By Jan Pettifor
Importing a Viper. How I did it.
Importing a Viper is easy as long as you are prepared. Patience is also needed. The first thing I did was sell everything I could to raise the money and that included my Corvette, Jaguar and motorbike. I opened an American bank account in the US while on vacation for the funds.
One important factor to remember when working out your expenses is that on top of the purchase cost of the vehicle and shipping costs is the large amount of money you have to pay to customs and excise before being able to collect your car from the docks in the UK. This stands at 10 % duty on top of the cost of the car and then add shipping charges and then add 17.5% vat to everything. It can make the car that appeared so cheap in the US suddenly not look so cheap. Also the cost of the SVA and associated work that has to be performed on the car to make it UK legal i.e. light conversions.
There are several decent web sites to look for Vipers which include www.traderonline.com and www.dodgevipersforsale.com I found my 2001 ACR on www.viperclub.org at a Dodge dealership in Georgia. I knew exactly what I wanted and it had to be yellow and a GTS. The fact it is an ACR is a bonus. I Phoned the dealership for a description of the car and gave them a credit card deposit over the phone. Lucky for me my friend was travelling to the US to buy a Z06 so I asked him to check the Viper out and hand over a cheque if it was all
Importing a Viper is easy as long as you are prepared. Patience is also needed. The first thing I did was sell everything I could to raise the money and that included my Corvette, Jaguar and motorbike. I opened an American bank account in the US while on vacation for the funds.
One important factor to remember when working out your expenses is that on top of the purchase cost of the vehicle and shipping costs is the large amount of money you have to pay to customs and excise before being able to collect your car from the docks in the UK. This stands at 10 % duty on top of the cost of the car and then add shipping charges and then add 17.5% vat to everything. It can make the car that appeared so cheap in the US suddenly not look so cheap. Also the cost of the SVA and associated work that has to be performed on the car to make it UK legal i.e. light conversions.
There are several decent web sites to look for Vipers which include www.traderonline.com and www.dodgevipersforsale.com I found my 2001 ACR on www.viperclub.org at a Dodge dealership in Georgia. I knew exactly what I wanted and it had to be yellow and a GTS. The fact it is an ACR is a bonus. I Phoned the dealership for a description of the car and gave them a credit card deposit over the phone. Lucky for me my friend was travelling to the US to buy a Z06 so I asked him to check the Viper out and hand over a cheque if it was all
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2001 GTS ACR.