Tips

• Uncalculated repair costs
• Documents

Uncalculated repair costs

Before deciding to participate in an auction, it is essential to estimate the repair costs for the selected vehicle.

When purchasing a vehicle, it is quite difficult to calculate the exact repair costs based on photographs: the estimated amount is usually exceeded during the repair.

The following are some aspects that most customers don’t usually think about:

• Bumper painting/polishing. It is difficult to assess bumper damage from photos, as they are often damaged when vehicles are transported by forklifts. Practically all imported cars need to be polished.
• Tires. Vehicles imported from the U.S. very often arrive with tires in very poor condition.
• Battery. The photos shown on the auction website were taken immediately after the vehicle was delivered to the auction lot. The vehicle may not go on sale for 1–6 months, or perhaps even a year. Considering the shipping time, we can expect that the battery of a shipped vehicle will not be in good condition. To find out when an accident occurred, use the Carfax.com check.
• Ignition keys. It’s common for the car’s keys to be visible in the auction photos, but not in the photos taken at the port. This happens because a large number of people inspect the cars parked at the auction lot, and some of them are thieves. Car keys can cost anywhere from 100 to 900 euros (the price depends on the make and model of the car).
• Catalytic converters. This section applies only to customers purchasing muscle cars (e.g., Ford Mustang, Dodge Challenger, Chevrolet Camaro). Muscle cars often come with a modified exhaust system, with catalytic converters and other exhaust system components removed. It is practically impossible to see this in photos. The price of a complete exhaust system starts at 1,000 EUR (the price depends on the car’s make and model).

Documents

Vehicles listed in U.S. auctions typically come with a wide variety of possible document types, which makes it unclear which documents are suitable for vehicle registration and which are not suitable for either registration or export. To simplify the situation, we mark each document on our website with a symbol indicating its suitability.

Information symbols:

• – eligible for registration in Lithuania
• – Suitable for export; registration is not permitted
• – Additional document processing fees apply
• – not suitable for export or registration in Lithuania
• – We are awaiting documents that are eligible for registration in Lithuania
• – No information is available regarding suitability

Below is a list of documents required for vehicle registration in Lithuania: