This may turn out to be a crazy idea....I have a 2006 vRS owned from new, 44,000 miles.....cambelt, waterpump, discs and pads all recently changed, and am probably emigrating to Oz in about 3 months.

I'm toying with the idea of taking the car as a personal import....because i just won't get a car as good over there for anything like a sensible price.

Only thing is, the diesel vRS wasn't released in Australia and Skoda will only support the new petrol version (Skoda man didn't know there even WAS a previous vRS...)

VW sold the 1.9TDi engine in a Golf......so my question is, are the parts largely interchangeable between that and the vRS?

I suppose I'm banking that they can do most things, with only the occasional part needing to be imported from Europe if i'm unlucky.

The 1.9 BLT engine was used in several VW cars, so parts shouldn't be a problem. Strong engine anyway and should go to 200K+ miles if looked after. It was used in Golf and Passat and I think a version of the Polo.

Engine and gearbox parts should be okay but what about panels etc? Also, wouldn't be convinced that the cooling system was high enough specced to cope with Oz climate and certainly the air-con won't be powerful enough. Personally I wouldn't risk it.

Yeah it's tricky. It's Canberra so much more like a UK climate and currently much cooler than Scotland......but it does get up to 40 degrees over Xmas/New Year.

Might be safer just to get something over there, some of the japanese imports look amazing value.

I might stick it on here on a month or two and see if anybody wants it!

Cars are made to run in hotter climates than ours! Lol, its not going to fall apart becuase its a bit warmer Just take it!

Matt

I don't know what regs apply to private imports, but I do know (having owned one) that most imports have to go through testing to make sure they meet Oz standards. There are a number of businesses that import low mileage Japanese cars and bring them up to standard - quite an expensive operation in many cases.

When I was still living in Queensland, I owned an (legally) imported Honda City Turbo II. Lovely car, but a nightmare to insure, since none of the companies had the slightest idea what it was. I also had problems with parts (air filters, and other such things). There were a few similar cars around, so I could usually get what I needed, but it was often a painful process.

The AC and the turbo were not really built for Queensland either - the AC was never enough in hot weather, and I went through 2 turbos before I managed to get a rebuit one with water cooled bearing housings. A diesel turbo shouldn't be quite so sensitive (the City had a tiny IHI turbo that ran at positvely stratospheric speeds).

If the personal import gets you round the problem of complying with OZ stantards and you can get some idea of insurance, it might be worht while.

Oh, one other thing - until fairly recently, diesel commonly availalbe in Queensland at least wasn't much use for modern high performance diesel engines. Don't know how much that has changed since I left.

Paul

Rob on here has taken his UK Octy vRS to NZ and has no problems running it there. I would assume the climate is simillar if not hotter in the summer months. Not sure on the import regs to OZ but I know Rob had some hassle getting his car into NZ. Plenty of Fabias run around in Southern Spain where its hotter than OZ with no problem. Y ou might want to consider the time to ship, it could be 3-4 months at sea.

indeed ive just been to spain in my vrs and it hit 43degrees and car was perfect, as said the heat wont afect it they dont change a cars spec for whatever country its in, think of what that would cost the car companys, i would only be concerned if it was say an older jap car where some of the cooling systems arnt the best, but not a modern vag engined car