Buying a new car through U.S. car importer. Your advice?
 

Last week, I heard on the radio about this company called LP auto. They import new or used vehicles from the U.S. for their customers.

With the loonie going up in value against the US dollar, I am thinking about buying a car through one of the car importers to save money.

Does anyone have experience with buying a car through a U.S. car importer?

If Canadian warranty coverage is available on a U.S. model car at a lower price, I'm definitely giving serious thought to buying a car through these importers.

Any advice on car buying through these importers is appreciated.

depends on what car you are buying. some brand will honor warranty in canada some not.

Is the importer buying the car by one of those US auctions?

if the car is simply a private or dealer sale, do it yourself, it's quite straight forward.

I was going to go through LP auto but found price to bring in a car to be higher than what I was expecting. in the end, I bough locally because of trade in.
I would do import a car from the states myself if I didn't do a tradein

I recommend Frank at LP, he's a good guy.

I have to disagree with everyone who always suggests importing the car yourself. It isn't a very hard process, but it IS time consuming, there are a ton of details to work out.. and it could end up being quite a hassle.
If I was going to save enough money, I might try it again myself, but, if my brother, sister, or parents wanted to buy stateside, I would recommend they use a broker like LP.

I recommend LP auto. Jason and Ivan helped me through the process. They also took my 350z as a trade in and gave me a reasonable value for it. If not, I wouldnt have gone through with them at all.

Weak Sauce loonie is something that you and LP auto would pay for so you wouldnt able to save anything going either DIY importing vs. broker importing.

it also depends on what car you are looking into to import. some cars doesnt need any mods at all, some needs drl only etc etc. it depends how much money you need to put into to pass inspections.

i heard that importing is a very time consuming process. it also depends to you to how much time you can put into the process.

i suggest you contact LP Auto. They are really helpful and cool bunch of guys!

http://www.importcartocanada.info/

Theres a calculator on the site which tells you how much the car will cost in the end (including exhange rate, gst/pst, duty, riv fee etc.)
http://www.importcartocanada.info/to...ce-calculator/

Also theres a warranty coverage check
http://www.importcartocanada.info/to...overage-check/

keep in mind you may have to modify the car in order to register it here, for example some cars like the MB c class u need to change out the speedometer(which is like $2500+)