Return of the prodigal SAAB

Garry collected the SAAB yesterday. It's been in storage at the removalist's depot since it arrived in London last month. We shipped it out of Australia unregistered, so it's now got to go through a bewildering UK registration process.

£500 face lift
First up, Garry has taken the car to the VOSA testing station (the RTA or MOT equivalent) for an initial British Standards compliance check. As expected, the car failed, but only on one item. The speedometer needs to be converted to read mph rather km/ph. This is a relatively simple exercise as we only have to get the faceplate changed on the dashboard. The odometer can continue registering kilometres. SAAB wants to charge us £500 for the faceplate. Garry's taken up the challenge of shopping around for a far cheaper supplier!

Once the dashboard has been modified, the car goes back for another test. If it passes we can then apply for registration. Incredibly, registration has to be conducted by post and takes up to six weeks to complete. Once the car is registered, we can then arrange the manufacturing of our licence plates. That right, we have to get the plates made ourselves, they're not supplied by the Government. Once these plates are installed, the SAAB is finally ready to transport groceries between the supermarket and Swiss Cottage.

How to make a fast £50
Of course, there's more to this tale. We have no off-road parking. To park the car on the street we need a resident's permit from the local council. Parking wardens seem to permanently camp outside our flat, waiting to issue a whopping £50 fine. Our removalists were hit with a fine the day they unloaded our furniture.

You've guessed it. We can't apply for a parking permit until the car is registered. All in all, it's going to take at up to eight weeks before the car is on the road, and free from the wrath of overzealous parking Nazis. For now, Garry's rented a garage about two blocks away. The SAAB will live here until it's safe to leave permanently on the street.

The irony of this saga is that we could avoided all of this drama by simply importing the car with a valid Australian registration. The UK authorities would have given us 12 months to convert the registration and make the dashboard change.