Found ‘our dream car’ on UK holiday. A 2008 Tungsten Silver Aston Martin V8 Vantage Manual Roadster.
Six months of excitement, joy, anguish, struggle, sleepless nights, documentation, difficulties, cost, etc. unfolded before we managed to import our Aston into Australia.
We were very naive and did not realise we had started on a very rocky road of jumping through hundreds of hoops and to our horror we found that importation of our newly purchased ‘dream car’ was not at all guaranteed!
There are many ways to import vehicles into Australia – Pre 1989, Race/rally car, Special purpose vehicles, Non-road vehicles, Vehicles in transit, Specialist/enthusiast vehicle, Forces vehicle, Carnet, Exhibition vehicles, etc. We wrongly assumed our Aston Martin would be easy to import as a Personal Import. For that you have to own the car for over 12 months (easy we buy it and in a years time we import it) = NO! You have to live in the UK and prove you have driven it every few days, had it serviced etc. - so we had to go back to the drawing board again.
Our car was eventually importation as Discretionary Approval Criteria - Addendum to an Application for Importing a Vehicle IO7 – Letter of Compliance Option.
Over the last 4 years we have upgraded many parts to Carbon fibre for ASTON 1 (Side sills, Rear diffuser, Grill, Slam plate, Console, Side strikes and Internal door sills), Clear glass rear lights and new wheels have also been changed. Who knows what the next additions will be?
The investment in time, money, effort and the emotional ‘blood sweat & tears’ is immeasurable. However, true car enthusiasts will fully understand the ‘love’ we have for our amazing ASTON 1.
