imports

stratos

This is something I have been wondering about.
I have imported a few cars from England (second hand ) over the years.
The only reason being, cars you could not get easily over here.
The on the road price after currency conversion and vrt here was very expensive.
If I could have sourced an irish car it would have been cheaper.

However an increasing number of secondhand car garages seem to offering english cars.
How are they making money, what is going on here.
Just the other day I saw 2 transporters full of english cars cars pull into a car sales place.
They were mainly Puntos and looked ex rental.
How are these dealers making money with these cars.
The currency conversion and vrt should make it unprofitable.


Anyone got any idea's ???

UberNewb

Anyone I've asked who has imported cars from the UK has done so cheaper than buying it here. From just a few simple checks I'm able to save about 5,000 on a Celica T-Sport and thats without any haggling. I'm interested to know what type of car you have imported?

xephyr

If you buy in bulk, the savings are staggering. A A4/Passat/320d just off a company lease deal can be had for peanuts. The two VRT rates make quite a difference to the kind of cars that can be imported and profit made. A 1.9 or less starts to make sense.

X

SouperComputer

of course if you import a classic it is VRT exempt and the yearly tax is harmless.

bazz26

stratos wrote:

This is something I have been wondering about.
I have imported a few cars from England (second hand ) over the years.
The only reason being, cars you could not get easily over here.
The on the road price after currency conversion and vrt here was very expensive.
If I could have sourced an irish car it would have been cheaper.

However an increasing number of secondhand car garages seem to offering english cars.
How are they making money, what is going on here.
Just the other day I saw 2 transporters full of english cars cars pull into a car sales place.
They were mainly Puntos and looked ex rental.
How are these dealers making money with these cars.
The currency conversion and vrt should make it unprofitable.


Anyone got any idea's ???

Another thing to remember is that some (not all) of these garages are buying alot of main stream exfleet models from auction houses at knock down prices. The history of these cars may be questionable, i.e. crash repaired or clocked high milers. Even then taking into account VRT, etc they could be then sold on to the unsuspecting public over here while still making a healthy profit.

I know not every car or garage is the same but I know of at least two cars like this bought from different garages over here.

lomb

the trade buys used cars for nothing, anything with over 50k miles, and 5 years old is sold to trade customers after a trade in for a new car.
the problem is getting stock that sells cheap, there is a lot of competition to buy used vws, mercs, small engined mercs, that shifts second hand.
however if they get it the uk route, there is infinite stock, and vrt is based on trade prices which tbh is not alot. many car traders are a victim of their own success, the flood of used cars imported coupled with peoples desires to buy new, mean that used cars dont shift.
franchised dealers are being forced to upgrade dealerships to glass palaces or lose their franchise, classic example being ballsbridge motors, just lost audi franchise. pure non franchise non service used dealers carry on pulling clocks, and tarting up tired cars and adding 50% to price they paid where they can. all part of the game to survive...

Ivan E

I just bought a UK import from a garage in Dublin. I more or less worked it out that buying directly from a garage in the North or UK would prob. save me 2.5k if I went that route. So I presume that the garage picked it up cheaper.

The problem for me was getting rid of mine and of course not having a guarantee. The garage gave the car fully serviced with a 6 month guarantee and an NCT guarantee. Also I couldn't manage getting in and out of work without a car so I needed to hand my old one in and pick the other up.

But the margins are there if you know what you want and know a good car.

BnA

This is actually something I've been looking at a lot over the last month or so. I have been looking up a lot of cars in the UK, calculating the VRT and comparing the total cost with prices on the Buy and Sell and Carzone.ie

My prices were all based on buying straight cars off the Autotrader or from Car Giant. i.e. Not on Bulk Trade prices.

I have concluded that there is definately money there to be made but you have to be very selective about the car you buy. There is little or nothing to be made in anything too main stream. Mondeos, Primeras Focuses and the like... waste of time.

If I was to attempt to generalise the type of car where there is money to be made I would say it is in low powered "High Badged" cars. i.e. BMW 316's and 318's. Low powered Audi A4's, Entry Level Saab 93's. These cars seem to hold their value in Ireland much much better than in the UK. Also, as someone mentioned above, if you keep below the 2 litre engine you pay the lower rate of VRT.

Example...

BMW 318i SE with 85k Miles.
UK Cost : £5,468 (€8,285)
VRT : €2,831
Expenses (Flight over, boat back, Juice for the car, Burger King in the train Station etc etc): €1,000
(I am going to town on the expenses here. realistically it would be more like €500 but just to be very safe)

Total Cost : €12,116

Compare that to the cheapest 2001 318 Saloon on Carzone...
http://www.carzone.ie/usedcars/index.cfm?fuseaction=car&carID=270159

Eventhough it has 10k less miles than the UK car, it does not have a CD player and is not the SE spec. it comes in at €17,000. That is almost €5,000 more than a trip to the UK would have cost you...!!!!!

Apart from the type of car I described above you also find a few other specific models like the current shape Celica where similar savings are to be made.

Sparky

i recently bought my 206 that was english registered, but for the price i got much better spec than here, plus my vrt was only €907.00

Ivan E

Because of VRT, cars here then to be a lot cheaper than most of Europe. Reason being that VRT hikes the price up so much, they have to be as cheap as possible. The way they make them cheaper is to strip out as many extras as possible to decrease the cost.

Not the same problem in the UK hence the better specs generally.

Sparky

Ivan E wrote:

Because of VRT, cars here then to be a lot cheaper than most of Europe. Reason being that VRT hikes the price up so much, they have to be as cheap as possible. The way they make them cheaper is to strip out as many extras as possible to decrease the cost.

Not the same problem in the UK hence the better specs generally.

yeah its true, a mate from up north paid about £22,000 for a new corolla back last year, but it was the high end spec'd model with basically everything, but down here we would get feck all for that.

wicklah

I've just imported a 98 (S reg) Passat from England. I was after an automatic, over here, you only seem to be able to get either a baseline or comfortline, all with dubious mileage (from the ones I looked at). Cheapest I could see here was 7k for anything with 100k of less. (Spent 4 months researching this so pretty confident I know what I'm talking about).

Anyway, my bro lives in england, so I went onto autotrader.co.uk, searched for auto passats within 40 miles of his postcode, found a heap of them (compared to very very few over here). Decided on a 98 (don't do much driving, don't need a newer one). He test drove it, got the AA type check done and went over to get it.

Total cost, 4,700. That includes flight, car, ferry, VRT, engineers report, fuel & food. Tax and insurance and NCT are on top of that, but would've paid that no matter what car I bought (here or import). Cracking car, auto, very clean, 83k (that was checked, never clocked - harder to clock in england), fsh. It is just under the spec of a comfortline, only difference, no cruise control (hardly needed over here) and no leather.

That's just my experience, would recommend it to anyone. Have read on other posts in this site that it's only worth it if you're buying a car over 15k. Rubbish.

Wicklah

Dead

you buy from spain not england :cool:

wicklah

what? who is that too?