Potential buyer

[Maxxeh]

Hi there, I'm new here!

I'm thinking about buying an S15.
I've always loved japanese cars, and the S15 won my heart pretty easily!

At the moment I have a 206 I bought it for £9k a few years ago, and now I could (if I'm lucky) get around £5.5 - £6k for it..

I am a member of japan auto direct's mailing list ( I have no idea if this is a trusted site!) and they seem to have a few S15's in good nick for under £6k..which my eyes is great compared to the £10k++ prices in the UK

the only problem is, I'm guessing I'll have to pay more for importing it.. And insurance will be insane.

Right now I am 20, and I get my 3 years no claims in august.. I've tried confused.com a few times over the last year, eagerly awaiting a price to appear..At the moment everyone just says "no, we're not insuring you."!

I put my information into A plan, and they will ring me soon, but I'm not getting my hopes up!

I'm guessing I should wait till I pass uni and get some more cash before i seriously undertake this challenge! Ofcourse I wish there was an easier way out, but that's life!

Just thought I'd enlighten you all with my hopes and aspirations!

 

[Yakozan]

Hi and welcome to the S15oc :wave:
A car which is £6k FOB in Japan would be about £10k in the end if you imported it yourself.
Sushiming is selling a beautiful white one here in the for sale section.

 

[Nicely]

Yep, £6k will be before import. So you've got shipping, duty, VAT, ESVA test, MoT, registration and road tax. THEN insurance. However, S15s are cheaper to insure than S14s - mainly due to most people being less inclined to try drifting them into roundabouts and bus shelters.

 

[Pazz]

£6k is not a realistic on the road budget I'm afraid. I dont think you could even get a crash-repaired for that.

As Yako says, you will not go far wrong with most of the S15's which are for sale on the owners club here.

 

[Darren_S15]

I think the other thing that is not going to be on your side is insurance.

Im 23 with 2 year NCB (3 soon ) and had 2.5 years experience in an FTO GPvR before the S15 so I know how hard it can be.

You will easily be looking at over 1k insurance fully comp I reckon.

I found most insurance companies wont touch you with a grey import until your 21 from personal experience.

I paid nealy 2k on the FTO at 21, but then I had no NCB then.

Dont want to put a damper on your plans, but you do need to be realistic.

If money is plentiful then go for it, otherwise you might be best off waiting a few year.

Good luck to you :thumbs:

 

[Nicely]

Lol. You kids and extortionate insurance Why not wait a couple of years and use the money you've saved for something more productive? I didn't have a high performance car till I was around 25. It was fcukloads cheaper to insure then. You'll only be selling it in a few months to buy a house....

 

[Pazz]

I have mine comming up in the next couple of months, definetly not looking forward to it.

 

[Raduga]

Insurance will be the stumbling block here.
I'm 30 with 5 years no claims (do have 3 points though) and my insurance is £850 fully comp.

I know the urge to get the car you want is great, but it really is worth building up some experience first.

 

[DeanS15]

Lol. You kids and extortionate insurance Why not wait a couple of years and use the money you've saved for something more productive? I didn't have a high performance car till I was around 25. It was fcukloads cheaper to insure then. You'll only be selling it in a few months to buy a house....

i make you right there nicely, soo many times i've seen people giving up thier pride and joys because 'its time to buy a house', it's crazy that people would buy a 10k car and spend bundles on it before they've even sorted a roof over thier head!! besides, people nowadays are pushing it too far - if people stayed within thier budgets they should'nt have to make sacrifices but instead people stretch themselves to the limit mortgage and finance wise and we end up in ther situation were in at the moment.

tbh matey if you want my advice i would save your money and put it towards your first house, if you have the money to put a sizeable deposit down - there hasn't been a better time to do it in years and eventually (inevitably) prices will begin to rise again and first timers will again be shut out.......ultimately your choice though

 

[DeanS15]

Insurance will be the stumbling block here.
I'm 30 with 5 years no claims (do have 3 points though) and my insurance is £850 fully comp.

I know the urge to get the car you want is great, but it really is worth building up some experience first.

whoah, maybe you should consider a diff insurer, mine is mods declared, im 24 with 4yrs ncd, parked on drive, 1xSP60 3 points, sd+p 800 fully comp with adrian flux. surely for a 30 year old with more no claims should be cheaper?

 

[Darren_S15]

Hmm car or house? let me think

I totally see what you guys say about buying houses though.

Got no plans to buy anything for a good few years, by which time the car will be in a state Im happy with it and wont have the urge to spend loads of money on it.

Ive got a house deposit fund going already, as well as the car

But Ive always viewed it the other way, what if I cannot afford a nice car once Ive got a house, atleast Id have experience it at some point in my life this way.

But hopefully Ill be able to have both :nod:

 

[Raduga]

whoah, maybe you should consider a diff insurer, mine is mods declared, im 24 with 4yrs ncd, parked on drive, 1xSP60 3 points, sd+p 800 fully comp with adrian flux. surely for a 30 year old with more no claims should be cheaper?

I'm with Sky Insurance and they were £100 cheaper than the next best.
You have to consider the area you live in as well. Hull isn't great. It's more or less a huge council estate separated by a few nice bits.
I happen to live in one of those nice bits, but share my postcode with one of the largest coucil estates in Europe. Not a good combination.

The last time I went to Adrian Flux for insurance, it was for a 12k TT Supra.
Their quote was higher than the value of the car. Even they couldn't believe it.
Needless to say, that experience put me off using them again.

Russ

 

[Pazz]

there hasn't been a better time to do it in years and eventually (inevitably) prices will begin to rise again and first timers will again be shut out.......ultimately your choice though

Errrm, bit of a bold and somewhat unsupported statement.

We are in the state we are at the moment because property prices have never before reached such a high point that mortgage lenders are now not prepared to lend the vast amounts = less mortgage acceptance = decline in asking prices to sell = decline in the market.

This is also why rental accomodation is in great demand, first time buyers are struggling to obtain mortgages for a home at the prices they are at currently.

As many professionals agree, the boom period is well and truly comming to an end.

 

[DeanS15]

Errrm, bit of a bold and somewhat unsupported statement.

We are in the state we are at the moment because property prices have never before reached such a high point that mortgage lenders are now not prepared to lend the vast amounts = less mortgage acceptance = decline in asking prices to sell = decline in the market.

This is also why rental accomodation is in great demand, first time buyers are struggling to obtain mortgages for a home at the prices they are at currently.

As many professionals agree, the boom period is well and truly comming to an end.

sorry but i must dissagree with you there - mortgage companies would of carried on lending vast amounts if it wasn't for the fact that the loans weren't being repaid. people over-borrowed (or banks over-lent whichever way you want to look at it), couple this with the b.o.e trying to keep prices down and introducing interest rate increases while not giving them sufficient time to take full effect, by the time they had taken effect i think they had gone a hike or two too far. the effect this had on svr's meant that people coming off of fixed rate deals that they could barely afford anyway, then found that the standard variable rate they reverted to put thier mortgage waay up, and even fixed rates that were available were over thier limit. then come the repos, or houses being put up for sale with people not wanting to buy etc.etc. this with all else thats going on is causing this slump...in my opinion

 

[JEZ 8553]

Insurance will be the stumbling block here.
I'm 30 with 5 years no claims (do have 3 points though) and my insurance is £850 fully comp.

Thats too much imo, im 31 (just) with 7+ years NCD, SP30 and mines £500 with all mods declared including £40 of legal cover.

 

[LuPix_S15]

mmm... I'm a bit concerned now about my insurance (sorry for digressing a bit but someone else started it lol). Twice I've paid £850 or thereabouts with Sky. They were by far the cheapest 3 to 4 years ago when I had another car and then stayed with them when I got the Silvia a year ago since they are popular with Jap import owners.

Now I'm starting to think whether it's worth phoning around when the renewal comes round. Traditionally, I do cos I hate being lazy and spending more than I have to (don't we all with insurance!!) but I've seen on so many forums that Sky is the cheapest I've not recently bothered phoning for other prices etc.

I'm confused but I ain't going to confused.com - prob ain't got the S15 listed


BTW - I'm just 30 with 5+ years NCB, parked on drive, safe area (minimal hoodies spotted hehe), avg mileage plus NO guaranteed value thingymejig.

 

[Nicely]

I've been with Sky for three years now. I stayed with them as they were the ONLY broker to offer agreed value on an import (they currently don't offer this for new policies). However, I decided not to renew the agreed value this year and had a quick look about. They still offered the best policy and price. Plus I've now got three cars with them (till I sell the Hilux Ute), which equates to a lot of bargaining power

 

[Maxxeh]

Haha I suppose the unanimous decision is that it's too expensive for me! thats a shame..I had a feeling it would be, but I wanted to make sure before I got serious about it!

Hopefully one day I'll be old enough to insure it, and earn enough to afford the import costs!

The cheapest insurance on my 206 right now is £747.14 anyway! and that's bad enough!

 

[DeanS15]

im surprised that some of you found sky to be the cheapest and i also agree with what initiald said that a lot of claims say they are the cheapest for specialist import insurance, espascially for owners clubs. the ftooc swore by them but come renewal time they could never offer me a truly competetive quote in three years of ownership (i always gave them a shot though). when i got the s15 i first got a quote from flux at 800.00 fully comp with no claims protected (ended up 852 - but still cheap for someone like me) which i was very happy with but still did the usual phone round, but sky came out at almost 1300 and kept pestering me to take it out - amazingly they seemed surprised when i didnt after telling them what i'd been quoted elsewhere......

maybe you other guys who are with them better suit the boxes that they like to tick when insuring........i know they weren't best for me though.

the thing i found most amazing is that with my fto i couldnt even get fully comp quotes under a grand yet the silvia came out cheaper......beats me but hey

by the way initial d you should ALWAYS have a ring round, my girlfriend saved 900.00 this year when she got her new car, her insurer wanted 1200 and flux did it for just over 300 quid!!

 

[Pazz]

people over-borrowed (or banks over-lent whichever way you want to look at it)

And why did they over-borrow??? Because house prices are inflated.

And why are they inflated??? Down to many debatable factors. One way of looking at it is that banks were handing out these ridiculous high-value mortgages driven by high demand and cheap credit.

But banks are slowing down and responding to the credit-squeeze with mortgage approval/acceptance rates at an all-time low.

Have a read here of an article published today: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/58947b98-3108-11dd-bc93-000077b07658.html