Importing of a car

[dewey]

Hi there

Does anybody know what the laws / costs are with regard to importing your car into Australia?

Regards

Joanne

[Dolly]

Hi Joanne,

Found the Australian Customs website that should tell you how to import a car, not sure though how much it would cost?

I'm presuming that if you're going to be shipping over your furniture etc, your car will going into the container as well? If that is the case, your shipping company will tell you what fees you'll end up paying.

importing a motor vehicle

Dolly

[kaz101]

Hi Joanne,

I would actually advise against importing a car, and this is having done it in July 2007.

Why are you thinking about importing a car? If it's a luxury car then you have to pay extra tax because it's a luxury car.

The costs you need to consider are:
- Cost of shipping the car in a container
- Cost of having car steam cleaned and possible replacement tyres in Oz
- transport from port to where ever you live
- Requirements needed to get car registered in your State
- any compliance issues with getting car on the road here

We brought over our 1971 Mustang from the UK on a historic licence. We would have had a smaller container except I thought it would be fun to have the car here. Once here we had to pay to get the car from the port (Melbourne) to southern south Australia. We wanted it to come into Adelaide but they were not set up as much for bringing in cars of that age. It cost nearly $1000 to get the car from Melbourne to us since we couldn't register it in Melbourne since that's Victoria and we're in SA. We've since found out we could have had it transported cheaper than that! Once home the engine head seemed to have cracked (I've no idea what that is but it is an old car and to be expected apparently - my husband understands it). So we had the engine rebuilt, and we were told that the wiring that we had changed to suit UK requirements was not valid here, and it had to be changed back to be original.
All the work was done and my husband went to SA transport to see how we could get the car on the road.... The car is original is all but one aspect - the colour. Ford did not produce a purple Ford Mustang in 1971, and we've been told that we need to either change the car from left hand drive to right hand drive and put it on a normal licence or re-paint the car to an original colour for the historical licence. Either one will cost about $10,000! If we had known that we wouldn't have brought the car in, taking into account the other costs too. We've met members of a local vintage and veteran car club who say what we've been told about the car re-sprayed is rubbish but we've seen the paperwork. If we can find a legal way around it we'll try that.

So what ever you decide make sure you know EXACTLY what is required to import the car and what is required to get it on the road (which varies from State to State). We've even been told that if we registered it in another town that they may not enforce the rules there, but moving house to avoid paying $10,000 seems a little extreme

Regards,
Karen