How to Make Buying or Selling Overseas a Little Less Scary

You've found it: your dream car, that one special edition that was never officially imported to America. You've been patiently waiting for the car to turn 25 years old, and now it can be legally imported stateside.

Surely all you have to do now is write that check, send it off and, in a few months, your dream machine will be sitting in your driveway. Sounds pretty simple, right?

Well, it turns out that putting that car in your driveway from half a world away is often much more complicated than many people realize. Yeah, that car is legal to drive on the roads here in the U.S., but you also still need to get it here. And that can mean getting through a lot of paperwork and red tape to even put the car on a boat in the place you bought it.

To get a better understanding of the potentially complicated process of buying a car overseas and shipping it back here, we talked to a few experts on the matter, such as Fantasy Junction owner Bruce Trenery and Dmitriy Shibarshin, director of marketing and accounting at West Coast Shipping.

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Comments

wspohn Dork
9/11/20 10:54 a.m.

One of the big issues when buying or selling at a distance is trust and flow of money. As a lawyer, I several times acted as escrow holder for buyers who gave me the purchase monies in trust on clear conditions as to what conditions had to be met for release of the funds - usually the car, with correct serial numbers and paperwork showing up and not having any obvious glaring defects.

Firing large amounts of money off into the void, to someone you have never met who may or may not have a car you have seen pictures of, makes people justifiably nervous. I've bought and sold car for and from myself at a distance, so I know!

nutherjrfan UberDork
9/11/20 4:17 p.m.

A very long time ago a British punter got hosed on replica E30 M3 passed off as the real deal and bought from a dealer in Holland.

Hop skip and a jump away but he was too trusting.

Pre internet admittedly but that could go either way I suppose.

wspohn Dork
9/12/20 11:55 a.m.

On questions of authenticity and condition the best money you can spend is a few hundred bucks to get a knowledgeable person where the car lives to do a report on originality and condition.

wearymicrobe PowerDork
9/14/20 5:38 p.m.

Having sold a bunch of cars out of the country every single one has sent someone in person to facilitate the deal. Plenty of companies doing that as a service as well.