Car shipping to South Africa from the UK

One company from your door in Britain to your gate in South Africa

A car cannot be driven to South Africa. Everything either side of the water can be, and that is where these movements are usually won or lost. We collect your car enclosed from wherever it stands — home, showroom, storage, an auction house or a circuit — and carry it on our own trailer to the departure port. We then arrange and manage the sea freight ourselves: the container, the booking, the loading, the documents. The vessel itself is operated by a shipping line, not by us. When the car reaches Cape Town or Durban we travel out to receive it, take it off the quay and complete the final delivery to the address you have given us.

That means one company, one telephone number, and the same person accountable at both ends. There is no broker chain. There is no forwarder in Britain passing you to an agent in South Africa who has never seen the car and has no particular reason to care about the underside of a sill. Ask for a photograph of the car inside the container and it comes from the person who put it there. It is the same principle behind everything we do: one car per journey, one crew, collection to delivery.

Why a sealed container suits the run south

The voyage crosses the tropics. Whatever is loaded on a cold British morning has to survive weeks of heat, humidity and salt air, and warm air inside a steel box does what warm air always does when the steel around it cools at night — it gives up its water onto the coldest surface it can find. On a car, that is glass, chrome and any bare metal you have.

Roll-on roll-off shipping works, and for a hardy modern saloon it is a perfectly legitimate way to travel. It also means a stevedore drives your car aboard with the key in the ignition, parks it on a deck among commercial vehicles, and a different stranger drives it off at the far end. A container is a different proposition. The car is strapped once, over the tyres rather than the chassis, so the suspension is left to do its job for the whole voyage. Desiccant goes in with it. The doors are shut and sealed, and nobody drives it, shunts it or opens it again until it is released at the destination terminal. The reasoning is the same one we apply on land, set out in our comparison of enclosed and open transport: the fewer people who touch a car, the fewer things happen to it.

The British leg: collection, condition report, quay

Your car is collected from a door, never a terminal. It travels in a Brian James Race Transporter 7 behind a Porsche Cayenne — electric tilt bed, powered rear door, synthetic-rope winch for anything that should not be driven under its own power, low-profile chocks, rear chassis rollers for cars with no ground clearance to spare, and a daylight roof so the load is inspected in daylight rather than by torchlight.

Before the door comes down we photograph the car and write a condition report, and you sign it. Nothing about that changes because the car is going overseas. If anything it matters more, because that report becomes the reference point for every inspection that follows, including the one on the other side of the world.

From your door the car goes to the departure port. It does not spend a night in a compound with sixty other vehicles. It is not tipped onto a second lorry at a depot, and it is not handed to whichever sub-contractor had a slot that week. The crew that loaded it at your gate is present when it goes into the container. That is the whole argument for enclosed transport and for door-to-door delivery: fewer hands, fewer opportunities.

Preparing a car for weeks in a steel box

Sea freight asks a few things of a car that a road move does not, and most of them are simple if they are done before the day of collection rather than on it. We will talk you through the specifics for your car, but the shape of it is always the same.

• Fuel low. Lines cap the tank level for a sealed container, and the cap is lower than most people expect.
• Battery sorted. Nothing can be left charging inside a container, so the battery either needs to be healthy enough to sit out the voyage or disconnected before it goes.
• Nothing loose inside. Personal effects in a shipped car are treated as undeclared cargo, and they cause problems entirely out of proportion to their value. The car travels empty.
• Clean and dry. Salt and grit sealed in under a soft cover for weeks does more harm than a wash would have cost.
• Keys and papers. One key travels with the car; the spare stays with you, and the documents travel separately from the vehicle.

Tyre pressures, alarm behaviour and any tracker fitted to the car are worth a conversation as well — a device that reports nothing for a fortnight tends to alarm the owner more than the shipment.

The traffic runs both ways

Britain and South Africa drive on the same side of the road and put the steering wheel in the same place, which is why cars have moved between the two markets for as long as anyone can remember. There is nothing to convert and nothing to explain to an engineer.

Out of Britain go cars bought here for collections in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and the Cape — the sort of buyer who has waited two years for the right example and is not inclined to let it sit on an open deck. In the other direction come dry-climate survivors: cars that spent thirty or forty years in the Karoo or on the Highveld rather than under a British winter, with sills and floors that have never met road salt. That is a large part of why our classic car transport work runs in both directions on this route rather than one.

Then there is relocation, which is steady and unglamorous and probably the larger half of it. A secondment to Sandton. A return home after twenty years in London. A retirement to the Cape. A family arriving in the UK who will not sell the car. Personal imports are treated differently from commercial ones in both directions, and the conditions attached are specific to the person and the vehicle.

The paperwork, described plainly

The document set for a car leaving the UK by sea is not mysterious, but it is unforgiving about detail. In broad terms you will need proof that the car is yours — the V5C, or the equivalent if the car is newly bought — evidence of purchase and value, your identification, an export declaration made on the British side, and a bill of lading issued by the shipping line once the container is loaded. Chassis and engine numbers on the paperwork must match the numbers on the car exactly. A single transposed digit is the most common cause of a car sitting at a terminal doing nothing.

South Africa operates a permit system for imported vehicles. Which route applies to your car, and whether it qualifies under a personal-import basis at all, are matters for you or your customs agent. Where a car is going out temporarily — for an event, a rally or a season — a carnet is the usual instrument for a temporary movement, and is arranged by the owner or their agent.

Duty and tax are set by the receiving authority and depend on the car and the basis of import. We will not quote you a percentage, and you should be wary of anybody who does before seeing your documents.

Arrival, and who is standing on the quay

This is the part most quotations go quiet about. We travel out to meet the car. It is released from the terminal, the straps come off, and the car is inspected against the collection report taken at your door in Britain — photograph against photograph, panel by panel, not a tick in a box. We make the final leg from the port to your address ourselves, on a vehicle secured locally for the purpose, and a second signed photographic condition report is completed at the address before we hand over the key.

So if something needs raising, you raise it with the person who loaded the car in England. Not with an agent who inherited a container number. That is the difference between this and the cheapest line on a comparison site.

Every worldwide movement is priced individually against the car, the two addresses, the sailing and the season. Our online estimate calculator covers UK and European road movements only, so for South Africa tell us what the car is, where it is standing, where it is going and roughly when, and we will come back with a price and an honest schedule. Call +44 7308 614008 or write to info@skorta.co.uk.