Guides
Three reference guides on the parts of an international purchase that are expensive to get wrong: duty and VAT, eligibility dates, and how the car travels. Written from the forms and the source guidance.
- Reviewed September 2026
- HMRC, DVLA, CBP, NHTSA and EPA cited by name
- Nothing gated
Reference library
The three guides
Each answers one question properly rather than several badly.
Importing a car from the USA to the UK
What a US car costs to land in Britain, and what must happen once it does. The standard duty and VAT route against the heading 9705 classic route, the NOVA notification HMRC requires within 14 days of the car arriving, and DVLA registration on form V55/5.
Duty, VAT and NOVA in fullThe US 25-year import rule
Whether the car is legal to import into the United States yet, and on precisely which date. The NHTSA exemption runs from the month and year of manufacture, not the model year. The EPA exclusion sits separately at 21 years, counted in calendar years and conditional on original configuration.
How eligibility is calculatedRoRo, container or enclosed
How the car should travel, and what each method quietly rules out. RoRo takes no personal effects and needs a car that drives on and off under its own power. A shared container is sealed and will take a non-runner, but it waits for the other cars to fill it. Sole use of a 20ft loads to a date you choose, at roughly double the RoRo figure.
Compare the three methods
Why we publish these
The rules are the expensive part
Freight is the predictable half of an import. Rates move, but they move inside a public band. As at 2026, RoRo from Southampton to the US East Coast is commonly quoted at roughly USD 900 to USD 2,000 port to port, with a shared container typically 10 to 20 per cent above that. What moves the total is classification, eligibility and timing: whether HMRC accepts a car under heading 9705, whether a build date falls one side of the 25-year line NHTSA applies, whether the NOVA reached HMRC inside 14 days of the car arriving. Nobody quotes you for that part.
It is also the part settled too early. By the time a car reaches a quay, every decision that sets the bill has been taken: the car chosen, the price agreed, the invoice raised in whatever form the seller preferred. Imports go wrong at the point of purchase more often than at the port. A chassis-plate date read as a model year. A restoration thorough enough to cost the car its collector classification. An invoice that omits the freight the customs value is built on. These guides exist so a buyer can make those calls with the rules in front of them, with us or without us. If you would rather hand the whole thing across, that is vehicle sourcing and vehicle shipping. How it works sets out where one ends and the other begins, and the USA to UK and UK to USA pages carry the same detail route by route.
Enquiries
A specific car, a specific route
Guides answer the general case. If you have a car in mind — or one already bought and sitting in the wrong country — send the build date, the origin and the destination, and we will tell you where it stands.