How much does imported car insurance cost?
Last Modified 16th of February 2021
Imported car insurance works pretty much the same way as the regular type of insurance works. In fact you can insure an imported car with a regular insurance policy; although you can also get specialist imported car insurance if you prefer. In terms of the cost, all of the usual factors apply and where you live, your age, your driving history and so on will all affect what price you are quoted. Imported cars are generally more expensive than an equivalent non-imported to insure – which might be down to a few factors and there are a few different things that can affect the cost of your import car insurance.
For instance…
The type of important will make a difference – whether it is a parallel import or a grey import. Parallel importing generally means that the car (or motorbike) was produced in Europe and to EU specifications. In most cases parallel imports are practically identical to their non-imported counterparts. Grey imports are often cars which can’t be bought in the UK – they will often be imported from Japan or elsewhere in the Far East and they will normally have a few differences to the UK version (if such a version exists).
Other factors
Of course other things will make a difference, what type of vehicle you are importing, how rare or valuable it is and how powerful it is. Few people bother importing small hatchbacks, so most imported vehicles are special in some way and as such you would probably expect that they would cost more to insure. So in short, imported car insurance will probably be more expensive, but by how much depends on a few things, so it’s hard to say without actually getting a quote.
