.

Importing yourself you have none of that, so factor the cost of a warranty in (if you are able to get one) and the savings start to not look all that great on most of the cars.

But you can get something that you want, vs what is the easiest for the dealers to get.

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kiwijunglist

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#922727 27-Oct-2013 21:27

Imported 2 cars saved a bundle.

First car cost me $38k all up, price at dealers was about $48-55k for ones that were 3 years older and about 40,000km (vs 5,000km) So I'm guessing I saved around $25k or more.

Second car cost me about $18k and I think at dealer it would of been around $22k, so saved $4k

Cost are

Vehicle Cost + Frieght + Insurance

Then add

Compliance + MAF + Registration + Port Fees + Cost of transport from Port -> Compliance Yard

Then add

Duty + GST on top of everything else.

I think the amount that can be saved is quite a bit less than what it used to be, and it really depends on the car. Some less common cars you can save heaps, while other cars the savings are a lot less.

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#922784 27-Oct-2013 22:00

Certain european cars import fr uk.

Eg land rover audi.
Defi not volvo.
Not sure abt bmw

He ard fr guy who knows a guy so ... Yeah

DravidDavid

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#922838 27-Oct-2013 23:23

Contact a guy called Chris. Has loads of experience with this sort of stuff. Imports from Japan mostly I think, but I'm sure he can do anywhere.

http://globalonlinecars.com/about/contact-us.php