Driving through Belgium towards Holland yesterday I overtook a Latvian registered car transporter carrying six GB reg'd cars all in salvage condition.
What the motivation for taking a G reg 520 and five other heaps that have been written-off all the way to Latvia (or was it going that far?)
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Years ago in Hull it used to be a common site for all the old Lada bangers to be seen getting loaded on Russian freighters.
There's a market somewher for everything.
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A friend of mine runs a small garage. He says that if anything with a credible badge (BMW Audi Merc) appears on his lot the first callers are Latvian followed by Lithuanians followed by the Poles. He recently got £1675 for a tidy 92 BMW 320i from an Eastern European. Top sellers at present to our new visitors are Audi A4 Tdis (96-2001) followed by Golf Tdi Mk4s. Invariably the cars are driven back to Eastern Europe after some time spent over here.
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Driving through Belgium towards Holland yesterday I overtook a Latvian registered car transporter carrying six GB reg'd cars all in salvage condition. What the motivation for taking a G reg 520 and five other heaps that have been written-off all the way to Latvia (or was it going that far?)
Just because used cars are worth nothing in this country, does not mean that they are worthless elsewhere as well. We enjoy some of cheapest used cars in the world in the UK, thanks to oversupply, or snobbish attitude and the resultinf rampant depreciation. Just check out prices in Australia or Denmark........
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For years Poland has been the dumping ground for all the worthless crap from Germany, France, Holland etc. There was huge demand for cars at the end of communism and little money to pay for them. The Polish govt is trying to put an end to this with heavy taxation on imports that increases with age of car. It's also an effort to kick-start new-car sales in the country. I'm guessing the situation in Latvia is like it was in Poland a few years ago but I seem to remember reading that you can register a RHD car for use in Latvia which makes the cheap UK used car market a very attractive one.
To give a rough idea of just how vast the price differential can be, my UK Peugeot 406 cost me 16,000 zloty and dispite scouring the Polish trade press for weeks I couldn't find an equivalent LHD for less than 35,000. Then enter into the equation the difference in salaries. Something to think about when you're whinging at the pump prices compared with other EU countries.
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In my case, it was a Lithuanian lorry; www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?v=e&t=44...0
Agree with BBD regarding pump prices. SWMBO's parents are Czech, and using a round CZK40 to the GBP, the average annual salary in their town is something like £3500-£4000 per annum. A quick Google confirms that across the whole country the average is the equivalent of £6,000. The same web page (tinyurl.com/ybuxdy ) shows Poland at £5300.
The last time (quite recently) I purchased 95 RON unleaded in Czech I recall I paid about 65 pence per litre. Great for me and my UK salary but not so great for someone with the average salary in my wife's home town; if we say the average UK salary is the order of £20,000 per annum, they pay the equivalent of £3.25 per litre.
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Mentioned this before...last summer a convoy of Polish trucks left a big scrapyard near me in SW France every week, loaded with damaged (but repairable after a fashion I guess) Pugs, Renaults etc.
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I used to work in an office overlooking a pile of redundant fridges.
Now I hads believed that these would have the CFC taken out and be scrapped locally.
Imagine my surprise to see that the pile was cleared by loading it into Romanian-registered artics!
I did once see a TV report showing that used Japanese-spec RHD cars (with their inferior rustproofing etc.) are very often imported to eastern Russia...
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Eastern Russia,Vladivostock is now the biggest market for used Japanese RHD cars,the fact that it is quite near to Japan obviously helps.Glad to see the old myth about Japanese spec rustproofing is alive and well.
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I knew a certain carrot-haired songstress who bawled "It'th a Mythtery" in the days before she had a facelift....but I was unaware that the statement "Japanese-spec cars have minimal rustproofing" was a myth! Only propagated to dissuade British buyers from the grey market? Do tell us more!
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Think about it this way: when was the last time you saw a rusty import?
The whole idea that Japan's weather is so much better than ours to warrant lesser rustproofing in the first place is silly to begin with. They have heavy snow in winter, and they're an island like we are so plenty of coastal sea salt..
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