Just toying with the idea of importing a vehicle (kombi) from the USA, and was interested to know what the procedure is and rough costs?

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The Australian dollar has thrown the idea out a bit. Depending on where the vehicle is the inland travel can cost as much as the usa to australia costs. The there is the choice of shared up and down container travel with possible damage. Then here we have port charges gst etc.. then the car can be knocked back by quarentine further charges for cleaning etc..
In my experience its only been worth it if you really want the car........ I was lucky with a 73 bug. no inland etc...i love the car

I brought a Type 181 into Australia after owning it for some time in Holland. The process is not difficult for importing if you use the Personally Imported Vehicle scheme, only major issue here is you have to have owner the vehicle for a minimum of 1 year in the location you are importing it from. Just paperwork and supporting documentation, once the certificate is issued you can ship, I think the certificate needs to be issued before the vehicle arrives, but shipping is not so difficult but its where the costs start to mount up. And when the vehicle arrives the port charges are outrageous and with older cars AQIS likes to steam clean them, of course for $$ - All up port costs are $7k to $10k + shipping + cost of car. Once you're through all that then there's rego and depending on age is either a simple blue slip process or depending on who you talk to can be engineering certification. 73 seems, in my understanding, to be when certain Aust Design Rules came in, such as 3 point harness seatbelts, as mine is a 73 it was unclear if I needed new seatbelts etc or the original lap sash belts were ok. And talking to RMS in NSW was no help what so ever, the first guy from the technical dept said get an engineering certificate - redo seatbelts and other things I can't remember. As i was living in the country at the time and the closest engineer was hours drive away the mechanic called back RMS to double check and spoke to a different guy who said don't worry about any of that just a blue slip would be fine. Loved that guy!

So is it worth it? buying a car overseas and shipping? Not sure if I would ever do it again or if I did maybe look at one of these car import type companies that do all that for you.

There are plenty of companies set up that offer shipping for US to AU for a set price. I shipped from NZ to AU and costs are similar, it turned out to be more than I thought but due to the strength of the AUD at the time and the quality of the car I found it was a good deal, it did however take a lot of time and research and was a little stressful but I found a good company who did most of the hard work for me.

The low AUD may make it a bit $$$ - you'd have to find a really good deal to make it worth it and as most are LHD they just don't fetch the same price as a RHD should you resell.

The process -
Find a car you want, apply for a vehicle import approval (you have to do this before anything else), receive approval, arrange delivery to port, arrange shipping + insurance (container is the better option but you can do RORO), Dock fees for unpacking the container, customs and qaurantine and AQIS (I had a broker do all this for me), arrange delivery from dock, rego + roadworthy (mines not at that stage yet)

Thanks for the info.

With a Broker, using a Vihicle Import Approval, it should only cost about $6000