Import Car Insurance Advice
If your anything like me and have ended up reading this article I am guessing you either own or would like to own a car that has been imported from outside of the United Kingdom. People drive imported vehicles for many different reasons such as to save money, enthusiast interest or even just because they want a particular model of car and it is not available in this country from a traditional franchised dealer.
Imported cars come from numerous sources from all around the world and once the new owner receives their new car they will inevitably have to arrange insurance for it, fortunately there are plenty of import car insurance providers who specialise in providing the cheapest quote.
Imported cars cause problems for insurers for the reason that they are not built to the same specifications as UK cars, however the level of these differences varies greatly between car models. Some imported car models can actually be bought in this country from a franchised dealership which would appear identical to the untrained eye, it would not be until you have a look at the interior or the engine that you might pick up on a few differences. For example on of the most popular imported cars is the Mazda MX-5 this car has been on sale since the early ninetys in many countries and has had numerous face lifts, due to its popularity many of these vehicles have been imported into the UK and many enthusiasts purchase these imported vehicles due to the imports especially from Japan are generally of higher specification but cheaper to purchase. The advantage of a Japanese imported car is that in Japan they also drive on the left side of the road so all their cars are right hand drive, this means a smaller amount of conversion is required to make them road legal in the UK. This difference in specifications sets up a ‘Grey’ area where certain parts on imported cars are not freely available in the UK there for increasing the price of that part due to importing costs, this often causes insurance for imported cars to be referred to grey import car insurance.
Not all cars are as simple to sort out for use on UK roads because many imported cars come from countries which drive on the opposite side of the road to us and therefore their cars are Left hand drive. This makes things more difficult when driving in the UK because the driver is on the wrong side of the car so on blind turns they are not best positioned when making a decision to pull out, also overtaking is complicated as a driver on the left hand side of a car on a UK road is unable to see past the vehicle infront to allow for a safe overtaking manuver to take place.
These factors mean obtaining insurance for an import car will often mean the quote will be more expensive on average than a regular UK vehicle firstly car parts may be more expensive and harder to obtain and then if the car is left hand drive more opportunities for driver error are created, this is why finding cheap import car insurance can require more work than an ordinary car.
This said thanks again to the Internet numerous enthusiast sites and forums exist for most imported cars including the Japanese cars often referred to ‘Jap Imports’ but also American cars which are all left hand drive vehicles. I would highly recommend visiting these sites and joining the forums to share other peoples experiences in order to find out the best companies who can give you the best Jap import car insurance or generally cheap import car insurance.
Also many of the regular UK insurance companies recognise the growing market for import car insurance so will actually list imported cars amongst regular car listings some sites even have specialised sections catering for Japanese import car insurance amongst other sub categories of imported cars.
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