How Long Does it Take?

It's tough to wrap your head around everything that is involved with importing vehicles to the United States. Thankfully, Greater East Imports is here to help, but the hardest thing as a customer is waiting. But, how long will you have to wait?

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     Obviously, if you decide to buy a car from our stock, there's not much waiting. However, some people want to be involved with the process from start to finish, and that's perfectly fine. In fact, if it makes you happier, we'll do whatever we can to make it happen.

Regardless, there are a lot of things our of our control, and one of those things is time. Like some of our previous posts, we're not going to reinvent the wheel. We want to give you the first hand analysis of someone who has gone through the process.

Here's a great post written by Doug DeMuro from Jalopnik.

How You Register An Imported Car With the DMV

More importantly, here's the part that applies to this topic:

"All told, from start to finish, expect the timing to work out roughly like this:

1. Finding a car: Weeks, months, years, depending on your standards.
2. Transporting the car to the port: days or weeks, depending on its location on the continent.
3. Port arrival: figure about two weeks before shipment.
4. On-vessel transit time: four weeks from Europe; six to eight weeks from Japan (to the east coast; reverse those figures for the west coast).
5. Getting it out of the port: two days to two weeks, depending on whether you know what you're doing.
6. Registering it: two days to two weeks, depending on your paperwork prowess.

All told, you're probably looking at roughly nine weeks between the moment you drop off the car at the foreign port until the moment you walk out of the DMV, title and registration in hand, and do an imported car victory dance. Financially, expect to pay around $2,500 all in for a "normal car" – and more if it's an expensive car with higher import fees and sales tax rates.

In other words: it isn't easy, it isn't cheap, and it isn't quick. So you'd better really love that foreign car you're importing."

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     And this is why we're in business; to take out the hassle and frustration of importing a vehicle, and just let you worry about owning your dream. While total time can vary, this DeMuro's post isn't out of the ordinary. When dealing with two governments there are obviously going to be some problems, but that's why we're here.