What is the process with Japanese car importing?

Once the vehicle is loaded onto the vessel, it may be necessary to deregister the vehicle in Japan. Without doing this you won’t be able to register it in the UK and you’ll be left devastated at the docks. Don’t threat, your shipping company is likely to arrange this for you. Shipping documents for shipping of the car and the legal documents associated with registering the car in the UK must be completed correctly and to certain timescales. These documents must then be produced at UK customs before they can allow the vehicle into the country, but not before clearance is gained for your car.

Most of us wouldn’t have the first idea of where to start with this, but importing companies or shipping companies do this all the time and know the processes to ensure that the Japanese car importing process runs smoothly and quickly.

There are a number of fees associated with this process that you will be liable for. There will obviously be shipping costs that range from £450 to £650 depending on type of car. There is also VAT and Import duty, which again ranges in price dependent on type of car, year of registration etc…. There are MOT and registration charges of £50 and SVA test charges of £180.

Your import company will pass a lot of the extra responsibilities onto the shipping company of their choice. Because of the amount of work they will pass through to this shipping company you should be assured of receiving the highest quality of work from both companies and if you have a problem with either then the first and most important step to getting this problem rectified is to contact the relevant party so they can resolve your dispute. Whilst problems are few and far between, they do happen and because of the amount of money involved in buying any car, the smallest problem can seem like the end of the world. This is especially true when dealing with Japanese car importing for the first time.