Getting On the Road

So, you can probably imagine, just getting her here was the first step, the desired result is actually being able to drive her on the road wasn’t quite so easy to come by… if you’re doing a similar thing, here’s some of the added items you’ll need to take into account before you can drive your new precious on local roads.

Obviously, these are relative to roadworthy and registration for Victorian roads. Importing a car into other states are quite likely to have different requirements.

1. Quarantine. – One of the first alerts that it wasn’t going to be a simple case of rocking up to collect her and driving off was a message from the logistics company that Lucie would need fumigating… just to be safe. Again, a good reason for having a logistics company handle all these kinds of details is that all I had to do was pay more dollars to Taurus and let them take care of the details… it meant, of course that it was going to be a longer wait before I could collect her than I anticipated a wait of 2 more weeks!!
2. Get a permit to drive her unregistered on the road. Because Lucie wasn’t registered and had a bunch of hoops to go through to get to that point, we did still need to be able to get her from the depot to my garage… and fortunately it’s possible to buy a temporary permit to drive her on the road in Victoria. The permit in question is an unregistered vehicle permit – you can read all about them and apply for one here.
3. Pick up the Car from the depot and get her home! Ahh, this was the fun/scary bit. My friend S drove me over to the depot so we could grab the car, and much to the surprise of the mechanics at the depot, we planned to start her up and drive her home… Hah!! As if it was EVER going to be that straight forward…

So excitement!

Turning it over… and failing…

Checking on the battery…

Chug, chug, cough…

I really shouldn’t have been surprised that she wouldn’t start out of the gate… the battery was completely cactus – she’d been siting in storage for 5 months and then 6 weeks at sea… I really was pushing my luck.  We charged it up by connecting it to 2 (TWO!) cars at the depot and got her started… and S, followed me home to make sure we got most of the way!! I managed to get us both home in one piece and tucked her away into the garage.

4. Getting a Roadworthy – the first important piece of paper you need to get a car registered on Victorian roads is a Certificate of Roadworthiness. I was planning on putting ‘club plates’ on the car so registration costs aren’t dear as it’s registered really to only be able to participate in ‘club’ events. However, the car still needed to meet minimum safety requirements… So it was off to the mechanic we went… Of course there was rather a lot more work than I’d have liked… but at the end of the day, all the things that got done made her safer and run cleaner… and at the price, she’s still a good investment. It took longer we’d have liked too… Add another 2 weeks!
5. Joining a Car Club – It seemed logical to join the Riley Club, she is a Riley badged vehicle after all… but to be honest, she’s more of a Mini than she is a Riley, and there are a lot more activities planned with the Minis than the Riley Club, so while I joined the Riley Club for the purposes of her Club Registration, I’ve actually participated on more of the Mini Club events. Will probably change my Club registration later on… not that it really matters at the end of the day, but I do feel bad about not participating so much in both.
6. Registering the Car. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle… This is where my lack of decent proof of ownership nearly tripped me up… but after ironing out that kink with some quick googling, the way back machine and an email from the current owner, presenting the right amount of dollars, the Roadworthy, the Club Rego and the appropriate Registration form, Lucie received her brand new, Victorian Club Registration, sticker, log book, and plates…  Let the games begin…