Petrolheads, SUV owners, I need your advice (car buying)
- Thread starter Lorddarthvik
- Start date
Oh gawd, what have you done! Now I'm gonna spend my days and my nights pouring through yet another countrie's car ads :D
Thanks for bringing this to my attention, never thought it could be a viable option!
I've already asked for a quote on the full s&h cost for a kia-whatever, to see if it's worth it.
If odo numbers stated on those cars are for real, this may turn out to be a way cheaper option overall!
Also, if the shipping turns out cheaper then I expect, I might convince my friend to start importing some fun jdm cars as well lol !
I'm glad i could be of help this site is just one of several that export cars from japan to other countries. Alot of people buy these cars then jack up the prices of the cars to Much higher ammounts in their own countries and make profit. Just make sure you check your local laws to see what cars you can actually import. A good example is in the united states you can't import a foreign car that isnt available in the country unless it is at least 15 years old. In Canada the car needs to be 10 years old so on so forth. Alot of people love buying the mini 2 ton trucks as they are great for hauling stuff around.(I think they are so damn ugly id never buy one)
Looking at the guidelines and law excerpts, I could not import vehicles from outside of the EU, because nothing could ever pass the bureaucracy, especially not the ones imposed by my own country.
On top of the iron curtain of EU envormentilst bullshit, and so called "protection of inner trade", my country has it's own non-standard laws to prevent anyone from acquiring anything for less than local retail price, so as to make you think twice about buying anything nice, unless you are filthy rich (which here means you are either a criminal or politican. although those occupations always go together, so ignore the "or". anyways...) It's like back in 1960, when we were in the middle of communism (or socialism, depending on who you ask, but again, it's the same thing really...), all over again...
Like not accepting world standards and certificates as proof of something being good enough quality. You know, from less common , yet worldwide instantly accepted proof of compliance by TÜV, to the usual markings like CE, the E in circle, through ISO, and other QA and compliance markings acknowledged by law all over the world, especially inside the EU.
Nope, we gotta have our own (far inferior and stupid) standards that were left over from the 50s socialism. Back from when all real sciences were very harshly frowned upon, almost up to the point of prohibited ( designing a new screw as an engineer could land you a life sentence on the gulag, cos knowledge was bad, belief in god was bad, belief in communism and hard menial work was the only good). So you can imagine how well deisgned and useful those "standards" are...
I've just read through a little 6 page pamphlet by my gov., and it stated that in theory, if you import even an atom of anything, it has to have certifications of compliance with our standards (which again, are different from EU and Intl. standards). The internationl standards can be matched to ours, and thus accepted, at least in theory. Yet, even if they can be matched to our standards, even if there is precedence, they do not have to be accepted!
So in most cases, you would have to get it certified by the hungarian institute of standards. Now, it is good to know, that the institute of standards consists solely of lawyers and economists, who do not speak, read or write in any foreign language, or have any mechanical, engineering, chemistry or otherwise applicable knowledge. So yeah, good luck getting a totally foreign car full of "unknown" parts certified for safe road use, legally. It is the definition of impossible.
There was a case a few years ago where someone imported a car in a trim that was not sold in Europe. Not even a totally unknown car, just a version from that local market. Imagine like, getting a V8 Ford Mondeo (whatever it's called there) imported from the USA. The car is the same fucking car, but that engine in that car doesn't exist over here, and probably the plastic bumper is a tiny but different as well... You get the point. Oh, better yet, the new Buick thingy... the one we call Opel Insignia. I bet you have zero chance of getting the Buick legalized here, while it's basically the same damn car, some small bits might be different, and if they find out... anyways, back to the story:
They literally said no, you can't register this, as we do not accept any internationally accepted markings on the parts that were not originally sold with the car inside our country. They literally asked the guy to provide the fucking original factory schematics for those parts!!! Seriously! Imagine calling Ford and asking for a full drawing of the engine with all measurements, material compositions listed, manufacturing procedures, and so on! That would be fucking hilarious...
If he could provide the schematics and the parts, he should hire the certified engineering firm (there is only one, gov. affiliated ofc), and have the items measured, tested, and certified. Even if this part was possible, the tests meant that the parts would get destroyed, and he would have to supply multiples of them! Also, it would have taken a year at least, more likely 2-4 years. The cost? nah, don't even go there...
And they could pull this totally nonsense even for something as simple as an extra cupholder! Cos that happened as well...
Good example of this nonsense: I had to change back my headlights to the original old, now quiet foggy and useless ones, as the car wouldn't pass the "road worthiness" test with it's aftermarket projector angeleyed lights. Even though the aftermarket ones do come with a TÜV markings and certificates, CE, and E markings, and all the rest, it would not be accepted. Even by our own fucking laws, the E marking alone has to be enough as proof of compliance, yet they wouldn't let it pass the test this year. Cos it's modifying a car, and only criminal road racers do that, and they should be shot the instant they were born... Or I could take the above described route and try to get it certified for use with my car.
Getting a "foreign" part certified for use on your car. Something even our most prominent car journalists working together with the fucking police Failed to do ! The guy behind the desk just told the journo and the chief-whatever of transport police to fuck off, you can't do this, unless you got the hungarian certifications for the parts for that specific vehicle! All this, while they were doing an expensive, government approved and funded awareness campaign on legally modding cars! The goal was to modify a car legally before the an international-tuner-car-show event, and then tell all about how wonderful our country and our police is for letting us do what others could freely do in the civilized world for decades. They wanted to do this prove that it is possible, and we don't have to be criminals, we just need to pay the gov. shit loads of money and it would be perfectly fine to mod our cars! Yet they failed on the first step of getting the mods registered for the car, cos bullshit laws are bullshit! God I love this place sometimes... It can be so absurd that even I can feel sane :D
Like not accepting world standards and certificates as proof of something being good enough quality. You know, from less common , yet worldwide instantly accepted proof of compliance by TÜV, to the usual markings like CE, the E in circle, through ISO, and other QA and compliance markings acknowledged by law all over the world, especially inside the EU.
Nope, we gotta have our own (far inferior and stupid) standards that were left over from the 50s socialism. Back from when all real sciences were very harshly frowned upon, almost up to the point of prohibited ( designing a new screw as an engineer could land you a life sentence on the gulag, cos knowledge was bad, belief in god was bad, belief in communism and hard menial work was the only good). So you can imagine how well deisgned and useful those "standards" are...
I've just read through a little 6 page pamphlet by my gov., and it stated that in theory, if you import even an atom of anything, it has to have certifications of compliance with our standards (which again, are different from EU and Intl. standards). The internationl standards can be matched to ours, and thus accepted, at least in theory. Yet, even if they can be matched to our standards, even if there is precedence, they do not have to be accepted!
So in most cases, you would have to get it certified by the hungarian institute of standards. Now, it is good to know, that the institute of standards consists solely of lawyers and economists, who do not speak, read or write in any foreign language, or have any mechanical, engineering, chemistry or otherwise applicable knowledge. So yeah, good luck getting a totally foreign car full of "unknown" parts certified for safe road use, legally. It is the definition of impossible.
There was a case a few years ago where someone imported a car in a trim that was not sold in Europe. Not even a totally unknown car, just a version from that local market. Imagine like, getting a V8 Ford Mondeo (whatever it's called there) imported from the USA. The car is the same fucking car, but that engine in that car doesn't exist over here, and probably the plastic bumper is a tiny but different as well... You get the point. Oh, better yet, the new Buick thingy... the one we call Opel Insignia. I bet you have zero chance of getting the Buick legalized here, while it's basically the same damn car, some small bits might be different, and if they find out... anyways, back to the story:
They literally said no, you can't register this, as we do not accept any internationally accepted markings on the parts that were not originally sold with the car inside our country. They literally asked the guy to provide the fucking original factory schematics for those parts!!! Seriously! Imagine calling Ford and asking for a full drawing of the engine with all measurements, material compositions listed, manufacturing procedures, and so on! That would be fucking hilarious...
If he could provide the schematics and the parts, he should hire the certified engineering firm (there is only one, gov. affiliated ofc), and have the items measured, tested, and certified. Even if this part was possible, the tests meant that the parts would get destroyed, and he would have to supply multiples of them! Also, it would have taken a year at least, more likely 2-4 years. The cost? nah, don't even go there...
And they could pull this totally nonsense even for something as simple as an extra cupholder! Cos that happened as well...
Good example of this nonsense: I had to change back my headlights to the original old, now quiet foggy and useless ones, as the car wouldn't pass the "road worthiness" test with it's aftermarket projector angeleyed lights. Even though the aftermarket ones do come with a TÜV markings and certificates, CE, and E markings, and all the rest, it would not be accepted. Even by our own fucking laws, the E marking alone has to be enough as proof of compliance, yet they wouldn't let it pass the test this year. Cos it's modifying a car, and only criminal road racers do that, and they should be shot the instant they were born... Or I could take the above described route and try to get it certified for use with my car.
Getting a "foreign" part certified for use on your car. Something even our most prominent car journalists working together with the fucking police Failed to do ! The guy behind the desk just told the journo and the chief-whatever of transport police to fuck off, you can't do this, unless you got the hungarian certifications for the parts for that specific vehicle! All this, while they were doing an expensive, government approved and funded awareness campaign on legally modding cars! The goal was to modify a car legally before the an international-tuner-car-show event, and then tell all about how wonderful our country and our police is for letting us do what others could freely do in the civilized world for decades. They wanted to do this prove that it is possible, and we don't have to be criminals, we just need to pay the gov. shit loads of money and it would be perfectly fine to mod our cars! Yet they failed on the first step of getting the mods registered for the car, cos bullshit laws are bullshit! God I love this place sometimes... It can be so absurd that even I can feel sane :D
Thankfully, there are ways past that, and I could import anything that I wanted. I know a guy who knows a guy, that's how this country works, whenever it comes to literally anything. Btw, there are no silly year laws here, but enviromentalist stuff pretty much means that nothing from before 1996 should be allowed to get registered, unless marked as "museum piece" (aka "Oldtimer").
Meanwhile in the real world , the car has to pass some minimalistic safety and emissions checks, and that's it. You know, really basic stuff like having headlights and indicators, brakes and such, and more importantly, if it can be categorized into the environmental/emissions standards of a EURO#, or at least into some basic class we got, like "emissions category 2: petrol, with single cat and nothing else". In case the import car is old, and doesn't meet some EURO standard, it can't be registered, in theory at least. Just by looking at the EU law excerpt as presented by my government, it shouldn't be possible, yet there are legal ways around that as well. We get more and more old american cars, for example. Those don't really meet any of the above criteria, yet here they are. My friend saw these just a few days ago in the parking garage of a local Tesco. (in case you wanna know, these old boats could fetch anywhere from 3.000 to 30.000+ USD here, these examples most likely fall in the 15k-20K range, as they look restored but still need oldtimer plates)
This is most likely a non-issue for modern Japanese cars though, they got safety and loads of enviromentalism.
Stuff like Chinese or Indian cars would be problematic because they fail all existing safety tests in most cases. Chinese knock-offs would be especially problematic, or most likely impossible with all the ongoing lawsuits. Also, emissions on those are just ridiculous.
Ofcourse modern cars brought in as "parts" or "wreck", are exempt from this check on the border, until you want to register them for road use. By that time, you can probably get local papers from another car of the same make. Example: you could break the windows on a chinese knock off X5 before loading it on the ship, call it "wreck" on the import form, then change the window for a new one, buy the papers and licence plates of a real X5 in the same color, add the "real" numbers on the chassis and engine, change the badges to real BMW ones, glue on the front masks or whatever is needed for the "road worthiness test" so it vaguely looks like a real X5 on the 1 second of "proof video footage" shot during the test with a potato, and that's it. You have successfully legalized a chinese knock-off X5. This would work right up until the moment it gets a serious inspection, which most likely won't happen unless it caused a very serious accident, in which case you would be dead anyways and wouldn't care
If the car in question falls into the oldtimer category (30+ yo.) it is most likely exempt from these as well. So if a car didn't have seatbelts from the factory, you don't need to have one to pass the safety regulations, I think, and you can get away with only hitting the emission levels required back in the day when it was first registered or built.
Anyways, with a real car, getting it legalized for use on public roads depends on whether the guy behind the desk can find the make and model of the car listed in the system, which means that really obscure foreign cars, like truly JDM cars that were never exported, can pose an issue (see long rant for more on why). There is some way around this, but it would either involve months of bureaucracy and tons of money, or knowing someone higher up, so the funny little trucks you mentioned are probably out of the question.
TL.DR.: I know a guy. I can get almost anything registered. Almost.
That's pretty awesome i'm glad you got the hook up. I wish i could get the hookup on my car haha I have a 2007 alfa romea GT which i originally bought for 5k here(Then the dealership decided to tell my wife i needed this and that to fix the car which turned out to be 20k. It was all lies and eventually i stoppped listening to them and did my own work and found the real problems which took 1k to fix.... Long story short don't trust a dealership in any country use intuition.). What type of car are you looking for maybe i can help you out on getting something really awesome, and yes japan's inspection stuff is rediculas i have to get my car safety inspected every 2 years from this massive list just to drive here so you are golden there.
There's one in every town. But they're handy to have around, even if he works for a business that might be a cover for a chop shop. Thing is, they know their way around and through all those pesky regulations. In most places, you can even home-build a vehicle, and get it registered. You just need to register as a manufacturer of that class of vehicle, with whichever agency handles that in your country or state. I say "just". It's a pure headache, which is why it's handy to know the guys who know.
Oh an alfa GT, nice car! Glad you got it fixed for "cheap" in the end!
Please refer to the first post on what I'm looking for, but basically we need something with the weight, size and safety of an X5, in left hand drive.
I could list a bunch of jdm cars I'd personally want instead, but that's for later.
I'm still trying to get an answer out of our tax and customs office on how much do I have to pay for importing from Japan, cos there is no fixed percentage listed anywhere. So I'm not sure yet if it's worth the trouble or not.
Edit: as to How our customs office operates, please refer to this instructional video from the 8:11 mark onwards:
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