On 16 Mar 2005 05:19:40 -0800, "PhilipS" >
wrote:

<snip>
>I was refreshed that the import issue didn't really come into play, as
>it was in the back of my mind from the day I bought it. Maybe they are
>now so common that buyers have lost wariness (and rightly so really,
>never caused me any problems at all).

There are a couple of potential issues regarding imports:

1/ Is the car to full 'UK specification' including badges? This can
actually affect insuring the car if it's not to the exact UK spec. I
suspect most importers don't even tell their insurance companies but
I've seen some very different-from-UK-spec imports. Having said that,
Alfa do plenty of miss-builds too and I've seen a Main Dealer car park
full of cheap ones for a company order that all had something VERY
weird in their builds. For example full Veloce spec exterior but full
Lusso interior without the leather, dashboards from one spec and seat
fabrics from another. The sort of weirdness that wasn't on the options
list.

2/ Alfa UK have to refer all appropriate *warranty* issues back to the
supplying countries Alfa importer (i.e. where the warranty was
purchased or original liability lies). This can slow up grey area
warranty work authorisation like cam belt failure outside the 3 year
standard warranty etc.

If you can pass on 1/ and live with 2/ then I don't think there's
anything else to genuinely affect an import relative to non-import.

Mine's an import and I've not had a problem as a result. It was
certainly a LOT cheaper to import an Alfa in 2001 than source new in
the UK!!

--
Z
Scotland
Alfa Romeo 156 2.4JTD Veloce Leather
'Oil' be seeing you..
(Email without 'Alfa' in subject are auto-deleted..sorry!)