Car shipping?

Has anyone shipped a car over?
What are the costs for that?

Not many bring their car since there are major expenses involved (shipping costs and mandatory modifications). Here is a recent topic on this very thing: http://talk.uk-yankee.com/index.php?topic=55948.0

Why would you want to ship a car over?  It seems like a lot of expense and bother when he steering wheel would just be on the wrong side.  If you're planning to settle here, better in the long run to buy a British style car.  

I think you'd be looking at a good £1,500-£2,000 or so to ship the car and then have all the modifications done to it in order to make it road-worthy and legal to drive in the UK. You could also be looking at paying a lot for spare parts and repairs as it will be an imported car... and it might cost you a lot in car insurance too. Have a look at this site for more info on how to ship a car from the US to the UK: http://www.import-car.info/worth-it.shtml

You can easily buy a decent car in the UK for less than it would cost to ship/modify a US car. In my experience, used cars in the UK are much cheaper than used cars in the US - when I was in the US in 2008, it seemed that many used cars were being advertised for around $4,000 (and some were a good 15 years old and had over 150,000 miles on the clock!), but we bought my UK car (1994 Nissan Sunny) for £1,000 in 2004 (it had done 37,000 miles and had one lady owner. In the 6 years we've had it, it's had barely any problems and is now on 98,000 miles and still running perfectly... it's probably only worth about £250 now though).

Here are some links to other previous car shipping discussions on UK-Y:

http://talk.uk-yankee.com/index.php?topic=45199.0
http://talk.uk-yankee.com/index.php?topic=19370.0
http://talk.uk-yankee.com/index.php?topic=30519.0

You can easily buy a decent car in the UK for less than it would cost to ship/modify a US car. In my experience, used cars in the UK are much cheaper than used cars in the US - when I was in the US in 2008, it seemed that many used cars were being advertised for around $4,000 (and some were a good 15 years old and had over 150,000 miles on the clock!), but we bought my UK car (1994 Nissan Sunny) for £1,000 in 2004 (it had done 37,000 miles and had one lady owner. In the 6 years we've had it, it's had barely any problems and is now on 98,000 miles and still running perfectly... it's probably only worth about £250 now though).

This is my experience as well. We purchased a 2000 Ford Focus with 60,000 miles on the clock back in July, 1 previous disabled owner that drove it the 2 miles to the shops & back for 9 years and sadly passed away and that's how we came to purchase it for £1,600, plus it has the full service history which is a wonderful thing. We had a full service on it with some standard maintenance things that needed to be done (cam belt & brakes) right after we got it but other than that we had no issues (until DH was hit by another driver on his way to work in early December). So you can definitely get a good car for a small expenditure.

Thanks everyone!

When were looking into having a car shipped over as well. We were in a differant boat then most though. The car was a 1968 Dodge Charger. We were going to hire a company from NYC to drive down to North Carolina to pick it up on a lorry and drive it back to NYC, then have them do the whole arranging to put it on a boat thing. But then it would have to go through inspections in the UK and since its a 1968, and needed a lot of work on it, we were concerned customs wouldnt have released it since it wouldnt have passed MOT until we did some work on it. If I remember right, for the whole picking up the car,and arranging it to be put on a boat, we were quoted just over £3,000.

In the end, we didnt get it, the guy who we were gonna buy it off of on Ebay suddently acted a bit weird,so we decided to play it safe and not part with the cash since it wouldnt have been insured through paypal