T8 Due in March - Dealer arghhhh

[Bonefishblues]

Originally Posted by Dutchbird

You used to be able to buy RHD drive Volvo's tax free in Belgium tax but unfortunatly this has been stopped by Volvo.

The current pre VAT price for basic LHD T8 in Belgium is 65.413,22 euros and at today's exchange rate is £ 49.437,00.

If you imported the car yourself into the UK, you would have to pay the UK VAT at 20%, which makes the car UK price a grand total of £ 59.323,00.

Still a saving but alas it is a LHD car, someone is making a healthy profit somewhere!

How have they stopped this - it's illegal to do so under EU law, isn't it?

[Philip Fisher]

Originally Posted by Dutchbird

You used to be able to buy RHD drive Volvo's tax free in Belgium tax but unfortunatly this has been stopped by Volvo.

The current pre VAT price for basic LHD T8 in Belgium is 65.413,22 euros and at today's exchange rate is £ 49.437,00.

If you imported the car yourself into the UK, you would have to pay the UK VAT at 20%, which makes the car UK price a grand total of £ 59.323,00.

Still a saving but alas it is a LHD car, someone is making a healthy profit somewhere!

I am pretty sure that it is part of EU law that you should be able to buy a rhd uk spec in any other eu country. To prevent you doing this would be a restrictive and anti-competitive practice.

Importing cars was very worthwhile maybe 25 years ago, but then the manufacturers lowered prices and the trade reduced down. I guess the current eu price would be about right at the previous euro exchange rate of about 1.15 to 1.2 but now at 1.33 it makes the uk look expensive.

[Philip Fisher]

In fact an exchange rate of about 1.3EUR per 1 GBP is the the breakeven point in this example. Stronger pound than that then cheaper to import. Weaker pound than this (which historically has been the case for alot of the time) and it is cheaper to buy in the UK.