I live in Thailand and have a vintage car I would like to bring over, but the import tax to Thailand is 300% based on whatever they think the car is worth.

It looks like bringing it to Malaysia, and then getting a visa for it at the Thai Malay border may be an option for me - the car "visa" lasts upto 6 months and I dont have to take the car out of Thailand to get it renewed.

I was wondering if its plausible to get a Malay citizen, agency or company to import it for me? Theres a lot of posts on this thread - sorry if I missed something and my question doesnt make sense.

The car is a 1979 Chevvy Corvette (30 years old), its 350ci (5.7 litres) its in "as new" condition. I dont know if I can find the original purchase price - but it would be quite low, like $5,000USD or something silly like that. Current value in Australia is about $30k USD. Would it really be depreciated at 30 years do you think? If depreciation applies then the tax should be faily low - I tried to follw the posts, but got a bit confused about whether all the tax is reduced or just part of it, so I cant figure out what the expected tax should be

In Thailand they dont let you know how they estimate the cars value - its totally unknown until the inspectors see it - so theres no way I would import to Thailand directly.

Any feedback would be very appreciated.

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Added on January 24, 2009, 12:31 pm
One thing to point out, the car brought in through personal AP needs to be under the AP applicant's name for 2 years before any transfer is allowed..

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Thanks for the respsonse, I am running out of options - I love my car, and dont want to sell it, but it seems like getting it here is going to be extremely expensive and difficult ><