This is a brief guide on importing based of my own experiences its not complete but ill add to it and try tidy it up as i go along ive tryed to bang up a few pictures to break up the text wall but alot of things id have liked to show have personal details so ill try do some photoshoping when i have more time .Apologies for any spelling or grammar mistakes am pretty crap at them i used www.tradecarview.com of course other sites can be used. but the ones I was looking at had either jacked up the prices or wanted you to pay a deposit just to look at cars for sale. Step one of course is to register on the site and start to browse for the car your after. As I was looking for a ep95 3 door manual I just banged ep95 manual into the keywords once every week or so and had a look to see if any had been listed. The cars are extremely rare I checked every week for around 7 months with out seeing a single one and gave up and then by chance I was bored one day looked and one had been listed with in the last 24hours!. Its worth noting in that entire time I seen quite a few 5 doors come and go but never once did I see a single ep85 so rare isn’t the word for these!!. Once you have found your chosen car contact the seller with any questions you might have and personally I would ask for as many pictures to be taken as possible as it’s the only chance you will get to actually see this car before parting with your hard earned cash. Also any marks or scratches you find can be used to bargain with the price. You are free to barter as much as you want to with the seller to try get the price down there are 3 different prices you will be dealing with FOB - this is the price off just the car and nothing else. C&F this is the car + and basic shipping cost . And the one I would advise you use with is CIF this is cost of car + shipping + marine insurance which you must have. Basically CIF means you pay them and they deal with everything right up until the boat hit’s the docks in the uk then its up to you. Remember there is also other things you need to pay the main one being 30% import tax when the car hit’s the uk ill list all the fees I encounter once my car is in my hands. Depending on the company selling the car you can also ask for different things as well when speaking to the dealer I was using they owned a garage and said they would be happy to do any work such as bodywork/service. Or even try source aftermarket parts and fit them to the car prior to sending the car. Once your happy with everything and selected a port for the car to be shipped to its time to request proforma invoice, this outlines all the details of the trade and the price to be paid. Along with the bank details the money should be sent to. Tradecarview have a system called pay trade which acts much like paypal basically you pay pay trade the money and when u confirm the car has arrived safely they then pay the dealer you purchased it from. For this they do however charge a fee based on a percentage of the value of the trade and minimum fee is $150usd its highly advised you use this for some protection. If your happy with all the details of the trade you should arrange a bank transfer from your bank to pay trades bank account with the invoice number as the reference to the transfer so it can be easily traced. Your bank should give you a receipt for the transaction which you should attach a copy of and send it to the dealer to confirm the payment has been done ( the receipt might have some personal bank details you do not wish to disclose please feel free to block this out) in my case the transfer took 5 working days for pay trade to get the funds and they then took another day to assign it to the correct invoice and notify myself and the dealer that the transfer had been complete. Due to the fact I had sent the receipt of the transaction to the dealer already they had already arranged and finalised all the shipping details and my car was sitting at the docks waiting to be loaded. Now the waiting game begins the shipping company will send a bill of laden to the dealer who will send you a copy via tradecarview and then they should arrange a courier to deliver the paper copy’s of the bill of laden, all the invoice documents and any jap paperwork relating to the car namely the de-registration paper work. Once you have the paper copy’s you have two choices you can either pay a customs clearance agent to do the paperwork for you or you can attempt to do the paperwork yourself. I spent quite awhile on the phone speaking to customs about this and have decided to do the paperwork myself. The forms that need to be filled in are, C21 customs clearance request C384 private motor vehicle release These will allow you to pay the 30% import tax on your car and give you the needed paperwork to take to the docks and collect your car. My documents should be with me any day now so I will update the guide as I attempt to work my way though the paperwork and last steps of collecting my car. A few things that should be taken into consideration when importing are. 1.You must make sure you have the funds to pay for things as soon as they come up not having the money at the right time can result in fee’s and the possibility of losing the car. 2.Remember to take into account the time zone difference this makes communicating very slow at times so be very careful. If you just spent 10 months looking for that super rare ep85 ask yourself is it worth trying to get £100 knocked off the price of the car at the cost of a few days negotiating when someone might just swoop in and pay the ticket price and take it from under your nose. 3.There are 3 ports cars can be brought into. Bristol, Southampton and Liverpool its worth getting quotes for all of them as one might be slightly closer but want £150 quid more to ship it and it will take twice as long to get there. 4.Its worth reading all of tradecarviews faq’s and such as they answer a lot of questions as well 5. Dealers will have reviews and will say if they accept pay trade check these to make sure your happy with the dealer before handing over any money payment's made to get boat loaded on boat car- $990 usd shipping + insurance -$760 usd paytrade fee- $150 usd total $1900 usd or £1,250.91 as of 03/12/12 £9.50 bank charge for making the payment so in total i had to pay out £1,260.41 for the car to be loaded on the boat the journey was suposed to be 8 weeks so gives you 2 months to start saving up when it hits the uk you then have to pay the following, VAT and duty are calculated by your invoice cost which will be in USD's. they use the exchange rate for the day the car actauly lands in the uk rather than the date on the invoice so just watch out for this. 10% duty of total invoice cost £119.93 20% vat of total invoice cost AND duty £300.45 customers clearance £98 landing fee £85, (this will change depending on company you use for me £85 covered them getting the car off the boat and storage for 7 days not including the day of arrival.) deferment charge £35 ( the agent that landed the boat done all customs paperwork and paid it for me so i could just arrive with cash and take the car straight away so they have a small charge for that) Thats the car yours ready to be picked you just need to take the orignal bill of laden with you. since its a 600mile round trip to get my car it cost me £245 to get the car from liverpool to my door total for car landed in the uk all taxs and duty paid £1898.79. then my transport costs to bring it home take's me to £2143.79. my car will be sitting for awhile before its put on road so i cant realy give detail on registering it yet however. ill more than likely add that in when i start that process. hope this helps if anyone is looking into importing when i was looking todo it there seemed to be no info on it so was a bit concerning to start sending thousands of pounds not knowing what the total costs would be but in all honesty am shocked how easy it was the hardest part was waiting
