Importing a Supercar to Australia: Process and Costs in 2026

Buying an exotic car overseas always looks like a bargain on the listing page. A late-model supercar in the UK, Japan or the US can read tens of thousands of dollars cheaper than the same thing here. Then you start adding up what it takes to land it on Australian roads, and the gap closes fast.

This is a run through the cost stack. Not the purchase price, the everything else. Figures are in Australian dollars. Where a number moves around a lot, we have said so plainly.

Step one: you need approval before it ships

You cannot just buy a car overseas and put it on a boat. Before it arrives, you need an approval to import a road vehicle, granted through the Department of Infrastructure’s online portal, ROVER. The car also needs a pathway onto the Register of Approved Vehicles, the RAV, before it can be registered for the road. Do not book the shipping until the approval is in hand. Australian Border Force will not release a car that arrives without one, storage and other charges can build up while it waits, and the importer may be required to export or destroy the car at their own expense.

Which pathway, and what it costs, depends on the car. A genuinely recent supercar is not 25 years old, so the cheaper “older vehicles” route is not available to it. Almost all modern exotic imports go through the pathway for a vehicle to be modified by a Registered Automotive Workshop, and as at the last published fee schedule that costs $95 for the application, plus a separate $109 RAV entry charge for a passenger vehicle, so budget on the order of $200 for this step. If the model is not already on the SEVs Register, there is a further $230 entry fee and a $900 Model Report fee on top.

Compare that with the 25-year older-vehicles pathway, which costs a combined $42.20, and you can see why it matters which route your car actually qualifies for. We have covered that pathway, and what does and does not qualify for it, in the JDM cars you can legally import now and our SEVS eligibility guide.

There is also one narrow route for people moving to Australia to stay, including Australians coming home for good. They can bring in a car they have owned for at least 12 months straight before arriving and used on the road overseas, if they apply within six months of arriving. The Department calls this importing a vehicle as personal effects. A car bought abroad and kept garaged does not qualify, so it is no help to someone buying an exotic overseas. The application fee is $50 plus a $7.20 RAV charge for a passenger vehicle, from the same May 2023 schedule.

These are the cheapest line items you will see in this whole exercise. The expensive part is what the approval pathway forces you to spend later on compliance.

Customs duty and GST: the unavoidable two

When the car lands, the Australian Border Force wants its cut before the vehicle clears customs.

• Customs duty: 5% on most passenger vehicles, calculated on the customs value of the car. Cars built in Japan, the UK or the US come in free of duty if you can prove where they were made. It is where the car was built that counts, not where you buy it.
• GST: 10%, calculated on the value of the taxable importation. That is the customs value, plus the duty you just paid, plus your international freight and insurance.

The order matters. GST sits on top of duty and freight, so it is always a bit more than 10% of the raw car price. On a high-value car these two alone run well into five figures.

Luxury Car Tax: the one that hurts

This is where exotics get punished. Luxury Car Tax, LCT, is 33%, charged only on the value above the threshold, not the whole car.

For the 2026-27 financial year the thresholds set by the ATO are:

• $80,809 for most cars, the standard, petrol-relevant threshold.
• $91,661 for fuel-efficient vehicles.

Worth knowing: from 1 July 2025 the definition of fuel-efficient tightened sharply. A car now has to use no more than 3.5 litres per 100km to qualify for the higher threshold. That rules out almost every combustion supercar, so for most exotics you are working off the $80,809 figure. On a car worth several hundred thousand dollars, 33% of the slice above that threshold is a serious number, often the single biggest tax on the whole import.

Getting it here: freight and marine insurance

Shipping a car internationally is not cheap, and for an exotic you generally do not want the cheapest option.

• Freight: roughly $2,000 to $5,000 by container from the UK, Europe or Japan, depending on origin port and whether you share a container or take a sole-use one. Enclosed, single-car shipping for a valuable car sits at the higher end and beyond.
• Marine insurance: usually charged as a percentage of the car’s value, often around 1% to 2%. On a $300,000 car that is $3,000 to $6,000. Skipping it on a six-figure car is a gamble most people should not take.

These ranges vary with the exchange rate, fuel costs and demand, so treat them as a guide and get a real quote.

Quarantine and biosecurity

Every imported vehicle is inspected for biosecurity risk on arrival, things like soil, seeds, insects and other contamination. You pay an inspection fee, and if the car needs cleaning or fumigation to pass, you pay for that too. Budget a few hundred dollars for the inspection, and more if it gets sent off for a wash and re-inspection.

Compliance: the wild card

This is the line item that makes or breaks the maths, and the one nobody can quote you accurately without knowing the exact car.

Once the car is on the RAW-modification pathway, it has to be brought up to Australian standards by that registered workshop before it can go on the RAV. Compliance work can cover lighting, child restraint anchorages, glazing, tyres, emissions and more. It is priced by private workshops, so it varies a lot from car to car, and for some rare cars there is no viable pathway at all.

Compliance cost depends entirely on the specific make, model and year, and you should confirm a real figure with a registered automotive workshop (RAW) or compliance specialist before you commit a single dollar overseas. Do not assume. Ask first.

The Department publishes details of approved workshops on ROVER, including their contact details and the vehicle categories they are approved for. Check that a workshop is approved for your type of car before you ask it for a quote.

The last bill: registration and stamp duty

Once the car is compliant and on the RAV, you still have to register it in your state or territory. Registration fees are modest, but stamp duty on a high-value car is not. Stamp duty is set by each state and territory and rises with the car’s value, so a luxury car attracts a higher rate. On an exotic this is commonly tens of thousands of dollars: on a car landed at around $360,000, it runs from about $11,000 in the Northern Territory to about $32,000 in Victoria. We have broken down exactly what that looks like state by state in what you actually pay on top.

An illustrative worked example

This is illustrative only, to show how the stack builds. Real figures depend on your car, your state and the exchange rate on the day.

Say you buy a performance car landed at a customs value of $250,000, with $4,000 freight and $4,000 marine insurance. Here is the stack for a European-made car, and then for one built in Japan, the UK or the US.

European-made (5% duty):

• Customs duty (5% of $250,000): $12,500
• GST (10% of $250,000 + $12,500 + $8,000): $27,050
• LCT (($297,550 LCT value minus $80,809) x 10/11 x 33%): $65,022
• Freight and marine insurance: $8,000
• Total of those four: about $112,600

Built in Japan, the UK or the US, with proof of origin (no duty):

• Customs duty: $0
• GST (10% of $250,000 + $8,000): $25,800
• LCT (($283,800 LCT value minus $80,809) x 10/11 x 33%): $60,897
• Freight and marine insurance: $8,000
• Total of those four: about $94,700

On top of both come the biosecurity inspection (a few hundred dollars), import approval and RAV entry (around $200), compliance at a RAW (priced by the workshop, so get a written quote) and registration and stamp duty. Stamp duty alone on a car landed at around $360,000 runs from about $11,000 in the Northern Territory to about $32,000 in Victoria.

It is illustrative, but the taxes are most of it, and they are fixed by law. Duty depends on where the car was built, not where you buy it, so a Ferrari bought in Japan still pays duty. The parts you can influence are freight, insurance choice and, to a degree, which car you pick.

Buying here or importing it yourself

A car brought in by someone other than the maker’s Australian distributor is what people call a grey import. For a model the maker already sells here, a grey import is often not a real option. The SEVS rules ask whether a make and model has been made available to Australian buyers as a new vehicle, and a model that has been is generally not eligible for import under the scheme. There are narrow exceptions, including a model that was not genuinely available here during the build dates in question.

That is why the sums above matter most for cars you cannot buy new here. Our SEVS eligibility guide sets out the test and how to check a specific car on the register.

The bottom line

Once you stack duty, GST, LCT, freight, compliance and stamp duty, a lot of imported exotics end up costing about the same as, or more than, an equivalent car already complied and sold here. The overseas bargain is real on the sticker and often gone by the time it is registered.

Importing still makes sense for the right car: something genuinely not sold here, a spec you cannot get locally, or a model where the local premium is steep enough to absorb the costs. For everything else, do the full sum first. Get the compliance quote before you fall in love with the listing.