Car importation from Thailand.

killalabay

Am moving home after a being in retirement in Thailand for a year. So bored I want to scream. The thing is I've bought a new Nissan Navara crew cab pick up and loathed to leave it behind. Does anyone in forumland have any experience in doing similar. Any advice would be good. Thanks.

Boards.ie: Mark

Hi killalabay, I've moved this over to the Buying & Selling section of Motors where people may be better equipped to help.

killalabay

Thanks a million Mark

biko

In Thailand they drive on the left so at least you won't have issues at parking garages, drive-throughs etc

About costs etc I have no input

killalabay

The truck would be RHD so I hope we drive on the left here in Thailand!
Thanks.

osarusan

I've imported cars from Japan to Ireland a couple of times.

Contact a shipping company to inquire about prices. The faster it ships, the more it will cost, obviously. The costs also vary based on shipping cost at the time (price of oil etc) and also can be delayed by different things going on in different ports. Costs also depend on where the car is stored on the ship - the more you pay, the better it will be protected. In my case, it cost about €700 in the end I think, but I had been told to expect €900-1000 based on what oil prices were at the time of contacting the shipping company.

In Japan I needed to formally deregister the car which needed a trip to the local government office, but no idea what is necessary in Thailand.

You will probably need a company in Thailand who will organise that end of the shipping for you, and you might want to use an Irish company to sort out the Irish end. You'll receive from the Thai company documents called the Bill of Lading, and take good care of them, as the car can't be removed from a port without them. If you use an Irish company, you'll be giving them the Bill of Lading, as well as a form saying you authorised them to do this on your behalf.

Depending on how long you've lived abroad and owned the car, you may be entitled to an exemption of VRT because of a transfer of residence. You'll have prove that you're entitled to this by demonstrating that you have indeed lived abroad for 12 months and owned and used the car for 6 months, and that your return to Ireland is a permanent one. If granted an exemption for VRT, you can't sell the car for 12 months (or to be more accurate, if you sell it within 12 months, you then have to pay the VRT you were previously exempted from).

If you are not looking for a VRT exemption, you have to pay VRT, which (to the best of my memory) is based on a calculation of how much VRT would be if a similar car was being sold in Ireland. In your case, that might be a hefty amount?

If you are looking for a VRT exemption, start collecting stuff like utility bills as evidence of your residence there, residence cards or whatever similar system Thailand may have, as well as the receipt for the car itself. These will probably need to be translated if they are not in English. Get access to a scanner so you can start scanning those documents.

You need to basically present your evidence to the staff at the port, who will decide whether you qualify for an exemption or not. You might think about contacting a company to act as an agent for you to do this, as they'll be up to speed with exactly what is needed - especially if you plan to send that car on ahead so it will be in Ireland when you arrive. There is something like 3 days' free storage at the port before they start charging daily storage rates.

(The exemption also creates a bit of a pain in the hole in terms of registration - you must register the car in the jurisdiction of your new permanent residence. If it's Dublin, I think you can register it at the port, and have insurance organised so you could drive it out of there yourself. But in my case that was Limerick, so I had to pay to get the car transported from Dublin port down to Limerick)

colm_mcm

If it doesn’t have a heater (some don’t and just have a cooler) you’ll need to get one retrofitted. There were companies doing that here about 10 years ago when Hilux Vigos were coming in from Thailand. Don’t know if there are any doing it these days.

If it’s a crewcab you may have issues registering it here as one if it doesn’t have a certificate of conformity (it very well may not have one)

McCrack

killalabay wrote: »

Am moving home after a being in retirement in Thailand for a year. So bored I want to scream. The thing is I've bought a new Nissan Navara crew cab pick up and loathed to leave it behind. Does anyone in forumland have any experience in doing similar. Any advice would be good. Thanks.

Bored in Thailand?

Youre doing it wrong

killalabay

Trust me when I tell ye, I’m not....