The car arrived today from the UK! Late August it got finally registered. With vacations in the middle it ended up taking longer than we anticipated.
I started looking for insurance to bring the car back. Turns out that I was not able to get any, at least looking on the net and with the few phone calls I made. They would either not cover me for not being UK resident, not cover me because the car was a kitcar, not cover me because I wanted to do a trip to the Continent... I believe there would have been a chance but I would have to pay a non-refundable yearly premium and I said "don't bother to quote" after the guy commented "but it will not be cheap".
So, I had to look for a transport back. Who took it to the UK was not available to bring it back and I had already spoke with a colleague at work whose brother lives in the UK and transports cars around (and also moves crates). While I was waiting for that contact to answer I looked online for others and found a guy, also portuguese and also living in the UK. He was coming to Portugal with a car the following week, he could put mine on the trailer and bring it along, price was good... But (stupid me!!!) I said no, too much of a rush. And thought better I should wait for my colleague's brother because she said his prices were killer, and it was someone I could trust more.
Turns out her brother made me waste a month. There was even a scheduled pickup date that he unscheduled last minute! Then price went up ("it's the refugees' crisis blocking the ferry in Calais and all others went up in price", he said) and it was expensive and almost sounding like a favour.
Went back to the guy I found online. He could bring it straight away and would cost just a bit over what the "brother" asked because he would have nothing planed for the trip back. If I could wait about a month and a half, he could make almost the same price promised in August (well below "brother"'s offer) because he would have time to get something for the return. Only reason the price would not be exactly the one told before was the ferries.
And so, Steve was really nice to keep the car stored until late October. By then, Virgil from Transport Virgil showed up at Steve's place, picked up the car and stored it away for a few days. In between he took the car, at my request, to a test station to get a CO2 measure. I was told that could help with the import process. Turned out I forgot to warn him he had to turn on the fan on the car (it is not automatic) and so the car started to overheat and he turned it off. Since this was a Saturday morning, time was up and no reading.
Virgil was actually a great bloke. We kept in touch by Whatsapp and during his trip from the UK to Lisbon he sent a few photos of the car!
Arriving in Portugal he gave me the chance to show up at my doorstep around midnight or just in the next morning. I wanted the car as soon as possible so he came and by 1 a.m. the car was on my garage! I drove it from the street where he unloaded it until the parking space, dried the interior from the rain and left it there.
More to come soon with what was changed while he was away, the import hurdles, etc.
