Please, oh please give this piece of JDM history a good home

freedomgli @ Tue Dec 05 said:

As with insurance there are many variables that effect the total price paid to have such a large item like an automobile shipped to the USA. Just the packing alone might cost £300 if the car is to be transported in a container and you want to minimize the likelihood of damage during transport. I don't know how the price of RoRo compares to standard sea container. It would be less expensive to ship to LA than, say, Baltimore. The USA is very large so the final destination must be taken into account. It seems some things like fuel and taxes are high in the UK while roll bar fabrication, used jdm tuning parts, and sea transport cost much less.

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The chances of damage by ro-ro are low; there are tons of ro-ro car ships leaving Japan each week. Thats how new cars are shipped. Even from Oz; how do you think Monaros, er GTOs, get to the US. Its how all 4 of my cars have reached the UK. The UK doesn't get special shipping rates. Its about $3-500 to ship Baltimore to Southampton by ro-ro, about $800-1200 by container. Containers don't add that much, and you can reduce the cost even more my arranging to share a long container with another car being shipped. There are specialists out there who can do this. In any case, this car is hardly a Bugatti or something. And for the most part, for containerisation, all they do is drive the car into the container. I'vce seen the japanse try and cram two cars into a standard container, by using block and tackle, to kind of dangle one car over another. You can get companies who build a crate around a car for you, but thats expensive from anywhere in the world.

If you're worried about damage, shipping insurance is about 7% of the total value. Most importers don't bother with this.

Rollbar fabrication I don't think is less in the UK; you are looking at £3-500 for a custom 4-point bar; about $600-1000, depending how weak the $ is. Used JDM parts are cheap, because we have so many old knackered cars being shipped in, and tarted up by dealers to stock appearance. The used car market here values standard cars over modified cars. I think thats generally true in the US as well.

Stunningly, parts for US cars are so much cheaper in the US than in the UK. I thinks its all to do with something called supply and demand.