Ordering a new car in LHD?

[Walter Sobchak]

I’m looking at getting a new car which I want to keep for the next 5 or so years but only planning to be in the U.K. for 1 or 2 of them so was thinking of ordering an lhd and taking it with me.
I’ve had one dealer say it’s not possible but surely if you’re ordering a build it must be?, has anyone else done it on here?.

[davek_964]

I haven't tried, but years ago it became quite common for people to buy new cars from mainland Europe because they were cheaper - but order them in RHD. It seems surprising that you can't do the reverse.....

[TooMany2cvs]

Walter Sobchak said:

I’ve had one dealer say it’s not possible but surely if you’re ordering a build it must be?

"Possible" and "Can be arsed to figure out how to do it on the system" are two different things.

Why not just start off by ordering it from a continental dealer, then registering it in the UK?

[pfwilliams]

I have had a bit of experience with this for a customer, as a dealer it is not a simple option.

I was asked to investigate a LHD car for a customer supplied through the UK, the UK head office for my brands can only order UK spec cars but we can request LHD. It was going to double the delivery timescale from 3 to 6 months and we needed payment in full as this is a one off vehicle.

We found that as it is a UK spec car the headlights were going to be wrong for the continent and it wouldn't correspond with any of the trim levels available in the LHD markets. So it was literally going to be a UK car but with the steering wheel on the left.

In short it was a total pain and would have produced a totally unsalable car. Fortunately the customer saw the light and decided not to go ahead, as the car was going to be a run around in the south of France they just bought one from the dealer down there.