Sending car oversea : Questions !

Google "shipping automobile to Europe". Rumor is to avoid DAS. Then do search on FChat.

Have to believe air is much more than sea.

 

Last time I looked which was like 4 years ago it was about $20k US + for air

Sea is probably around $3k US

Big difference

 

Andrew, I just got a couple of quotes for indiv. container from Amsterdam to Oakland and the shipping itself was only $1950US but by the time you get all the folks paid off at either end and the canal crew too, it ended up a bit less than $4k. Not bad when you consider cross country ground costs at least $2k.

 

Andrew,

I'm having my car (S2000) in a container on a ship to Rotterdam as we speak. I'm paying $1500 plus 2% of the cars value for insurance, and that was not even the cheapest.

Shipping is not the problem. Not importing the car (and paying the local taxes) is more complicated. I will drive around with NY plates, and the trick was to get the car properly insured. But finally it works.

 

Andrew,

I do not have to pay any VAT, as long as the car is "temporary" (officially a 6 month limit, but who is going to know) in the Netherlands, and I'm not a permanent resident (registered/ paying taxes etc.). However, US insurance is rarely more than domestic. If you drive into Canada, your car is not insured (I did not know that and could have been in a lot of trouble), let alone shipping a car to Europe.

No Dutch insurance would do the whole thing either, so we settled for a combination of US general insurance and Dutch liabillity insurance.

I do have a front plate, but you can probably get away with one of those british magnetic vinyl prints.

The Elise in Holland got totalled by someone else, so I bought a replacement, a 111R. However, waiting for the title, the car loved it up in the Catskill mountains, and in in the mean time in Holland I moved to The Hague. There are no B roads to get anywhere around and I found myself too often on the highways, being caught in the rain. So, in September I decided to get an titanium/black S2000 instead. Much more practical for a daily driver.

Last month I traded the 456 and the Elise for the 360 spider, because I was just not driving the 456 any more.

 

No, the 2% was for the shipping. The split insurance is quite expensive, especially in Holland, where it takes 6 full years of no claim to go from $1500 to $600 per year. The US part is $1800/year.

 

Prices vary a lot (I think William H got it about right), but if we're talking nice car (ie Enzo/F40/BBLM ...etc), the plane is the way to go. It's the safest means of transport, period.

When it comes to ships, you can load the car in a container (you could also split the container with someone else to reduce costs) and have it shipped, but chances of damage are more important (storm, car not properly fastened, 2 weeks of sea air and salt ...). The car is in a container anyways, so they handle it as a container. There is no little "fragile" stamp on it.

There again, we shipped our car (Europe to Canada) a couple years back and everything went smoothly.

Bottom line is, if the car is valuable enough and you can fork it, go for air freight. If the car is reasonable, go for the ship ...

 

There is a provision in the law in GB and NL (so, probably also in F), which allows a longer stay if you are living/paying taxes outside of the EU and are in the EU on a study or project basis. We need to show a contract and time table to get written permission (we go for 2.5 years). I hope this works, because that makes it much simpler.

 

You can actually Fed-Ex vehicles by plane. We previously Fed-Ex'ed 4 cars from Tokyo to LAX for a movie studio for a large feature film and I believe it cost somewhere in the vicinity of $10k/car (approx 3-4 years ago). Fed-Ex was great with the cars as the usually ship all of the F1 cars to their respective venues.

You can also go 2 options by ship; RO-RO (roll on, roll off) or container shipping. From Japan to the US, RO-RO was approx $2k (but less safe) and container was approx $3-4k (very safe). Pricing also varies with the season, so if time is not important, you can ask when their slow times are and usually the cost is cheaper.

Hope this helps!!