Garages Importing UK cars

Heard a SIMI rep complaining recently about people importing UK cars,yet I see local garages doing the same things themselves!! What gives?!

This isn't local dealers anymore! Reputable main dealers are going down the road of importing from the UK at a great pace along the line of BMW's/Audi etc. Still, they won't shift too many unless they find some fools. Who in their right mind would pay €8K plus over the odds????

if i was to buy a 06 range rover in the uk for approx 30k. how much vrt would i have to pay. it is a 5 seater 2.7 ltr diesel.

Go to the VRT calculator on www.revenue.ie

Fill in the details and it will give you an amount.

Whats your point SISSOKO?

Sorry Frank,was just agreeing with Mick Dundee's post that a lot of main dealers are doing the same thing bringing in U.K. CARS yet if an
individual does it they are ruining our economy and being unpatriotic
in some way...................While all along we were being fleeced for motors..........

Looking at a car in N.Ireland from a Toyota Dealer who also takes Toyota cars from a car hire company after a few months old and imports them over and sells them on.
Example of car ; july 2008 10500 on clock and full warrenty until 2011 from car manufacture(Toyota). Higher speck on car than in the south.Difference of 4000 euro on price to the south.Any thoughts.

I'm not sure I buy into this SIMI argument at all, that somehow importing cars is ruining the Irish car industry.
According to those Jan 09 registrations, there were 400-odd imported cars registered in the month, versus 48,000 irish cars registered in Jan 08 (0.8%); sure when you compare it to 15k reg's in Jan 09 it looks slightly worse (2.5%), but its still only a drop in the ocean; it just happens to be getting more column inches so that the dealers can use it as a stick. 'its not the economy, its the imports'.

No dealer is being put out of business because of UK imports.

It was only after further enquiry with a local dealer that I found out that a car being offered was a UK import. The irony was that when I called in there about 6 months ago they had articles photocopied and stuck to the wall re "horror" UK imports.

So despite all the horse manure they have been telling us about not touching UK imports (in terms of a trade in), they are now happy to import them themselves.

I do have some sympathy for the state of the industry but where is the market equilibrium - the UK imports cant be such a problem if Irish garages arent anywhere near competing with them. Shouldnt it get to the stage where the UK import price sets the "floor" and people pay an acceptable premium for an "original" Irish car.

Why an "original" Irish car deserves a premium I'm not sure, and as the years go by and the incidence of horror cars turns out to be no greater than Irish cars then maybe that premium will ebb away.

If you're thinking of buying up north / UK, I'd do it now rather than wait. Latest foreign exchnage reports are suggesting sterling to rebound to 80p / euro levels over coming weeks.

This from a report out today

"In the FX market, the name of the game is relative value. While all economies are suffering from the global financial crisis, those economies that have begun to deal with their problems more quickly, serve to benefit greatly in the long run. While the BoE has been very active in addressing ongoing threats to the local economy by introducing an overly accommodative monetary policy (much like the Fed), the ECB has arguably been behind the ball in coming to terms with the current market environment. This has begun to reflect itself in the cross rate, and we contend, should continue to do so over the longer term with EUR/GBP seen back towards 0.8000 over the coming weeks."