"I can see that your vehicle was imported from Germany"

[aerochrome]

So I'm the new owner of a black 5dr Edition 30 (reg S24 SPP). The car I believe was registered in early 2008.

I emailed VW for my plaque number and have been told by them that they reckon the car was imported from Germany so does not actually have a number assigned to it.

The car is right hand drive and I can't see any evidence in the service history documentation that it has ever resided outside of this country and reg checks don't show any import history.

Has anyone ever heard of this kind of thing before? Why would they build right hand drive ED30s for the German market? Is this likely a mistake brought on by the private plate on it?

[titchy]

possibly cancelled order?

[aerochrome]

Received a response back from customer service that basically says that vehicles built in Germany did include a number of right hand drive vehicles that were imported into the UK. They reckon because it was registered outside of the UK before it was imported, it was not assigned a plaque number and that only ED30s built for the UK market were given a number and have directed me to a certificate site.

Strange but fair enough. Looks like I'll be taking #2342!

[rich83]

Are they not all imported from Germany 

[aerochrome]

Are they not all imported from Germany 

My thoughts exactly!! The best I've got is that it wasn't intended for the UK market - what they were doing making RHD GTIs for the German market, I have no idea

[GVK]

I read somewhere that in 2008 they 'imported' a  few Edition 30s that were sold in car supermarkets.  May have been on Pistonheads?

I believe a previous owner of my car had a similar exchange with VW UK about the plaque , he was given #2314 which I still have in my documents, never fitted it.

My car is quite low spec , no xenons, no highline cluster, no arm rest (thank god, hate those arm rests!!)  likewise says nothing in the service history that it came from Germany either.

[pudding]

Some British army chaps and chapesses posted in Germany used to buy their RHD car over there (at a tasty discount) and 'import' it back to the UK when they'd finished their post. I'm pretty sure VW had an allocation of RHD over there for that reason.  It's not so much of a thing these days but was common in the MK2/Corrado days.  One of my old MK2 16Vs was originally purchased in Germany by a forces chap, which I only found out some years into it's ownership.

[colesey]

Back in the day, German dealers were able to supply UK spec rhd cars with English language manuals etc. This was before orangewheels etc existed and they were typically @20% cheaper than VW UK dealers and sometimes even more on extras like leather.

I think the BFPO schemes Pudding mentions allowed service personnel to buy VAT free and were quite prevalent for most brands at the time.

[LC5F]

Wonder if my 2005 Lupo is the same, no service history provided by PO, so tried turning up at a dealer and asked very politely if they could find any history, it came up as imported too.

Buying a RHD on the continent was open to anyone, and saved a healthy amount of tax, but the hard part was getting a dealer to source the car in full UK spec, + at the time warranty was another headache finding a UK dealer who would help -why would they, they didn’t sell the car!

Already mentioned Service people stationed in Germany would also get healthy discount -It may be how one of my relations ended up with a Mk2 Jetta Syncro

[colesey]

I bought my car this way via a broker in Berkeley Square and it was easy as pie. The only discernible difference was that it came with a 2 year warranty rather than the 3 years of UK supplied cars. My local VW dealer was as happy to lie and cheat me as he was with any official UK car but that’s another story...