Buying an IMPORT secondhand car – any riskier?

Nothing directly to add re import but given you need ulez compliant, how long are you expecting the 10 year old car to remain such?
My main worry would be getting burned on that in 18 months to be honest.

But yes I’ll elaborate as far as that was a rude thing you said, to a decent member of here, for no reason at all other than to take another opportunity to look awesome.

@maccruiskeen – apologies if my turn of phrase was rude or insulting, that wasn’t my intention. I’m just one of those people who buys cars over 10 years old with the hope of getting 10 years use out of them, like the OP.

rather than a playground of arguing with people

@bearnecessities – I remember you giving me a similar telling off over the Covid thread, but other than never addressing you or your points, which I think I have stuck to since them, I’m not sure what else I can do to appease, avoid and not upset you. Sorry.

Given my experience of buying an imported VW T4 campervan a few years ago I wouldn’t touch an imported vehicle unless, just perhaps, it was from a main dealer. My van passed its HPI check, everything looked great, but (long story) it turned out to be a ringer: the entire windscreen surround with the VIN on it had been expertly swapped with that of a different van – and it had in fact been stolen from a family in Germany. After reporting it to the police I had to cancel my insurance as I no longer owned it – it belonged to the German insurance company that had paid out on it – and had to leave it on my drive for months until an insurance valuer had inspected it and I’d paid a non-trivial amount of money to buy it off the German insurers. In the end I did okay out of it as the van happened to be newer and higher spec than the one whose identity it had acquired, but that was just pot luck, and it involved a lot of hassle over an extended period. It left such a nasty taste in the mouth that I ended up selling it, having been totally open about its history in the ad.

It took an hour up on the ramps at the garage to confirm that it was a ringer, and the insurance valuer was clear that he wouldn’t have spotted it – I only found out because the van specialist I took it to was convinvced the person I bought to from was a crook so he kept looking for another VIN plate with a different number on it. If I hadn’t gone to him I’d have been none the wiser.

Also, as an import it was hard to get repairs done – for example neither my local VW or independent garage was able to identify particular parts that needed to be replaced.

On a different but related note a friend of mine who lives in Amsterdam recently bought a car in the Netherlands which had been imported from Germany. It all checked out as an excellent low mileage car until he took it for a service and it turned out (another long story) to have a mileage about 4-5 times what was on the odometer. Since then he has found out that there’s an entire town in the Netherlands that is renowned for dealers selling imported cars sold as being low mileage which turn out to have been clocked – apparently there’s even been a TV programme about it!

The core problem I’d be concerned about is that when a car is re-registered on importation this wipes out important aspects of its history, so this is used as a convenient approach for selling on dodgy/clocked/ringed vehicles. You may well manage to avoid this, but you might not know for sure until after you’ve bought it…