by Customs clearance of any car in our country is quite an “adventure” — without connections and experience, it can become a real hellish procedure. But perhaps the most difficult and labor-intensive is the clearance of retro cars in Ukraine. Customs clearance of collectible cars on preferential terms is what interests many Ukrainians who have a weakness for vintage cars.
How much it costs to clear a retro car, what you need to know and how long this process may last — read a real-life story about the legalization of a Datsun 280Z.
How to clear a retro car in Ukraine
People regularly ask me how much it cost and how it was done. It’s not hard for me — I’ll describe it. 
The car was ordered at the Copart insurance auction.
Usually there are wrecks, but there are also auction-charity things. Mine is one of these. John, the owner of the car since the early 90s, after it failed a smog test in sunny California, gave it to a charity auction, and from there it ended up on this sales platform.
I must clarify right away — you can’t just buy a car from a private seller on eBay or Craigslist. You need to live in the States, or have a friend living there who will PHYSICALLY visit the sellers and communicate.
If you don’t come with dollars to the lawn of his house to the car — they won’t tell you anything over the phone, and goodbye. In this regard, if you don’t have your own mafia unit in the States — you can only buy from such an auction.
So. I bid for it 3 times. The Emirates love these cars and they buy them.
At the auction, there is a minimum price below which the seller won’t let the car go, and twice the Emirates won the bids from me, but both times the limit was not reached, and then I negotiated with the seller, and we agreed on a price. This price, no secret, was $2800. The car is running, clean title, everything is good.
I then took it to my home in Ukraine. Actually, this was my only main and very costly mistake.
The goal was immediately set to get a 100% honest and legal car, cleared, real, normal. Without registration and operation on public roads (not Euro-5…), but as a collectible item. And there was a clause in the law: “…based on decree No. 441 of the Ministry of Income and Fees from September 3, 2013, as well as the general catalog of the customs nomenclature of Ukraine, according to which a car can be considered a cultural value if it is at least 30 years old, it should be in original configuration and be relatively rare in Ukraine”.
According to these requirements, the car fits perfectly — it is 40 years old, completely original, with native paint, there is a certificate from the traffic police that there are NO such cars in our country at all, there is a certificate from the museum history expert that the car is a cultural value for a number of reasons, there is an expert assessment certificate of the value. All these certificates, of course, also cost money.
Everything was preliminarily agreed with customs — there is such a car, there is such a law, I want to bring it — will I bring it or not. Customs repeatedly assured me that there would be no problems, including the last clarifications when the car, after being delivered to Odessa and transported for customs clearance at the place of residence in Kyiv, stood on a rented tilt truck (this is an important detail for the future ) under customs, and customs once again said “of course, come in — 30 minutes and you will leave calmly and go home!”. Moving ahead, I’ll say that customs KNEW it wouldn’t be like this.
So, we enter, and the gates close behind us. And then the fun began.
It turns out that the accounting program gives an error — that it is not a cultural value but just a regular car that needs to be cleared as usual. So go quickly to the nomenclature department and clarify everything. The nomenclature department, arrogantly flipping through the EXPERTS’ conclusions, says it’s not a value — a car is a car. And if we declare a value — we could get fired. So we will declare it’s a car — and you can contest it in court…
The nomenclature in the customs declaration is changed to the car, we go to customs.
Customs declares that with a 2.8 motor, a cost of 2800, and a 1977 year of manufacture, the customs clearance is eighteen thousand dollars, please. Plus, it would be nice to pay a fine of 300% of the customs clearance cost (54,000$) for allegedly deliberately indicating the wrong nomenclature and trying to evade taxes.
The option to take the car out of the country and not clear it is also absent — of course, you can do so after paying the fine… And in general, you can take it out under the pledge of the customs clearance cost (18k), which theoretically may someday be returned when the car leaves the country. Meanwhile, while you decide how to handle this, the car is on customs territory. On a rented tilt truck — it cannot be removed.
The tilt truck rental fee is 500 UAH per day. Parking on customs territory is 170 UAH per day. And customs were perfectly aware of the course of events. Because these cars try to enter once every year or two, are turned away, and people are left to dispute in court for years, or they leave them there in warehouses and someone “inside” takes them, or they pay wild bribes. So from the very beginning, they lied to our faces, saying “sure, come on in, everything will pass!” Plus, such educational “catches” help to move up the service ladder — you can’t intercept smuggler goods, they might hit you for that…
This is more or less how it was. By truth and by lie (mostly by lies), I managed to take the car and moved it out of the territory of my beloved motherland — with a visual illustration of the saying “he wanted the best but it turned out…”. Exporting to Lithuania is another story, and crossing the border, and a month of “storage” at the border, etc., etc. — the whole story about it would take a good half-day at a bar over a couple of liters of beer at least
In fact, we got to Lithuania, sold it to a Lithuanian company (it was their first experience — usually, it’s the other way around). In Lithuania, it cleared for 1200 euros and half an hour of time.
Straight away. Immediately. Right there. Downtime at our customs took 3-4 weeks, by money you can calculate only official payments for parking and tilt truck rental. It’s better not to count unofficial ones, I stopped keeping a paper slip with expenses after they exceeded $10,000…
Registering a retro car in an EU country is also not a straightforward deed — you just can’t drive in, it’s also euro5, orange turn signals, all the business. But there, after all — it’s Europe. There are retro clubs through which all this can be solved and done. As a result, my car in general cost me $12,500, but I think it could have been managed within 8-9. If anyone has a tangible interest — I can assist, since there’s already enough experience…
In general, that’s how it is.
By the way, do you see the separate speakers on the shelf behind?
They were in this photo from the Copart lot. They were in the photo before loading into the container. In Odessa, I took the car already without them. Greetings to you, port scum — may they delight you with quality chanson!
