The Daily Vroom

Good Morning Vroomers,

We Built You Something…

I get asked a lot why we don't run ads.

The Daily Vroom has grown into something I'm genuinely proud of. A community of car people who actually read, who care about the market, who share this stuff with friends who get it. And in all that time, not a single banner, not a single sponsored slot, not a penny taken from an advertiser or platform and plenty have asked.

The honest answer is simple. This newsletter exists because I love this world. The cars, the culture, the obsessive people who know the difference between a 993 and a 996 and why it matters. I didn't want to monetize that relationship. I wanted to earn it.

The plan was always to build something actually useful alongside it. The newsletter isn’t going anywhere. This is in addition, not instead. Products that serve you, not advertisers. This is the first one. There will be more.

I’ve imported cars myself. Every time, the cost question was a nightmare. You'd find a car you loved, start doing the maths, and realise you had no real idea what it was actually going to cost you to get it home. You'd call a broker, get a rough number, call another broker, get a different number. I’d talk to people in the community who'd done it before and piece together something that felt close enough to make a decision on. It worked, eventually, but it was slow, opaque, and completely dependent on who you happened to know.

Over the past couple of years I've had dozens of conversations about this, with people in this community who import regularly, with brokers on both sides of the Atlantic, with buyers who nearly got burned by costs they didn't see coming. The picture that emerged was consistent. There's no good tool for this. Nothing that gives you a real number quickly, before you even bid, using live exchange rates and current tariff rules, that change all the time, that tells you not just what the fees are but whether the import actually makes sense.

That last part matters most. Fees can be eventually worked out. What's harder, and what we've tried to build, is the intelligence around the decision. Is this car worth importing at this price from this country right now? That's the question The Daily Vroom Take answers at the bottom of every calculation.

So we built one.

Introducing the Daily Vroom Import Calculator, now in Beta.

It does one thing, properly. It tells you what that car abroad actually costs you to get home. Purchase price, duties, freight, marine insurance, compliance, port fees, all of it, converted at live exchange rates, with current tariff rules baked in including the new Section 232 rates that have been scrambling everyone's spreadsheets since the beginning of April.

Let me show you what it looks like in practice.

The Bentley.

There's a 2019 Bentley Continental GTC W12 First Edition listed on Collecting Cars right now. 9,035 miles, Sequin Blue, full Harwoods service history. Stunning car. I ran it through the calculator, £118,000 purchase price, UK to US.

That's $21k in costs just to move it. Total landed cost before you even touch the door handle: $180k.

And that's before EPA/DOT compliance conversion, which for a non-US-spec Bentley may be required depending on the spec and compliance pathway, and can add $15,000-$30,000 or significantly more on top. You're looking at potentially $200K+ all-in on a car that stickers at $260K new in the States. Depending on what spec you want and how patient you are, that's actually an interesting proposition. Or it isn't. That's the point, now you know.

The Daily Vroom Take called it Viable with Caveats. Not because it's a bad car, it's magnificent, but because the compliance picture on a 2019 non-US-spec Bentley is genuinely uncertain. The landed cost is $180K. Add potential EPA/DOT conversion and you're likely north of $200K. We want to help you understand what you're actually getting into.

The G-Wagon.

Now flip it completely. There's a 1983 Mercedes-Benz 240GD on Bring a Trailer right now. Ex-Norwegian Army, drab green, canvas top, fold-down windshield, jerry can, 19k miles on the clock. Current bid €5,750 with a few days left. Someone in the comments was asking about shipping to Texas and getting no useful answer.

I ran it at €7,500 final bid. Netherlands to US.

Total landed cost: $12,921.

The 240GD is 43 years old, which means it clears the 25-year threshold, no Section 232 tariffs, no EPA/DOT compliance headache. There may still be a small 2.5% duty depending on how it's classified, which is worth a quick conversation with your broker before you ship. But we're talking rounding errors on a $13k all-in number.

The Daily Vroom Take called it STRONG BUY. A pre-G-Wagen G-Wagen with military provenance and legitimate collector appeal, landed for under $13k. That's the kind of number that used to require a spreadsheet, three phone calls, and a customs broker willing to give you 20 minutes on the phone. Now it takes less than 30 seconds.

A note on the numbers.

Every broker will give you a slightly different figure based on their fees, which port they use, and how they structure the import. The calculator gives you the real-number framework, so you walk into that conversation already knowing what you're talking about. Use it to decide whether something is worth pursuing. Then call a licensed customs broker before you wire anything.

A few things to know before you play with it:

It's free. Always. No signup, no gate, no form. Run as many calculations as you like. That's not changing.

It's live. Exchange rates from the ECB, current tariff rules including Section 232, updated regularly.

It covers 13 countries. US, UK, Germany, Japan, Australia, UAE, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, South Africa. More routes coming.

It goes further for US imports. Select your state at the bottom of any US calculation to see the all-in total including sales tax at registration.

It's in Beta. We've tested a lot of scenarios but not every car, every route, every edge case. If something looks wrong, or you want a make we haven't included, or you have a suggestion, email us at [email protected] We're all ears.

This is the first product. There will be more. But right now we want to make this one as good as it can be, and that means hearing from you. What's wrong, what's missing, what would make it more useful.

Before we open this up to the wider world, we wanted you to have it first. The people who've been here since the beginning.

Try it here: thedailyvroom.com/import-calculator

Hope it's useful.

Sam