Alliance Car Imports Car Importer

...sites, but found that only Alliance Car Imports actually had what they said they had on their site. We discovered that we could pick up a brand new full UK spec TT for a mere £400 more than our German quotes and they were available immediately! (after the paperwork was sorted out).

Once the decision had been made, nothing could have been simpler. The paperwork was hassle-free, Stuart Dean, our contact at Alliance couldn’t have ...
...it) was reassured by his knowledge and understanding of the importing business. In fact, the reassurance he gave was to counter the myths we were fed by various Audi dealers.

We picked the car up last Saturday (which meant that we also had the latest Y registration) and drove it back to London from their offices in Accrington- quite a track, but its half run-in now!

In short, I couldn’t recommend the service highly ... more

You know how you always go back to the first place you looked…..

I’ve been an Internet shopper for some time now, but never thought I’d end up looking to buy a car on it. I, like others have on the one hand been fed up with rip-off Britain, but on the other, very wary of opportunist cowboys trying to make a fast buck. Car dealers don’t always have the best of reputations. From my experience, we’ve been told different things from different dealers about the same car. Therefore, you can image I was even more wary about the car importing business.

Firstly, if you save so much money, what’s the catch? Surely you’ll end up with either shoddy goods or a shoddy service or both! Perhaps they’ll run away with your money and you’ll end up on Consumer Watchdog blubbing to Anne Robinson.

My girlfriend has just taken delivery of an Audi TT 225bhp Roadster. Rumour has it that you can pick them up much cheaper in Germany than in the UK if you do a personal import. With this in mind, we flew out and stayed with a friend in Hameln near Hanover and drove from dealer to dealer, picking up quotes and doing our research.

To our amazement, we discovered that on a full UK spec Audi could save a massive £3,600. The Audi dealers in the UK are understandably not happy that you can do this, but at the end of the day, it’s clear why. The German dealers were very polite and seemed happy to supply you with a car, but we were told in February that we could have the car for mid August. This is because they would have to order it and we’d have to wait in the queue. Clearly if you’re buying a convertible, you want it before the summer, so we were gutted.

On our return to England, we were considering forgetting the idea altogether, and looked at buying secondhand models. We found that the TT held its value so well, we were unable to find secondhand TTs as cheaply as the personal imports.

We kept looking, and after a quick search on Pricerunner.co.uk, we found several car importers who were claiming to have Audi TTs in stock at German prices. We used the Internet to get an idea of prices in the first place. I checked out the import sites, but found that only Alliance Car Imports actually had what they said they had on their site. We discovered that we could pick up a brand new full UK spec TT for a mere £400 more than our German quotes and they were available immediately! (after the paperwork was sorted out).

Once the decision had been made, nothing could have been simpler. The paperwork was hassle-free, Stuart Dean, our contact at Alliance couldn’t have been more helpful, and my girlfriend (who was paying for it) was reassured by his knowledge and understanding of the importing business. In fact, the reassurance he gave was to counter the myths we were fed by various Audi dealers.

We picked the car up last Saturday (which meant that we also had the latest Y registration) and drove it back to London from their offices in Accrington- quite a track, but its half run-in now!

In short, I couldn’t recommend the service highly enough- Until we got home, we were very not prepared to decide whether we’d made the right decision. Being a cynic and believing that you only get what you pay for, we were worried that something would be amiss. After all, we saved over £3000, it had all the extras we wanted, it was the colour we were after, we picked up the car immediately and we drove it off after being offered a cup of tea and a guided tour.

What’s the catch? So far, we haven’t found one. The “too good to be true police” have not come knocking on our door telling us that it’s all an elaborate hoax.

Things to look out for with an import.
I picked up a trick or two of the trade. If you are buying an imported car from abroad, there are several things to bare in mind and a check list of things to look out for.

1) First and most obvious is to make sure it’s a right hand drive! You can buy a non-UK spec import, but you won’t get them serviced over here, because some parts will be to different compliance standards. This will affect the warrantee. Also, the residual value of a non-UK spec car is dramatically reduced. That’s why non-UK spec cars are so cheap.
2) Does it have MPH on the speedometer? If it’s only in kilometers, it’s not UK spec.
3) Is the manual in English? Ditto.
4) Look at the seatbelt safety label. Is that in English?
5) Are the headlights UK facing?
6) We’ve been told that with our car having an Audi warrantee, Audi dealers are obliged to service it. A couple of Audi dealers have hinted that we would not be treated with an import. In other words, they’re nicer to people they’ve ripped off! It’s obvious that UK car dealers can’t keep this attitude for much longer. If we went through a main dealer, we would have had a longer warrantee, but what ever they tell you, it’s not worth £3,000!

In fairness to the Audi dealers, they receive a monthly allocation of cars that they can sell. This puts them in an unfair disadvantage, but also leaves them with limited flexibility and hence longer waiting lists. They also have a duty to maximise the cost of their cars.

Finally, Stuart sent my girlfriend an email wishing her all the best and telling her not hesitate getting in touch if there are any problems.

I'll review Audi dealerships when the car needs its first service and confirm their attitude towards personal imports.
 

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