Any guesses why this Cadillac was here?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was watching an old episode of Top Gear the other day, and they did an item on the Cadillac Escalade, which reminded me of something I saw a couple of years ago which surprised me at the time, and which I’ve wondered about occasionally ever since.

It was in the summer, and I was on my way to enjoy the last of the afternoon sun in my favourite spot (which happens to be outside the pub on the corner, but that’s not important. It’s in the North East of England, though, and that’s relevant). As I got to the end of the street I saw, waiting at the lights, this big, black … thing, the likes of which I’d never seen before.

Now that, in itself, wasn’t what surprised me: I’m not especially interested in cars per se, so I quite often see a model I can’t identify. This vehicle, though (which I now believe to have been an Escalade) was so unusual that I took a closer look to see if I could find out the manufacturer at least. The badge didn’t mean anything to me (Cadillacs aren’t exactly thick on the ground in these parts) so I looked elsewhere for clues – and spotted my second point of interest. It was a left-hand drive.

Again, not that surprising – we have an international ferry terminal only a couple of miles away, with services to Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands, so it’s not unusual to see cars from the continent, where for some reason it pleases them to drive on the wrong side of the road (not that I don’t still get the occasional momentary gliff when the driver of an on-coming car appears to be reading, sleeping or missing altogether). And I did what I usually do: looked down at the registration plate to see where our visitor was from. Sweden? Germany? France, even? And that’s when I got my surprise.

California.

Fancy that.

Now, I’m making a couple of assumptions. The first is that if a UK resident was the owner of the car, even if it had been specially imported, it would need to be registered in the UK, and wouldn’t be sporting a California licence plate. Therefore – presumably – this was a real-life Californian, who had (for reasons of her own) had her car shipped over from home to drive around the North East of England in. The second assumption is that said shipping would be neither cheap nor hassle-free (though to be fair it’s not something I’ve ever tried, so I’m prepared to be proved wrong on that).

To my mind, someone planning on driving in a country beyond normal driving distance (and I’m not aware of any convenient land route between the west coast of America and the east coast of Britain) normally has two options: hire a car, or (if staying for an extended period) buy one locally. Bringing your own car with you seems a trifle excessive… but this is where my train of thought gets derailed. I’m trying to think myself into the headspace of someone from California, where it seems they have an entirely different mental landscape. Who knows what would seem excessive from that perspective? Plus, there’s always the likelihood that I’m missing some obvious piece of information that would make shipping several tons of automobile half-way round the world seem the obvious choice.

So I turn to you, fellow members of The Straight Dope message board. Ever do anything similar? Or know someone who did? Have you any information/opinions/wild-ass guesses that might mean I can stop wondering about this? Was this just someone living the movie star lifestyle (like, for instance and given the state of origin, an actual movie star) or was it someone who carefully assessed their options and chose an unconventional but reasonable course of action.

2

I think it is pretty rare since the requirements for cars in the US market and the European market definitely aren’t the same. My WAG is that it is a U.S. Soldier’s vehicle. I know that U.S. Soldiers can and often do bring their own vehicles with them when they are stationed overseas. A friend of mine stationed in Germany took his Ford Ranger truck with him. I don’t know whether they should register them in Germany or how that would work exactly.

3

Probably diplomatic, or US forces, off base.

The other day I passed a USAF missile transporter and armored car on the motorway in England, and they had their US plates on them. Quite spooky, I thought - could it be a build-up to something else agressive in the Middle East? I haven’t seen the like since the days of Greenham Common.

4

I’ve seen several cars with US plates on them in the UK, and in Europe. It’s certainly a rare sight, so they tend to stand out, but I reckon I must have seen half a dozen or so in the past 10 years, so it’s not that unusual. I’ve also wondered about the logistics of importing the cars.

I’m not sure how long you can legally drive foreign-registered cars in the UK without re-registering them with UK plates, but I reckon it must be quite a while as I see a few Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian registered vehicles locally, owned by people that now live here, and they still have their original plates.

5

Now, I thought of that, but I was under the impression it would have a US army (or whatever) licence plate, rather than a standard California one. Or have I got that wrong?
[Sorry, replying to Caffeine.Addict and JJim there)

6

  1. Having a car that isn’t often seen in that particular part of the world is fun. Brits over here do the same thing with nifty European-market only cars (although I believe the Escalade is sold in limited numbers in the UK, in left hand drive form). There are usually laws in most countries giving foreign nationals that are there on business some kind of waiver to drive cars that are not typically sold in that country.

  2. Shipping a car on a container ship isn’t cheap and can be a hassel, but isn’t particularly expensive either, if one wasn’t too worried about WHEN it arrives (you sort of have to work your schedule around that of the ship’s). If I were to go to the UK on business for an extended period of time (6 month or more) having my car shipped there is a viable option. I had my old Mercedes shipped from Japan to Canada on a container ship for little more than $1,200. It’s even cheaper if you could hitch a ride on a manufacturer’s car carrier, although you need to have your timing right for that.

The UK has a thriving market for grey-market foreign cars, due to relatively lax regulations on safety and equipment compliance, so it’s a fairly common thing, I hear.

7

Yes, but those cars all have to be re-registered (not sure what the laxity you describe is relative to, as the regulations appear to be quite stringent from where I’m sitting).

8

I know, they are two different things (Foreign nationals w/ foreign plate cars vs British Nationals w/re-registered foreign cars). What I was getting at was that the UK has fairly developed facilities for private individuals to ship cars in from overseas, it’s an easier process than me trying to get an MGB into the interior steppes of Canada. The laxity I am referring to is that it is generally legal for UK nationals to import fairly new used foreign cars, and drive them, which is not the case in most of North America due to significant political pressure from the car dealership lobby here.

Trust me, we would love to have British laws over here.

9

A member of the US military who owns a vehical would register it, and get the tags and inspection, from the state where they are based. So if you are stationed at Tinker AFB, you would have Oklahoma tags. If you are sent overseas, you keep registering from your old place.

But all of those vehicals would have some sort of decal, usually on the front bumper, that a guard at the gate checks when you enter the base. That would identify it as a military person’s car.
Other WAG. Someone was making a movie?

10

So does anyone know what the DVLA rules are regarding how long you can drive a foreign-registered car in the UK before you have to register it with UK plates?

11

If you were a rich tourist–and the Escalade is not a poor person’s car–there wouldn’t be any problem* bringing it in and driving it around as long as you took it with you when you left again when your tourist visa expired?

[sub]*Other than physically fitting it down some of the roads, I mean.[/sub]

12

6 months max for EU-registered cars (I imported my car from Ireland). But officially: “A vehicle that is permanently imported for use in Great Britain (GB) must be registered and taxed as soon as possible after it arrives in the country.” Which does indeed leave some grey areas.

13

A good friend of mine from high school moved to England when his step father was stationed over there. He had his 1971 Chevy Camaro shipped over there. He said he drove it a while but gas was too expensive to drive it all the time. He has since moved back to the States and had his car shipped back over as well.

It was a special car though. It was a car he had worked on with his father before his father passed away. It had a a number of customized things they had worked on together and wouldn’t have been replacable even with a more expensive vehicle.

14

So do you have Q plates on your car or did you get the relevant year plate for the date it was first registered in Ireland?

15

Ah, I was looking at the number plate (and I only had a couple of seconds, really, before the lights changed and she moved off) so I could easily have missed something like that if it was off to one side.

I must confess, I was rather hoping this might have been the case, yes. There are a few likely film locations nearby (Alnwick Castle, for one), but I think I’m inclining towards US military, from what you say.

As long as it was road legal in this country, I don’t think there would be any problem at all. In fact I don’t even think you would necessarily need to take it away with you: provided you filled in the relevant forms, and the proper import duty was paid, etc, I’m fairly sure you could sell it here if you felt like it. My wife’s first husband once had a profitable side-line in restoring and re-selling classic American cars, and I understand many of them came over with GIs in the 50s and 60s.

As to fitting down the roads, I don’t think the Escalade’s that big. It did seem huge when I first saw it, but that was more the impression created by the enormous front grille and high, flat bonnet (hood, sorry) – most SUVs I’ve seen tend to slope down a lot more at the front. It’s large for a family car, but there are plenty of vans around that are bigger, and they seem to manage. One of the footballers at Newcastle United has a Hummer, though – now that is a rolling roadblock.

I’d imagine a bigger problem with driving an Escalade round here would be the left-hand drive, but as I say, we’re right next to a North Sea ferry port here, so if it was American service personnel, they could have come from any of the bases in northern Europe, where that wouldn’t be a handicap.

16

I bought it in 2000 and was given a W reg when I imported it. I think they must reserve a few thousand plates every year now, rather than the old Q scheme.

Problem is, the DVLA has its registration date as 2006, and the online insurance companies cross-reference with this, but note from the reg that it is meant to be a 2000 car. The mismatch means I can’t get through the forms without chucking up an error.

Confused? They certainly fucking are.

17

When we moved to the Netherlands we brought one of our cars with us. It’s a Honda Accord. We also drove around for several months with Georgia plates, until the Dutch ones were issued.

Sometimes it’s fun, a police officer once followed me home, waited politely until I had parked and got out of my car, then told me he had followed me just to ask me what kind of car it was. I never expected to turn heads on the street riding in a Honda Accord.

We used it in many ways as a shipping container – we shipped it over packed to the roof with our stuff. It wasn’t very expensive, which surprised me. We did have to retrofit it some to make it street legal – I think we had to change the color of some of the bulbs and add some side lights or something similar.

The car was new and was paid for. We could get more for it, even with the import costs, by taking it to Holland and selling it there, even if we had done so right after we moved. It was, to my spouse anyway, the obvious choice. I took some convincing, I thought he was perfectly mad.

In any event, around here everybody can import a car one time (lifetime I gather) without having to pay extortionate taxes. There are some rules about showing that it is your personal vehicle and so on but they aren’t very onerous. It was Dearly Beloved’s car so I still have my one free shot.

My father is tangentially involved in collector cars (specifically corvettes) and periodically threatens to ask me to use my free shot so he can export a car to Europe somewhere. But I doubt he’ll ever really do it. Shame, I wouldn’t mind driving a vette around for a couple of months just to satisfy the “personal vehicle” requirements.

18

We had a similar but sort of funny error. The reg date for our car was February 12, 2003. In the US this is written: 2-12-03. So in Holland of course the reg date became December 2, 2003. Which is also written: 2-12-03. No one has noticed yet so we don’t chuck up an error.

19

And that’s a good exaple of why we should use the only unambiguous format for writing dates numerically: year-month-day, with a four-digit year: 2003-02-12.

It’s 2007, people! I thought we solved this problem already!

20

While I agree with your conclusion, to be honest, as with the metric question, it’s pretty much been solved by the-whole-of-the-world versus one rather stubborn (and influential) neighbour…