So, Saturday was delivery day and I think it's fair to say that everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. Wall of text incoming....
I had exams for my Masters in the morning, and had arranged lunch with a client in the afternoon. As I was leaving the exam, the driver called me to ask which number my house was at which point we realized he had totally the wrong address - it was a location around an hour away from where I live. His response was pretty much "sorry m8, not my problem" and his boss the called me asking me for another £500 for the extra distance. After a bit of back and forth, I managed to prove that it was their screw up and they agreed to deliver the cars to my address at no extra cost. It didn't end there however....
As I was about to hang up, the driver told me that he'd checked the address, and that his truck couldn't get anywhere near my house. They'd told me it would be a flatbed trailer, a bit like the one in the picture above, so I didn't understand what the problem was. Turned out, it wasn't a flatbed trailer, it was a full size HGV. When I asked him how he was planning on getting the cars out of the HGV, he said he had absolutely no idea, and that I should probably look into hiring a flatbed tow truck to drive them out and lower them down. I begrudgingly did that, and of course the company charged me 4x the normal rate as it was such short notice and they knew I didn't have any other option.
I then had to search for a place near my house to drop them off - I didn't want to do it anywhere near the city as none of the cars had tax, registration or insurance so I wanted to keep the driving to an absolute minimum. Luckily, my wife's family are in charge of a sports centre nearby, so we arranged to do it there. I thought that would be the end of the issues, but it was only the start.
When we got there, the situation was a bit like this
The driver handed me a folder of paperwork, which contained only the titles and import papers of the cars - all the service history and original dealer invoices of the Rolls was missing and he had no idea where it was. The Land Rover was parked behind the two Rolls, so the idea was to drive that out first, then get the others out. However, the battery was totally flat, and as it had a 24v system, we couldn't jump it. So, we ended up winching it out and abandoning it at the side of the road while we worked on getting the 2 Rolls out.
I wasn't particularly optimistic about the Rolls starting, as if the Defender battery was totally dead, the Rolls ones probably would be as well. Sure enough, I was correct, neither of them would start. Now, you might think that's not a big deal as we could just winch them out, but they do need some amount of electrical current to get them in neutral, as the shift mechanism is electronically operated. So, I had to pull the battery out of my Jeep and put it in each Rolls so we could get them in neutral and pull them out. Then, I put the battery back in the Jeep and used it to jump the Shadow II.
As I turned the key of the Jeep to start the jumping process, it snapped off in my hand, so I had to use a pair of pliers to get it to turn on. After that minor setback, the jumping worked, we got the Shadow II started with its original battery, then moved the Jeep battery to the Shadow I, which totally refused to start. I knew the battery was good, but it wouldn't turn over whatsoever, so we started tracing the wires. It was dark at this point, so we decided to just leave it and pull it back to the house with the Jeep, which was more or less successful, if a bit scary.
That just left the Defender, which I was considering doing the same thing with. I called the buyer and explained that we had it ready, but that the batteries were dead. He seemed totally unbothered, sent a tow truck to collect it, and contacted me this morning telling me how incredibly happy he was with it.
Then, this morning, I decided to have a look at the Rolls that wouldn't start. The wiring to the starter solenoid looked terrible, so I wiggled it around a bit while my wife turned the key, and we managed to get it started. I'll get it all replaced at some point, but it's nice to know it doesn't have any major issues. I also went to get a new key for the Jeep, which was thankfully very cheap, and my customs agent called me to tell me he'd found the folders with all the paperwork and would send them with the other Defender that's coming this week.
So, I guess you could say that everything worked out in the end. I am currently looking on Facebook Marketplace for a nice car trailer however - this experience and the previous one I had with the US one has made me hate transport companies.
