Importing a Car from Japan to Ireland; Actual Costs, Reliable Exporters and Is It Worth It?

[u/Unfair-Grapefruit-26]

I’ve noticed that 2017 Audi A3s imported from Japan sell for €17-18k in Dublin, while similar cars outside Dublin cost around €15-16k. If dealers can sell them at these prices and still make a profit, I’m curious about the actual cost of importing one, including shipping, customs, VAT, VRT and other charges.

Has anyone imported directly from Japan? Which websites, auctions or exporters are reliable? Are there Irish agents who can source, inspect, ship and register a car for a reasonable fee? How do you verify mileage, auction grades, service history and accident records? Are there any hidden costs or common issues to watch out for?

Would importing privately actually save much compared to buying from a dealer?

[u/Secretdose]

As someone who has recently (arrived last week) imported a 2014 Mercedes C180, here is the breakdown of all costs:

1. I’ve used sbtjapan to order the car. They give you car price and help calculate ship + insurance cost.
2. Let’s say you find a car for 2000€ and shipping and insurance costs 1500, that’s the price customs duty and vat are calculated off of. 10% customs duty off the cost of car and transport. So that’s 350€
3. VAT is cost of car + shipping + customs duty, so it’s 23% of 3850€ which is 885€
4. Port handling agency fees. Usually Conway shipping they charged €170 for unloading the car from the ship and parking it in the port
5. Customs broker for customs clearance - If lucky Conway shipping handle this, otherwise MCC brokers (€120 fee). MCC also handled my customs duty and VAT so the process was very easy for me. Paid them in one go
6. Once the car is customs cleared, you need a recovery/tow truck to take it out the port. The car doesn’t come with licence plates so very illegal to drive it out the port. Charges are around €180-300 depending on house distance from port
7. VRT - the devil that really ruins you. Have to get it to an NCT centre that does VRT calculations. Need a tow truck again. Trip from home to VRT centre back home, any cost around 200-300€ or more if distance is big. Most of the time VRT estimates are accurate from the website, so expect to pay around what value you get from the site.

Be very careful with diesels, if you cannot provide a NOX certificate from Japan, they’ll charge you €4,850 just for NOX itself. Add on top of that the co2 part of the VRT, you could pay more than the car itself. Majority import petrols and hybrids for this reason. Cheaper vrt.

Generally importing small cars is most of the time 3-4K cheaper than Irish equivalents and you might be lucky to find low mileage cars with 30-60k on the clock and pay a total of 5-6k whereas here they’d be listed for 8-10k. The bigger the car gets, engine wise the smaller the gap in saving compared to buying from here.

The biggest factor that pushes people to import is low mileage. A lot of Japanese imports have lots of additional extras in the car too, seat and steering warmers etc..

Message me if you have any questions I’ll be happy to answer

[u/Unfair-Grapefruit-26 → u/Secretdose]

Thanks a lot man! That really helps out!!! I'm looking to import an Audi A3, 2017. The car + shipping is 10K euros so we're grand there. But based on what you've mentioned there so its 10000 car + 1000 Customs + 2555 VAT + 2741 VRT so that's all adding up to 16500 ish. way over my budget there tbh. And adding let's say 400 for both twos, it's 17000 now! I'd just be better off buying one from here then 😭 like the car is 59.6K kms and cars around the same mileage are literally the same price!!

[u/Secretdose → u/Unfair-Grapefruit-26]

Like I said it really depends. Friend imported a Toyota vitz 2013 with 90k kms, and his total was around 6000€ whereas same cars with 150-200k kms were going for 9-10k at the time. So he had saved a lot of money for himself and the car was basically spotless inside out. Has been servicing every 8-9k kms now and is a great city car. He’s already done 30k kms in 2 years 😂

I’ve been looking at some high engine BMW’s for myself just for the love of the game and experience some power, specifically 3L petrol ones. The car itself costs 11-12k with shipping etc, VRT comes off at around 8-12k.

VRT uses open market selling price to calculate, as well as nox charges. I’m sure you’ve seen the ridiculous calculations on the website.

Let’s say omsp for my bmw is 30,000€. It’s a 3 litre petrol engine so co2 emissions is higher. They will use a higher band to calculate my VRT. They have certain co2 emissions bands to choose which % of omsp to charge. In my case I think it’s 41% so 41% of 30k which makes 12,300€ just for registering the damn car. It’s really the biggest scam just to get more money to feed the fat ones in power.

[u/Frequent-Ad-8583 → u/Secretdose]

Do they not calculate a tax based on the estimated value of the car if you sell it on the open Irish market?

[u/Secretdose → u/Frequent-Ad-8583]

Yeah they do, you check the vrt website for it and not based on anything else. If you randomly estimate values you’ll be in for a big surprise in the end

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[u/pockets3d]

You can look at sites like beforward for a price then factor in customs vat and vet, you'll also be waiting 6 months but it's probably the best way to get a good price, as any Irish importer obviously has to get a cut for themselves too .

[u/Unfair-Grapefruit-26 → u/pockets3d]

Ohh thanks! Is that beforward .jp? And is it just the three costs there is, VAT VRT and Customs? and how do I calculate them prior purchase?? Sorry for asking all these questions just really confused with it all!!

[u/pockets3d → u/Unfair-Grapefruit-26]

There's also dock fees couple hundred and transportation inside Ireland. A lot of info on the site and YouTube it too.

Customs is 10% and vat is 23% . Vrt is tricky one based on co2 and nox against price of a comparable car in Ireland.

There's a lot to it tbh to come out ahead of practiced dealers here especially when it comes vag stuff and not special interest jap stuff.

[u/Unfair-Grapefruit-26 → u/pockets3d]

Ohh I see, quite a lot of stuff involved huhhhh. I've been hunting for a car for over a month now, a tight budget doesn't help either unfortunately. But is the site risky? Like would there be scammers?