Austarion

Who did you use to import your car?

Would you use them again? Why? Why not?

Current options i'm looking at are prestige, j-spec and ironchef. Will be very shortly looking to get a manual widey in from the land of the rising sun (or New Zealand if I can find one)

Pitfalls?

Comments much appreciated. I don't give a flying crap what colour said widey I find is, it'll be stripped and gassed (painted! Any colour as long as its black) shortly after landing so its rust free :)

I noticed finding one in Australia is immensely difficult. Anyone want to offload a local one to me with a straight body? Working engine is optional as long as its manual and has no major accident history.

Entaran wrote: (or New Zealand if I can find one)

good luck getting one from here pal

bridgey wrote:

Entaran wrote: (or New Zealand if I can find one)

good luck getting one from here pal

Just trying to illustrate that i'm looking globally. I'll bring one in from the UK if I have to. :)

charlie will have all the answers for you!

I have no idea who charlie is.

But i did just wake up my best friend in London. Apparently it's 4am there or something and asked him to look for a widey for me. hahaha :/

Charlie is NXTIME on here. Almost half of our cars were brought in by him.

bridgey wrote:

Entaran wrote: (or New Zealand if I can find one)

good luck getting one from here pal

Everyone has their price! What sort of coin are you looking at paying for one?

oi David if you ever sell I'm keen to be first in line (or next in line haha)!

LOL yeah I know - was just curious as to what the perceived value is at the mo. Have been bitten hard by the merc bug over the last few weeks so the starion has been sitting in the garage undercover most of the time!

We have a '99 E55 AMG. It's a beautiful car. :) I like it a lot actually.

BUUUUUT

Wideys in the UK are the equiv of 4k AUD plus whatever it costs to get over here, talking to an importer. Ex japan they're 10k plus costs. Both have similar (snow) climates so rust will be similar. UK ones come with MPH speedos (nothing photoshop can't fix)

I'm hoping to get away for 12k in Australia. But I think just the shipping alone is 2k or 3k of that.

Get a USA one and just do the RHD conversion :beer not too hard.

Lunacy wrote:Get a USA one and just do the RHD conversion :beer not too hard.

Then all i have to do is do the MPH conversion AND get an EXTRA engineers cert.

Oh and all the fucking around. Awesome.

Anyway back to topic, importers anyone has used? NXTIME?

NXTime is your best bet. Some observations from the years;

-Manuals are harder to find than auto in Japan. Easy enough to do the conversion using JA/B bits.
-UK units appear to largely be rustier than Jap spec (less well cared for??). Some rusty ones in Japan too. The rear quarters is common and nasty to repair (trawl the starquestclub forums for what happens in the snow-belt).
-$12K may be on the low side, unless you are prepared to wait for one to appear.
-Get the 88 model that has the better seats, gearbox & diff.

They do appear for sale here. I bought mine from a guy in Vic.

yeah mine was an auto and i converted it into a manual. not too bad a job, biggest pain was fitting the clutch pedal box brace under the dash. otherwise straight forward...

and yes i bought mine from charlie :beer

Jdstaz45 has two so you could see if he wants to sell one of them.