Charger in Belgium

69 Sleeper Bee said:

What do you have to go through to ship a car like that to another country and the registering process.

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1. The hardest part: taking the leap of faith that the car on those pictures will turn out to be the real thing. At the time, it didn't occur to me that as a newbie I could ask anyone around here to go check it out for me. Also, it seemed to me that the actual good cars were never up for sale very long, so I felt a pressure to decide quickly. I other times, I might have taken a flight to check it out myself. So based on a couple of photos, and some phone calls, I bought it unseen.
2. Money transfer: piece of cake. Other the fact that the risk was entirely on my side...
3. Shipping: I tasked an agent who organised pickup in a closed trailer and delivery to the East coast. Then chose container with max. 2 cars inside, and all the insurance. This set me back around $4k. Once you know the name of the vessel, there is a nice app that lets you track its progress in real time. Amazing how many turns and stops they take. You also start monitoring the Atlantic storm forecast, because all you can do is worry anyways...
4. Customs: two months after the sale, the car was unloaded in Rotterdam. The going rate for customs and VAT for imported cars is 31%.. Unless, it's an actual classic car without any "modern" upgrades. So I only paid the reduced rate of 6% - quite the difference.
5. License: I do not have the stomach for dealing with this, so I had my shop do all this and it turned out, they can work miracles. It seems to depend a bit on where you actually apply for the registration, plus it's of course different form country to country in Europe. You would expect having to modify a couple of things such as headlights, safety belts, add a fog light in the rear etc. but my car sailed through even with the speedometer only indicating mph.

powertrip said:

I found it quite nerve-wrecking, but then it was first time for me, suppose it gets easier with time...

1. The hardest part: taking the leap of faith that the car on those pictures will turn out to be the real thing. At the time, it didn't occur to me that as a newbie I could ask anyone around here to go check it out for me. Also, it seemed to me that the actual good cars were never up for sale very long, so I felt a pressure to decide quickly. I other times, I might have taken a flight to check it out myself. So based on a couple of photos, and some phone calls, I bought it unseen.
2. Money transfer: piece of cake. Other the fact that the risk was entirely on my side...
3. Shipping: I tasked an agent who organised pickup in a closed trailer and delivery to the East coast. Then chose container with max. 2 cars inside, and all the insurance. This set me back around $4k. Once you know the name of the vessel, there is a nice app that lets you track its progress in real time. Amazing how many turns and stops they take. You also start monitoring the Atlantic storm forecast, because all you can do is worry anyways...
4. Customs: two months after the sale, the car was unloaded in Rotterdam. The going rate for customs and VAT for imported cars is 31%.. Unless, it's an actual classic car without any "modern" upgrades. So I only paid the reduced rate of 6% - quite the difference.
5. License: I do not have the stomach for dealing with this, so I had my shop do all this and it turned out, they can work miracles. It seems to depend a bit on where you actually apply for the registration, plus it's of course different form country to country in Europe. You would expect having to modify a couple of things such as headlights, safety belts, add a fog light in the rear etc. but my car sailed through even with the speedometer only indicating mph.

Click to expand...