Imported Car Insurance Help

[Martin4356111]

Evening all,

Looking for some advice on getting reasonable insurance for an imported car.

I bought a brand new 23 plate Skoda Octavia Sportline 1.5 petrol when I was in Cyprus and now looking to bring it back to the UK. It’s basically a UK spec (RHD etc) and I have all of the paperwork required to register.

Unfortunately for me, for whatever reason Skoda UK decided to stop selling the Sportline model for about 12 months in 2023 before reintroducing again in 2024.

That means that when I do an insurance quotation search, my model trim doesn’t come up when I enter the first registered date of 2023.

I’ve tried Adrian Flux who quoted me £1100 for a year. What’s annoying is if I use any of the comparison sites and put in 2024 and tick imported it brings up that model and the price is around £400 per year. The 2023 and 2024 cars are the same Mk and identical.

Any ideas on how to get a better price staying within the law?

[dibblecorse]

call the insurance company quoting £400 explain and ask them to speak with an underwriter or get approval to release the policy.

[MustangGT]

Phone a broker and talk to them.

[TommoAE86]

My Japanese import is quadruple the amount of the equivalent Lexus it shares it's underpinnings to insure so my experience has been that importing is always more expensive.

Try some broker's maybe and see how close to UK model you can get? Howden's (formally A-plan), Keith Michaels, Greenlight, Sky Insurance (not the TV guys).

[blue_haddock]

My little starlet was purchased in Germany as RHD uk spec and brought to uk some time later.

When getting quotes it added about £80 over a uk vehicle with admiral.

[itcaptainslow]

Some insurers care, some don't. I've got a modern classic which was a parallel import in the 90's (remember the Quentin Wilson episode of Top Gear?). From insuring that, most brokers when you explain it's a UK spec car, ordered abroad in the 90's to save money, don't care and don't load the premium for it.

[Dingu]

Your big issue with this car appears to be that there isn’t a direct U.K. equivalent (year and trim).

It might be worth running a comparison quote for a non imported one of the correct year and then contacting the cheapest few to see if they can refer to underwriters to cover the imported version for a similar cost- unlikely to be the same but may be cheaper.

[alscar]

You could add Brentacre to the list of those brokers already suggested.
Or as suggested simply phone the insurer on the comparison site who “ quoted “for a 24 model.

[Oliver Hardy]

There are some insurance companies that specialize in covering imported cars, although the ones I contacted never got back to me.

Lancaster Insurance covered my MR2/MRS for a couple of years before hicking the price up by nearly 250%, I guess you could try them