Greetings All,

Unless you have a special purpose vehicle and plan to do some serious
overlanding with a full on expedition vehicle (like to India or something),
I suggest you buy a van in England.  I used to have a link to an online
vehicle classified in the UK, but no longer.  In my travels I have bought
and sold vehicles in New Zealand, Australia, and India.  There is a huge
network of travelers (unfortunately very very few Americans) worldwide that
buy and sell vehicles as the move on.  You will find it surprisingly easy to
do this once you get in the network.  Pick up a lonely planet or "rough
guide" guide book to find the network.  They usually congregate in a
particular district of large cities like London, Edinborough (sp?), etc.  I
wouldn't be surprised if there was a backpacker car market in England much
like the one in Sydney Australia.

That said, it would be pretty cheap if you could find a left hand drive
vehicle in the UK as no-one there wants one, and they drive on the right on
the mainland.  Of course there are registration problems you will have to
sort out, but it would be much easier to do in a country where you speak a
version of the language....  Make sure you bring proof of insurance when you
go over, and buy a AAA membership before you go.  The EU (and NZ and OZ)
versions of AAA are MUCH better and have reciprocal agreements.

The most important thing in buying and selling vehicles on the backpacker
market is timing.  You will have a difficult time selling a vehicle in
December in the UK.  They optimum thing to do is buy in Mar-April and sell
some time in the summer, or go somewhere like Spain or Italy to sell in the
Winter.  The advantage of backpacker cars is that they usually come fully
equipped with camping stuff and you know why they are selling it (leaving
the country as opposed to selling a problem vehicle).

Yours,

Rob

http://msnhomepages.talkcity.com/PassportPl/gunter01/