Importing a car: Do it yourself or go with an importer?

IC3

IC3

IC3

Soldato
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I was going to buy a cheap BMW and drift it to death... But, when I looked at my savings for a new car, I came to the conclusion that my dream car is possible. The car I'm looking for is S15 Spec R with Ori Body, an example below. :cool: I'll probably be looking at spending around £11-15k, its quite a bit of money and that's where the question comes whenever to go with someone like Smile JV or Torque GT? I'll be looking at buying one next year spring time, still a lot of time... But finding this car in the spec I want, won't be easy.

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Local place to me, JM Imports, are very good at finding specific cars for you. And looking at the owners own cars, they certainly know a thing or two. ;)
 
Ryan-3 said:
Local place to me, JM Imports, are very good at finding specific cars for you. And looking at the owners own cars, they certainly know a thing or two. ;)
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That's another highly recommended importer I heard of, another option would be to try and buy from a private seller in the UK. But, all the lovely examples priced right go within 2-3 days... :(
 
Yeah, I was surprised by just how popular these things are right now! Would love to be in such a position. :)
 
I have recently imported an impreza through torquegt, and they were decent throughout the entire process. Constant communication from finding the car to getting it ready for the UK roads. I will say that initially budgeted for around £15-16k and final cost was nearer £18k. Also the auction sites are pretty rubbish at the whole uploading of info on the car so it can feel like you are buying blind, so if you are going to be importing I would suggest that if you budget saw £15k try to make sure you have at least £2k in reserve for parts in case anything needs done. But as for importing yourself or doing it through a company, I wouldn't even think of doing it yourself as the importer will have better contacts in Japan as well as sorting out all the paper work and getting it ready for the UK
 
Agree with above

Ive imported 6 or 7 cars now over the past years. The issue of course that you have is that you are after something very specific which means that the auctions are probably not for you. An established importer will also cost a fair bit more for their services, nothing wrong with that, they have a business to run but you'll be at least a couple of thousand for them.

Another option is to browse stock cars in Japan, get used to prices etc and use your own calcs to see what prices come out to be. Ive only ever went stock car once and the rest have been auction. At least with stock you can have someone in Japan check it beforehand for you. As a starter, have a look here for prices/stock: http://www.goo-net-exchange.com/


Any questions, just ask. I love the whole process, it can be quite exciting. My current go to agent is Pacific Coast JDM, they have a decent YouTube channel full of info.

The agent is Japan based and imports to the UK whereas "importers" here are UK based and use the agent in Japan, if that makes sense?? :) I tend to prefer to import myself, save some money and I enjoy the auction bidding process too.
 
@Axeboy Funnily enough, I used Pacific coast to get a better idea of the cars on auctions and how much they go for. :)

I would prefer to buy something (S15 ideally) here, but I doubt it'll be lighting yellow.
 
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Yeah, great guys, thats how I ended up using them, I watched the channel for ages.

I just love the randomness of the car walk around etc. Edit, in fact it was the auction walk around that first got me into it but they stopped doing them after a while. They were great.

One of my cars is on the channel, the Crown estate
 
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