I read the link you sent me..it requires that we must have UK insurance in order to register our car in the UK....does that make sense ? i thought the insurance comes AFTER you register the car ?
Sorry, I hadn't noticed that part on the DVLA webpage.
I guess the idea is to make sure that you will be insured. It's a similar situation when you go to renew your "tax disc" at a local DVLA office or the post office and you need to show proof of insurance.
I know that some insurance companies won't even provide a quote until you give them a vehicle license number (registration number in British terminology), nevermind actually issue the policy and certificate, so that might limit your choice a little.
If you already had insurance on another vehicle, you might be able to use that, as just about all U.K. insurance covers you to drive somebody else's car, and the law only requires that the driver be insured for his
use of the vehicle, not that there must be a policy which explicitly specifies the vehicle itself.
The only problem with that approach is that some officials don't seem to accept that and will still try to insist on you having a policy which names the car in question, so sometimes you need to remind the bureaucrats that they can't make up the rules as they go along. But I don't think that applies to your situation at the moment anyway.
Re:Kmh/Mph gauges, what happens if dashboard does not have MPH option ?
This isn't a problem I've experienced myself, as obviously American cars already have MPH on the dial, so I can only report on what I've read elsewhere on this issue.
The official answer is that you need to be able to tell the speed of the car in MPH, so you would need to replace the speedometer with a MPH version, or if you felt like a little DIY modification you could disassemble the speedo to add suitable MPH markings yourself. (Probably not a job you want to tackle, right?)
I recall seeing questions posed about whether just fixing a small card with km/h to MPH conversions on the dash is acceptable, and the official answer was "no," because you wouldn't be able to read it at night.
Are you certain the speedo is only kilometers? Sometimes there are also MPH calibrations in smaller numbers on a separate scale inside the main scale (just as some MPH speedos also have km/h in smaller numbers).
I dont see any fog lights for the car...but i will email hubby and find out.
I didn't think to ask before if it is a U.S. version of the car, but as you've already mentioned the metric speedo, that answers the question!
So far as I'm aware, all British/European market cars of this year would have been fitted with rear fog lights. In the U.K. they have been a requirement on all new cars since about 1980 or 1981, and I believe it was an EU regulation which introduced that requirement, so I would think that a 1989 car sold originally in Austria would have them fitted too.
The U.K. version of the rules says you can have either a pair of lights, or if you have a single light it must be fitted to the right of the centerline.
Quite a number of the small cars seem to use a single rear fog light, and then have only a single backup light fitted in the matching position on the opposite side (either separate lights or incorporated into the taillight cluster). I have no idea which arrangement the Honda Civic uses, sorry.
If -- as seems to be the case with the way the import rules stand at present -- you only need to get a regular MoT inspection, you might (I stress
might) get away with it if you choose your MoT garage carefully.
MoT inspectors often see little things like this in different ways, whatever the official rules say. If you can get a more relaxed inspector, particularly one who has been around a good many years, he may just pass it anyway.
For instance, I've had similar situations with turn signals. All British cars have been required to use amber front and rear since 1965. Some inspectors will look at the red rear turn signals on a U.S. car and just point blank reject them. Others will look at it more reasonably and say, "Well, the book says after 1965 they should be amber, but the car wasn't built for the British market, it's a private import and a bit of a gray area, and older cars can still have red anyway, so what does it matter? -- Pass."
If you can ask around about local MoT garages, it might be worth going along to one with your car and having a quiet word with the inspector to "feel the water" before booking it in and having to pay the fee.
Come to think of it, I don't think the speedometer is actually part of the MoT inspection. So even though technically you are supposed to have MPH on it, I
think you would probably pass the MoT anyway.
Once you have that MoT certificate, you'll be home and dry, unless the DVLA registration office wants to inspect as well before issuing the U.K. registration. {*}
Sorry if this sounds rather gloomy and complex, but all the paperwork relating to cars has become horrendously bureaucratic.
You see why I said before that sometimes (especially when you don't have a run-of-the-mill situation) you need to be a little "inventive" with the rules.......
Edited to add:{*} I've never had an inspection from a registration office, but as I understand it, if they check anything, they're more concerned with matching up the vehicle ID number and things like that. (I can't guarantee that though, obviously!)
