A SPECIAL PURCHASE

For sale, aBritish tracked FV432 armored personnel carrier. It has a normal flat entry hatch at the topand entry doors at the rear. It is ingood shape cosmetically and was driven here onto the property. The engine is a 6-cylinder gasolineengine.

The onlyknown mechanical issue is the two carburetors that supply fuel to theengine. Both need to have their rubberdisc washers known as the accelerator pump replaced. The rubber washers are cracked. These are readily available from any Jaguarcarburetor rebuilder. The body and thetracks are in good shape.

These APCscan be purchased from an array of vendors specializing in these types ofvehicles and many of them are for sale in the UK. They make a good living selling thesevehicles to collectors, serious off-roaders, event providers, vehicleenthusiasts and as long as they stay in the UK, there is no problem buying orselling them and shipping them within the UK’s dominion.

There is anew group of buyers that is developing. These are people that are concerned about the decline of personal socialsafety for citizens, the growing number of persons are concerned about thegrowing numbers of murders, killing of children, and the greater number ofmostly peaceful protests as buildings and police stations burn in thebackgrounds, to name just a few issues. This could be considered a great vehicle for a personal mobile panicroom or bug-out vehicle for well-prepared and forward-thinking people. This group tends to be seen more in theUnited States than anywhere else. Thereare some very necessary aspects a potential buyer must be aware of inpurchasing one of these vehicles anywhere in Europe and then trying to importit into the United States. There issignificant more money to be paid than just paying the advertised price of theAPC. The prices range from surprisinglylow numbers which will get you something that most likely has body damage, track damage, various mechanical damages, and the seller makes quite a bit ofmoney selling you replacement parts. Butif you aren’t skilled in rebuilding an APC, you really want to purchase onethat is in decent shape. There arealways minor issues with these machines. Taking that in consideration and having parts you can buy from theseller, they really are amazing machines and a lot of fun, and in an emergencyyou could probably bet your life on it.

You willeasily pay $20,000 for a machine that might run or might not. If you don’t want to spend a lot of money insignificant repairs, you can very easily spend $45,000 to $55,000 for a machinein pretty good shape, depending on condition. If you buy this outside of the United States, that $20,000 to $55,000will not be your only costs.

The buyermust apply to the BATF in Washington, DC for an import certificate license fora weapon of war to bring the APC into the United States. However, before you can apply for the importcertificate, you have to first show your purchase of the vehicle and various IDnumbers of the specific APC as well as a bill of sale of your APC for yourcertificate application that you will send to the BATF. It seems that the BATF is not approving manycertificates for these types of vehicles into the United States after 9/11. At some point, you could very well realizeyou are not going to get an importation certificate, and unless you reallytrust the seller to return your purchase price, you will find you have paidtens of thousands of dollars for a vehicle you can’t even ship to the UnitedStates. Many of these dealers will promiseyou everything, but they realize that most people that have the money to spendon something like this rather than having to initiate a court proceeding in theUK, they will generally just abandon the project and the seller can send you abill every month for storing your APC on his property until you can make anarrangement to sell it back to him. There are many horror stories of good people spending good money andfinding out they can’t ship their APC to the United States for differentreasons.

Next, ifwhen you maybe can acquire the certificate of importation to the United States, you have to pay special hauling fees to get your APC to the shipping port outof England and into the United States. Shipping costs anywhere in first world countries have gone up 20 to 30percent primarily due to cost of diesel fuel and maintenance costs and laborcosts for the specialized drivers and operators of the equipment who can haulan APC. Once you have paid all the coststransporting it to the shipping port in the UK, you still have to pay the cargocharges to bring your APC across the ocean to the shores of the UnitedStates. For pieces of machinery likethis that require special handling while on the ship, you can pay between$18,000 to $22,000 just to get it here.

When yourAPC arrives in the United States, say, California, which would be shipped intoPort Hueneme, you will have to hire a specialized driver to get your APC offthe ship. Next, you have to have a heavyhauler tractor-trailer to haul your APC. The going rate now is $400 to $425 per hourwith a surcharge fuel charge. Thesecharges are based on port to port.

Anotherfrustrating aspect to consider is that as part of your importing the APC intothe United States, you may find there is a restriction that is required to befulfilled before you can take actual possession of your APC in the UnitedStates. You may very well be required tohave your APC what is termed demilitarized. That is above and beyond removing any cannons or machine guns from theAPC, if it has any. But to also beproperly demilitarized, it would have to be taken to a demilitarizing stationwhere they will cut two or more very large holes lengthwise in the body of yourAPC. They might also, depending upon therule of the day, actually cut off one of your drive axels off. This would require some major and extremelycostly repair. Then, once it has beenverified demilitarized, you can have your damaged goods shipped to your desiredlocation and start repairing the damage. These are things that people that don’t typically deal with these typeof vehicles find out the hard way. Theseare things no typical seller wants to tell you about because you might not buyan APC out of the United States.

So to avoidall this fun stuff, your best bet is to try and find a vehicle that is alreadyin the United States, is not a wreck and doesn’t have any holes cut in it. The one that I am advertising here is such avehicle. If you were to look at all thecosts you may incur in shipping a vehicle out of the UK or anywhere else inEurope to the United States, you can be looking at total costs of purchasing adecent machine plus shipping both by truck and ship upwards of $85,000 to$120,000 and you still don’t get to see it until it arrives, which is whybuying one in the United States, if you really want an APC, is the way to go.

I amoffering this FV432 for a price of $55,000. It is in California and available now.

Price: $55,000

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Location: Northridge, California, United States