Thinking Of Importing A Daily? Opinions!

[wytnte]

hey guys,

as the title says i am currently looking into importing, i live in sa so i guess it limits companys i can do it with, but on "TRADECARVIEW" i have found some stock of stageas that are really cheap, and i think that they would make a really good daily driven car,

i have just sold my old daily a r31 et 5 speed, and i dont really want to only drive the gtr all the time.

a stagea to me appeals to me as a comfy car, and its a NISSAN!! HAHA.

well the cari seen is 700 aus dollars, auto 25 non turbo (i think), i know shipping is 1192 to adelaide, but yeh,

if anyone from adelaide has imported with a company easily and i guess at a good price please have your say!!

and i guess not everyone who imports deals with trade car view,

i dont want to spend any more then 4 thousand! cheers guys

Jake

[Tommmo]

Hey Jake,

considered an ST215W Caldina?

About the same price tag as a stagea, just better build quality and only 4 cylinder.

I've got a manual as a daily, around the city I get around 10L-11L/100km....I doubt any stagea would be able to get close to that!

Let me know if you come down to AJD, I'll let you have a look at mine

Send me a PM if you like

Edited February 20, 2011 by Tommmo

[wytnte]

oh ok, i will look into it.

cheers mate

[Tommmo]

[quote

i dont want to spend any more then 4 thousand!

sorry to break it to you but compliance, shipping plus taxes alone will be more than this!

[wytnte]

yeh you know i just thought of that hey! lol

http://www.tradecarview.com/used_car/japan%20car/nissan/stagea/3359145/

it has there 1200 for shipping, ya think about 1200 for complience? and what ever else? its just a idea, looking for any info from anyone who has imported,

[Tommmo]

yeh you know i just thought of that hey! lol

http://www.tradecarview.com/used_car/japan%20car/nissan/stagea/3359145/

it has there 1200 for shipping, ya think about 1200 for complience? and what ever else? its just a idea, looking for any info from anyone who has imported,

depending on the workshop, but usually $2000 onwards plus tyres

then you have:

Import Tax

GST

Port Fees

Customs Fees

Inspection fees

Cleaning Fee

it all adds up.. even if you were to get the car for free in japan, it would still set you back minimum of $6,000-$7,000 landed and complied

Haven't even mentioned the fact that an N/A stagea isn't eligible to import!

There's a lot more to it then just going on "TradeCarView" and going.. "oh thats cheap!"

If you're serious about importing, you're best off doing a LOT of research before hand, or using a well known broker who can guide you through the process!

Another tip.. don't use tradecarview!

Edited February 20, 2011 by Tommmo

[wytnte]

oh ok then,

cheers fot that mate, yeh i knew there was alot of stuff, just not sure what.

well thanks mate, have you imported before!!

but yeh to be honest my first impression was wow thats cheap lol.

oh and curious as to why you say dont use trade car view??.

but thanks heaps mate.

and i was not aware that the na stag was eligibal

Edited February 20, 2011 by wytnte

[Mr Eps]

its a real shame that theres no good car importers in adelaide...

There really should be someone who knows how to bring in cars... In adelaide...

Ps as you know by now.. You cannot import for 4 grand unfortunately.. And even if you could. Why would you...

I tell this to everyone, even people i dont know in the street... I tell em... Why import cheap cars..

I mean u gotta pay brokerage, fob, shipping, quaarantine, steamclean, customs, tax, gst.. Compliance, towing... Rego etc...

Why cheap out on the car?? Like if youre paying all those fees and waiting all that time, why import a shitter??

[TUFF_350]

The subtle hint Mr Epps is trying to make...

Contact Iron Chef Imports from Adelaide and have a chat with Kristian, also on this forum. Tradecar dealers have burned many people thinking they dont need a broker and can import a car themself!

[wytnte]

its a real shame that theres no good car importers in adelaide...

There really should be someone who knows how to bring in cars... In adelaide...

Ps as you know by now.. You cannot import for 4 grand unfortunately.. And even if you could. Why would you...

I tell this to everyone, even people i dont know in the street... I tell em... Why import cheap cars..

I mean u gotta pay brokerage, fob, shipping, quaarantine, steamclean, customs, tax, gst.. Compliance, towing... Rego etc...

Why cheap out on the car?? Like if youre paying all those fees and waiting all that time, why import a shitter??

yeh good point mate!,

i guess i just seen stag 700 buck! you ripper!,

my budget isnt huge for a daily so i guess its gunna be a falcon hahah or another 31.

cheers for the heads up mate

[Tommmo]

oh ok then,

cheers fot that mate, yeh i knew there was alot of stuff, just not sure what.

well thanks mate, have you imported before!!

but yeh to be honest my first impression was wow thats cheap lol.

oh and curious as to why you say dont use trade car view??.

but thanks heaps mate.

and i was not aware that the na stag was eligibal

I've imported a few over the years, for myself, family and friends.

There's a lot of variables when importing, its not as straight forward as you'd think.

In regards to tradecarview, basically 90% of the cars advertised are dealer vehicles and most of the time they are auction rejects... which means you are really "scraping the bottom of the barrel" hence the cheap prices!

[wytnte]

I've imported a few over the years, for myself, family and friends.

There's a lot of variables when importing, its not as straight forward as you'd think.

In regards to tradecarview, basically 90% of the cars advertised are dealer vehicles and most of the time they are auction rejects... which means you are really "scraping the bottom of the barrel" hence the cheap prices!

oh ok mate thanks! yeh too good to be true sorta prices.

and yeh as i said earlier i knew there was alot of small things that ya need to pay for, cleaning gst ect ect,

but thanks. has been a huge help. saved me alot of time and money,

looks like i will just have to drive the GTR hahahahahah

[Beer Baron]

mate even in japan there is nothing good for $700. about the cheapest half decent car you can buy in japan is still going to be more than $3,000. compliance on a stagea is going to be around $2500. shipping maybe around $1200 but add customs, AQIS, port fees and cleaning which is another $600 or so. look at the stagea's for sale here. whateveer they are going for it's going to cost you about the same (or maybe more) to import one. there is no massive profit margin in importing cars these days.

[Iron Chef]

$4000 for a Stagea?

Here's a copy-and-paste from an HPI column I wrote regarding Trade Carview...might be useful for some of you...

So you’ve had a look around locally for your next car and haven’t seen anything that catches your eye. You then make the decision to see what’s floating around in Japan, and jump on the computer to check some websites and see what is currently available. The first thing you’ll discover is that if you type something like “car import Japan” into Google, you’ll end up with eleventy billion sites all prepared to take your money in exchange for possibly sending you a vehicle.

The most popular site people seem to stumble across is Trade Carview (www.tradecarview.co.jp), where export agents across Japan will list their “stock” and generate new leads. The second is Goo (www.goo-net.com/english) which is a Japanese version of our CarSales but without any private sales, particularly handy because it has an English version of the site. In third comes Yahoo Japan Auctions (www.auctions.yahoo.co.jp), where an increasing number of private owners in Japan go to list cars that are hotly sought after by local and overseas buyers.

Anyone who has been to Las Vegas will know that the main casino strip that you see on TV shows is awesome to experience, but if you take a wrong turn down a side road, you quickly end up in some very dark and dodgy spots. Trade Carview is the Las Vegas of the importing world: searching through the cars is lots of fun at a superficial level, because you’re almost guaranteed to find the car of your dreams. Once you go down the side road and start contacting the export agents for more information, you should brace yourself for heartache and pain.

Firstly, my guesstimate is that around two thirds of the cars listed on there have already been sold; they’re what’s known in the trade as ‘dummy stock’. Car dealers in Australia like to do it a bit, but it’s an art form in Japan - list a hot car at a really cheap price, generate a heap of new leads, then tell every interested buyer “sorry that car has already been sold, but we can find you another one at auction if you like”. The less scrupulous Japanese export agents will only tell you this after you’ve sent your money over for the car, meaning you are then locked in to purchasing a car through them.

Then there are the agents who list cars with the auction house photos of cars they don’t even own. It’s a variation on the dummy stock technique: advertise cars that are coming up at auction in a few days’ time at a price that would give the agent a good chance of purchasing it, and then when people inquire about the car and put their money down, go and try and buy it at auction for the advertised price. If the agent purchases the car for less, they get a fatter margin, and if bidding goes past what they can afford to pay, tell the overseas buyer that the car is already sold and keep their money until an alternate car is found, guaranteeing them a sale either way.

Of the few legitimate cars remaining, completing a successful transaction depends entirely on the honesty of the export agent in Japan. I never cease to be amazed by the number of people willing to transfer thousands of dollars overseas to companies they’ve never heard of or dealt with before. Internet forums around Australia are littered with disastrous tales: cars that aren’t eligible for import into Australia getting refused entry at the docks, cars turning up that aren’t the ones in the photos on the website, cars with major structural damage getting rejected when they get to compliance, and the worst of all, cars just simply never being sent.

In the case of Goo, the cars listed all belong to dealers, and Japanese car dealers are very different to Australia. For starters, they like making big profits on their cars and treat haggling and low-balling as an insult, so forget negotiation. On top of this, I’ve had car dealers flatly refuse to sell cars to overseas buyers. Discrimination? Not quite. If the car has no rego left, it must go back through the roadworthy process before it can be re-registered, so dealers will often sell unregistered cars cheaply and then hit their local customers up for the registration work (which can reap them up to an extra two thousand dollars). An overseas sale often means no profits.

But, assuming the dealer is happy to sell to you and you agree on price, you are then relying on a car salesman (and they are virtually all men, sorry girls) to give you an accurate description of his own stock. Think about it logically – if you had to make a sales target for the month and knew that your prospective buyer was overseas and had no recourse against you if anything went wrong, wouldn’t you be tempted to describe your cars as being in much better condition than they really are? If you wouldn’t trust a local car salesman to describe his own cars accurately, don’t trust an overseas one either!

Yahoo Japan auctions are great if you’re looking for a track car (assuming all the goodies listed in the ad actually make the trip here along with the rest of the car), but for a car that’s going to be road-registered, you’re again at the mercy of a seller who is keen to sell and generally has no idea about the standard of car needed to pass compliance in Australia. Unless you pay a third party to inspect the car in Japan, you’re again taking a big risk. The other problem with Yahoo cars is that they’re invariably in remote locations and cost hideous amounts of money to transport to the docks.

For the reasons listed above, I stick to buying cars through export agents I trust from the dealer-only car auctions in Japan. A good export agent will act in the best interests of the buyer, not the seller, and if a car is rubbish, my agents will tell me it is and we’ll walk away from it. I’ve seen my agents cop losses in the thousands of dollars rather than knowingly send cars with mechanical problems to Australia, even though they could theoretically get away with it. It’s the reason I’ve remained loyal to them for the last 10 years, despite plenty of offers from other agents to try and get my business.

You probably saw this last suggestion coming, given I’m an import broker myself, but good brokers really are worth their weight in gold. They can’t totally eliminate the risks of importing, but they can drastically reduce them compared to importing yourself. So go out, have fun and enjoy the sights of Las Vegas, but if you decide to venture down a dark side street with a wad of cash, it’s best to have an experienced tour guide alongside you with a big spot light and a bigger shotgun.

[wytnte]

oh ok, thanks mate!! that was a interesting read actually!, cheers.

yeh i saw the stag on there for 700, so i thought maybe if it were all legit for 4 to 7 thousand. ?? but i have no idea whats involved in importing,

[Iron Chef]

In TL;DR form:

1) If it's $700 it's probably non turbo

2) If it's turbo it probably doesn't even exist, other than in the photos

3) If it exists it probably has rust and/or heavy accident repair, making it ineligible for compliance

4) If it's clean, it won't be the one you end up getting sent

[wytnte]

In TL;DR form:

1) If it's $700 it's probably non turbo

2) If it's turbo it probably doesn't even exist, other than in the photos

3) If it exists it probably has rust and/or heavy accident repair, making it ineligible for compliance

4) If it's clean, it won't be the one you end up getting sent

hahahah thanks, it was non turbo auto i think, lol , which i hear i cant import anyway yeh?????.

there is no cheap import is there?? lol

[Iron Chef]

Put it this way, if you go through a broker, even if the car itself was free, you're gonna be struggling to get it here for less than $5K, and that's not including any compliance costs.

[jahn-15]

mate even in japan there is nothing good for $700. about the cheapest half decent car you can buy in japan is still going to be more than $3,000. compliance on a stagea is going to be around $2500. shipping maybe around $1200 but add customs, AQIS, port fees and cleaning which is another $600 or so. look at the stagea's for sale here. whateveer they are going for it's going to cost you about the same (or maybe more) to import one. there is no massive profit margin in importing cars these days.

And AQIS usally knock things back a couple of times thats 100 dollars everytime they have to inspect it. Ive worked for toll resources and had to wash imports funny when they import jap cherry pickers and toyota coasters lol shit all through them!