MisSTi

Thinking of importing a MY03 Impreza STi and have heard of a company called Eurekar. They have been very helpful on the phone but I was just wondering if anyone has ever used them and has anyone anything to report.

Can anyone also recommend any other importers I could try.

Thanks

chiark

Iain Litchfield (banner ad) and Emperor imports (banner ad) both have delivered great service to board members; I've yet to see a complaint against either of them.

I've been looking at the same thing, and to be honest if I bought an STI I *think* I'd be considering using a UK dealer. This will shock regular readers as I rather advocate importing cars. My MY00 came from Gertjan van der Velde direct in Holland and was a great, painless experience of buying a car... the fact that I might be able to part-ex my car with a UK dealer appeals too...

Good luck, hope you get a good deal. If you want to contact Gertjan I know he can also source STIs - either email gj_velde@wish.net, or phone +31 186 661556 and tell him "Nick sent you" . No, I'm not on comission, more's the pity

Contact details for the others can be found in their banners.

Good luck,

Nick.

MisSTi

Has anybody else had any dealings with them, I am interested to know how much you can save on car etc and if they give a good deal

thanks

Silver Ginger

I imported a WRX in August last year through Eurekar. Very professional service from start to finish. Paid £16,999 which at the time was a good discount. The bonus was that because they are a slightly larger company, they managed to save me a six month wait because they had a dealer in Holland who had already taken delivery of the same UK spec car I wanted. So I only had to wait three weeks in the end:-).
What was the deciding point for me was that they sorted the foreign transaction out themselves and the price was fixed from the start and therefore not subject to fluctuations in the exchange rate on Euros etc. You can get round the problem if importing yourself by 'buying forward' on the currency but for me it was a better rate and all round deal with the Eurekar option. I also only had to pay a small deposit and they were speedy pushing all the paperwork through so that the fun could begin!!

Go for it!

naturbo2000

I'm most of the way through ordering a WRX with them.

Wendy at customer services was incredibly helpful - I couldn't get any answers out of Litchfield (so they lost the sale).

There definately are cheaper (mine's 16,706 inc alarm), but like I say - customer services have been excellent all the way through.

Phil Herrup

Just ordered but all in home delivery price is now 17.4k
Happy with service to date and hope that continues until my baby sorry car arrives.
Good luck.
P.

NicholasO

I ordered through jamjar.com, which actually use Eurokar, which actually used Gertjan!

Somebody recently emailed me, and asked for my story,
It's quite a read, but may be useful to you, see below
Good Luck.

Nick

AND SO THE STORY BEGINS (Apologies for any boredom caused!)..........

Apologies for taking so long to answer your email, it is a personal address and I only log in a couple of times a week. You are correct I ordered my MY02 WRX via Jamjar, it took about 7 months to arrive at my door (23/12/2002). The estimated delivery time to dealer (Gertjan van der Velde) was 5 months from the time the deposit cleared. This was fairly accurate, the car arrived in Holland early second week of November, it took 5 weeks from arriving in Holland to arriving at my door. The delay was partly my fault I ordered a Leather option, which took about a week to turnaround at the Holland PDI centre. There was also the fact it takes a while to ship from Holland to Essex, TOAD to fit the alarm and Tracker (Tracker was requested by me, alarm fitted FOC by Jamjar), and to transport to me, you're looking at 10 - 14 days.

I was looked after by Tor Olson very well, until 6 weeks before the car was due. She then notified that she was leaving, and I was to be looked after by Wendy Aldridge. Wendy was also quite good, but unfortunately went on a fortnight's sick leave a week before the car arrived in Holland. Nobody picked up my order, hence it was waiting to be collect in Holland far longer than it should have been. Worse still, the Certificate of Conformity, which proves it is of UK specification, and is legally needed to be registered in the UK "went missing"! To be fair Wendy worked quite hard, to get the DVLA to accept a copy as proof for registration, and apparently is still trying obtain the original at my request. (Although it is not needed now, but it would be nice to have it for resale, etc.)

Saying all that I'm over the moon with the car, it is without doubt full UK spec and Subaru UK have just confirmed by entering on their UK database. To summarise the above it all went wrong when Wendy was taken ill, and the COC was lost. The Leather and transport, etc. added approximately an extra month, this could have been communicated better, to avoid disappointment, as you said it is a long time.

To answer your questions:

1) Jamjar actually forwarded their Order Form to the dealer to me, with confirmation of the order.

2) Their covering letter, suggested I should ring the dealer for any technical information. In fact it stated that I was buying the car from the dealer not Jamjar, who were the import agents, and encouraged me to ring them as often or as little as I liked.

3) Yes, I believe it was, I have certainly quoted it on contact.

4) (31) 0186 661556 (I can't remember the complete number at the moment, the bold number is that of the dealer. I have taken the liberty of looking up the Country code for the Netherlands, and I believe the zero is dropped. If this doesn't get you through, please let me know, the number is probably in work.)

5) See above.

To be honest, it is nice to hear from someone else who is done the same thing as I have, there seems to be plenty outside of Wales, but not many within the Principality! For me so far so good, (apart from the Hiccup described above). I have done 600 or so miles so I haven't engaged a UK dealer yet, which I guess is the final hurdle!

There is no Subaru dealer in Swansea, you may have heard Ken Throne folded some months ago, so CVC Cardiff is the nearest. I have heard Keith Price in Abergavenny, is excellent, 30 years plus of Subaru experience. I have posted a thread on servicing, I had some excellent replies, probably worth you taking a look.

I guess yours will be a My03 new shape? What colour, options, etc. have you gone for? Mine is a bug eye version, I went for no engine mods, but had a Leather interior, white indicator kit, side door trims (boring but I park in a multi - storey every day), colour WR Blue Mica.

Suggest you talk to your account manager at jamjar, find out why you didn't receive what I had in documentation, if no joy, give Gertjan a ring, if he's the man you will find him very helpful, there's lots of threads which praise Gertjan on Scoobynet from people who have done personal imports. Interestingly jamjar don't provide Subaru anymore (last checked about 2 months ago).






[Edited by NicholasO - 2/2/2003 6:41:54 PM]

MisSTi

Thanks for the feed back, from what I can tell Eurekar seem quite good. Customer service is always important, especially when you do not really have a clue what is going on yourself. I am looking at an Impreza STi, world rally blue of course.

Second question - who is good for insurance????

naturbo2000

Liverpool Victoria - if you can get it (Best for me, but I want my g/f of 22 as a named driver).

Currently with privilege for my (quite) modified sport - they have a knack of being able to do "deals" esp if you have a second car to insure

knuckledragger

I got my MY02 WRX from Eurekar in November and the service was great. Try Bell Direct for insurance.

Andy02

Thought you might like to hear that myself and my partner imported a UK spec' WRX in August 2002 direct from Belgium. Even though we’d never sourced a car from overseas before, our thoughts were, why pay someone (Eurekar, Keyring, jamjar.com, etc) to arrange a deal that we can make ourselves.

So having read a couple of issues of “Car Import Guide”, it became clear that Belgium had the cheapest prices and we made contact with Garage Knockaert nv,Ypres.

One email later we had a very keen price for a brand new WRX, complete with Morettes, clear indicators/side reflectors, detachable tow-bar, roof bars & floor mats - they were even happy for us to pay the deposit by credit card, which meant we had some security while we waited for the factory order confirmation to come though.

We have to admit that it gives you a very strange feeling buying a car by email & telephone, however we’re delighted to report that the whole deal went through without a hitch. And apart from the lack of a Cat 1 alarm, everything was the same as a MY02 UK car (including a 3 year warranty). Even after hours of searching, the only difference we’ve been able to find is the absence of locking wheel nuts - but we did get a warning triangle, fire extinguisher, first aid kit & a pair of protective gloves.

With a typical build time of between 4-6 months, to make sure you don’t get unexpectedly hit by a weakening pound it’s sensible to forward buy your euros (most High Street banks can do this) - if you don’t, the typical fluctuation in exchange rates can mean as much as an £800 difference in the price of your car.

“Garage Knockaert” is a small family run firm with over 18 years experience of Subarus and the guy to speak to is Alain Knockaert. He was very helpful with all our queries and even though we chose to collect our car in person (filled up with cheap booze on the way home to help celebrate our shiny new toy), we could have had it delivered to our door (on a Transporter) just as easily.

Even the DVLA were very easy to deal with, the only painful part of the whole process was sending a very large cheque to HM Customs & Excise for the dreaded VAT........grrrrrrrrrr

Acid test, would we do it again? If the price is right, you bet-ya!!!!!

Contact details;
Alain Knockaert
Garage Knockaert nv
tel : 0032 57 20 20 66
fax : 0032 57 21 61 98
e-mail : knockaert.gar@pandora.be

NicholasO

Andy02,

Wish I had the guts at the time to do the same. Seriously consider it next time though.

What service schedule are you following, as stated above I received a MY02 WRX from jamjar etc., just before Christmas, what is your servicing schedule according to your handbook and Service book.

Mine, which was sourced from Holland, suggests 12months / 7.5k. plus the 1k of course.

New baby due next week so I've only managed a poor 800 miles, so far.

How much can I expect for the 1k service?

How happy were the UK Subaru dealers to service the car?

Apologies for straying off the thread title a bit.

Cheers
Nick

Andy02

NicholasO

The service book says 12,500km or 6 months, but the dealer says 10,000 miles or 12 months. Consequently I’ve got to phone IM in the next couple of weeks to find out which is correct to save invalidating the warranty.

Besides asking how much I’d saved (”if it’s that much, I don’t blame you” was the response), the local dealer was fine about doing the first (1,000 miles, about £100ish I think) service – they offered a courtesy car without even asking for one.

In fact, when I went back to collect the car, the dealership owner himself even helped me register it under the UK warranty scheme!!!!!!!!!

Hope this helps & the birth goes well.

Andy

NicholasO

Andy,

Take a look at the thread I've posted in the past re: servicing schedules, I had some excellent replies. You'll probably find that the payment of the warranty is the end responsibility of Subaru Benelux. When Subaru UK officially accepted my warranty, this was stated on the acknowledging letter.

http://www.scoobynet.co.uk/bbs/thread.asp?ThreadID=165273

Let me know what you decide on the servicing schedule.

Thanks for the good wishes with the birth.

Cheers
Nick

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