This is the HMMWV...or better known as the Humvee! I bought an ex-military vehicle from the US during COVID...because I was bored at home!! This is a story about how I bought it, what it's like and most importantly, how I imported it to Australia.
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior 00:45
Interior 06:27
How I bought it 08:39
Overhaul 13:51
Shipping to Australia 16:10
Arriving in Australia 19:12
What's Next? 22:50
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
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#humvee #hmmwv #military
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior 00:45
Interior 06:27
How I bought it 08:39
Overhaul 13:51
Shipping to Australia 16:10
Arriving in Australia 19:12
What's Next? 22:50
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1
You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.
Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!
Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!
CarExpert:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au
Paul Maric:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric
#humvee #hmmwv #military
Category
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MotorTranscript
00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. So I bought the most ridiculous car on the road.
00:04 It's this thing right here. It's called the AM General.
00:07 High mobility, multi-purpose wheeled vehicle, better known as the Humvee.
00:13 Today I want to explain to you why I bought it, and I still don't really know the answer to that,
00:17 but how I got it here into Australia, and just the litany of scumbags that tried to rip me off on the way,
00:23 and what you can avoid if you do want to import a vehicle from overseas into Australia,
00:27 or just import a vehicle to anywhere, really.
00:29 Make sure you have subscribed to the channel and press the bell icon as well,
00:32 because that's going to tell you when we do publish more of this.
00:34 Today I'm going to run you through this, why I bought it, how I bought it.
00:37 If you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this video, you can use the time codes that are up on the screen,
00:41 or if you're on YouTube, you can scroll down and use the chapters below.
00:44 So what on earth is this thing? I mentioned in the intro there, this is a military vehicle,
00:50 and it's called the Humvee, but it was designed effectively to serve the US military.
00:56 They built around 300,000 of these, and it was originally a concept that was approved,
01:01 and since then it's evolved. They've changed the engines that they had in them, changed the design as well.
01:05 This is one of the original ones, so it has the sort of canvas roof and doors on it, no real windows.
01:11 Today's Humvee, or the latest ones they've sold, come with up-armoured kits,
01:15 so they're actually bulletproof and bomb-proof to a degree as well, and look completely different to this.
01:20 They also have air conditioning. Mine doesn't have air conditioning, and this is a very low VIN number, this one.
01:24 And it actually has served as well. This was part of the National Guard in the States.
01:28 I'm not sure of its history prior to that, but it was actually used for some purpose.
01:33 Up the front here, you've got cooling for the engine, so the cooling stack is directly beneath this.
01:38 I'll show you what that looks like when we crack the bonnet open, which opens in an interesting way.
01:43 This is a brush guard on the front here, so you sometimes see these without the brush guard.
01:47 You have to actually drop the brush guard down to open the bonnet.
01:50 This is a water fording kit over here, so these actually have an ability to ford an incredible amount of water.
01:57 With the water fording kit and the exhaust, which I don't have on mine,
02:00 you can actually submerge the entire vehicle up to the inlet of that, and also the exhaust,
02:04 because everything is properly sealed and designed to be taken underwater.
02:08 There is actually some video on the internet of military training where they do submerge these with troops inside,
02:14 so it is incredibly capable in that regard.
02:17 Under the car here, I keep calling it a car, but truck, whatever you want to call it, it's a word that I always use.
02:23 Part of the reason this is so successful as a military vehicle and it's so off-road capable is the way that all of this is set up.
02:31 So it actually uses portal axles, and the way that works is it has a front and rear Torsen differential,
02:37 so there's one up here, one up the back there.
02:39 Then that central diff for this axle comes down to a hub on the wheel, and that's a geared hub as well,
02:45 and that basically then sends drive to the wheels. It allows you to have high torque multiplications.
02:50 It also means that you are tucking all of your equipment quite high up,
02:53 and that means you have this incredible ground clearance under here, and you're not going to be collecting anything.
02:58 This is more ground clearance than you'll have on any standard car today,
03:01 because with a standard car, you have the diff hanging nice and low.
03:04 That is the first thing you're going to collect if you hit a nice and low object.
03:07 It also means that they have a pretty interesting setup with the brakes.
03:10 You can see the disc brakes, four-wheel disc brakes, just here next to the differential.
03:14 Your brake pedal feel is weird as well, because when you go for the brakes,
03:17 you're actually then affecting the differential and your portal axles as well,
03:22 so it has a little bit of play to it before it actually starts inputting any of that brake feel,
03:27 which is kind of weird in my opinion.
03:29 This is interesting as well, because if you have a look here on top of the bonnet,
03:33 you have this sling guy. There's also a matching airlift bumper at the rear,
03:37 and that was because they actually hooked these into the back of the plane and dropped them out with a parachute.
03:42 There's actually videos of these coming out of planes and also being towed by helicopters
03:47 and then just being dropped on the ground, because it meant that you didn't have to land the plane
03:51 to deliver your vehicle to troops, so they can literally drop them out with a parachute,
03:55 which I think is pretty incredible.
03:56 These have served all over the world with the US in conflicts,
03:59 and I think they even left a whole stack of these in Afghanistan when they fled there,
04:04 so I don't know what they're up to today.
04:06 Come around to the side here, I'll show you what this looks like.
04:08 The wheels, 37-inch. I had these changed over before it was shipped to Australia,
04:13 so they're brand new. A bit of a pain in the arse to remove as well,
04:16 because they're run flats or can be run flats in some of these vehicles.
04:19 These are the doors I was talking about, so it's like a sort of canvas material on the roof and the doors.
04:24 It means it adds less weight, and this engine was changed over,
04:28 and I'll explain that in a bit more detail later, but you really don't want to be going for the up-armoured version
04:32 if you don't have a turbocharged engine, because it is pretty slow.
04:35 Come around to the back with me. This right here is the airlift bumper,
04:39 so this is where they hook onto here and also top of the bonnet there when they do lob it out of a plane,
04:44 which is pretty cool. I also got a Pioneer kit installed on mine, or the Pioneering kit.
04:49 It's all brand new. It includes a shovel, a pick, and a couple of other bits and pieces, just in case we get stuck.
04:54 I've got some aerials here for my functioning radio inside the cabin,
04:59 and then also you can actually use this as a dual cab ute.
05:03 Look at that. Throw your stuff on there.
05:07 It goes nicely with my Raptor, and for all intents and purposes,
05:11 I'm referring to this as a green ute, so it matches my Tesla Model Y nicely.
05:16 Now, before we jump inside the cabin, let's have a look under the bonnet.
05:19 I want to show you how all that stuff looks and works.
05:22 Now, before you can open the bonnet, you've got to get rid of this brush guard.
05:25 It's actually a pretty straightforward process. Get rid of that, and then fold it down.
05:31 There it goes there. Then, come around here. Let me show you this.
05:34 You've got these latch straps, so you release that. You have one on each side.
05:40 Okay, that is done, and then what we do, we come around here,
05:44 and we can fold the bonnet or the hood forward.
05:49 There it is, and then it will click into position up here.
05:53 There it is there. So, that is your engine.
05:56 6.5-litre naturally aspirated V8. It actually started life as a 6.2-litre naturally aspirated V8,
06:03 but as part of the Army's overhaul program, they actually dropped the 6.5 in there,
06:07 and then it stayed mated to a three-speed automatic, but I've had it changed to a four-speed auto,
06:12 and I'll run through some of those details a little bit later on.
06:15 But you can see here that this is all made for easy servicing.
06:17 It means that if anything goes wrong in the field, they can jump in there and just start working on it,
06:21 and then all of the entry points to the engine are sealed, so if it does get submerged in water,
06:25 you're not going to go flooding the engine.
06:27 So, I'm going to go through this in a bit more detail when we actually do the review,
06:31 but this is what the inside of a Humvee looks like.
06:33 It is incredibly not very spacious because this whole centre section here, in fact,
06:38 the back of this is the sort of noise plate for the engine, and if you do remove the doghouse,
06:44 you actually get access to the back of the engine there,
06:46 so if you do need to do any repairs on the move, that's where you go.
06:49 This all folds forward as well, so you can imagine if this was actually in service,
06:53 you can do all of your field work without too many dramas.
06:56 Beneath all of this wood here as well, you have access to the fuel tank and a few other bits and pieces.
07:01 A little ammo box here as well for all my little toys, and mainly tools if it breaks down.
07:08 So, that's all in there.
07:09 Ahead of the driver here, you've got all your gauges, and this is a keyed vehicle.
07:13 Normally, if this was basically in the military, you wouldn't have a key,
07:17 because you don't need a key to lock and unlock your military vehicle,
07:20 so there is just a little switch here that you would switch the car on with,
07:23 the Ute, the truck, whatever you want to call it, you would switch it on over here,
07:27 and that would fire it up, so yeah, it's a pretty cool setup.
07:29 This is my functioning radio, so if I flick that on, we'll turn that on.
07:35 Obviously, there's nothing going on at the moment, but...
07:40 Uh-oh, they're after us.
07:47 But yeah, so I love that that's in there as well, because this kind of shows you
07:50 what this would have been like when it was actually used in real-world scenarios.
07:55 The seats are very uncomfortable.
07:57 Most people will actually replace these seats with high-back seats
08:00 to give them a bit more comfort inside the cabin,
08:02 but for me, I've just kept them here, so it's all nice and original.
08:05 Beneath that seat there is the battery system.
08:07 It's a 24-volt system, so two 12-volt batteries that are set up,
08:10 and then you also have storage beneath the two back seats as well,
08:13 so it's pretty fun in here, not as spacious as you would expect,
08:18 but it does what it does, and it does what it needs to do as well.
08:22 Now, we're going to go back to the studio, because I want to run you through
08:24 why I bought this and just some of the stuff you need to watch out for
08:27 when you are importing one of these, because if I had my time again,
08:31 I would hopefully not get as ripped off as I did with some of the cowboys
08:34 that are out there, so let's head back to the studio,
08:37 and we will see how it all went down.
08:39 Okay, so we're back in the studio now.
08:41 You've seen it there sort of in person, so to speak, on video.
08:45 I've done a walk around with you.
08:47 Now I want to run you through how I bought it and how all of this came about
08:51 and some of the stuff that you can avoid doing like I did
08:55 to not waste all of your money like I did,
08:58 so let's kick off where I actually found it.
09:01 So it is worth pointing out at this point, you can do all of this on your own,
09:05 but I chose to do this through an Australian import company called Iron Chef Imports.
09:10 I had them full price, so literally I'm only telling you that they were great
09:15 because they were great.
09:16 They basically handle all of the annoying stuff in the background
09:19 that you're about to hear about.
09:20 If I had to do it myself, I would have no idea what I was doing,
09:24 and they were excellent to deal with.
09:25 So Iron Chef Imports, if you do want to get a car to Australia from like the US or Japan,
09:30 they kind of cover all of those markets.
09:32 When I got the idea in my head, it was COVID, and here in Australia,
09:36 if you're not watching this from Australia, we had--
09:38 I think it ended up being the world's longest lockdown,
09:41 and so it was shambolic here where I'm based, and that got me onto the computer,
09:47 and it got me Googling stuff, and one of the things I Googled was a Humvee,
09:51 and I thought, "I'm going to buy one of these," and I went to sites like Iron Planet,
09:54 which is where they actually sell these once they're decommissioned from the military.
09:58 Unfortunately, though, there are a lot of horror stories about some of those vehicles
10:02 because a lot of them need a stack of work.
10:04 They've got all these sorts of issues that you don't really realise
10:07 when you're bidding online, and you can't really do a great deal in person
10:10 to see if they're actually working until you've bought them.
10:13 Then also getting them assigned to a foreigner is really hard to do as well
10:17 because there are special forms you need to sign to tell the military
10:20 you're not going to go send it to embargoed countries overseas.
10:23 So what I thought was I'll go to the second-hand market and have a look.
10:26 Most of the ones on the second-hand market were really expensive.
10:29 They were sort of circa $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 US dollars.
10:32 A lot of them were also modified as well.
10:34 I wanted mine to be bone stock and original.
10:36 So I hit up Craigslist, or Craigslist if you're watching this from the States,
10:40 and I found what I thought was going to be my dream Humvee.
10:44 I've got my iPad here to flick through some pictures.
10:46 These are actual images from the listing.
10:48 So you can see they're in the listing.
10:50 It kind of looks great.
10:52 There were sort of no issues from what I could tell in the listing,
10:55 but at that point I didn't know how old these pictures were.
10:59 I also didn't know whether this thing was real because ultimately
11:02 I would have to wire money over to this guy that I'd never met in the States
11:07 based off a Craigslist listing.
11:10 How would I ever know that it's actually real?
11:12 So once I determined that this was the one that I wanted, it looked original,
11:16 it had a fairly good history, it was overhauled by the military as well,
11:20 so they changed it from 6.2-litre V8 to a 6.5-litre V8.
11:25 So that was a program they did to extend the life of some of these.
11:28 I then got in touch with the seller and asked him to do a walk-around video
11:31 because I thought, well, he's not going to be able to do a walk-around video
11:34 if it's not real.
11:35 So he did this video for me, and I could tell that it was all sort of fairly legitimate.
11:41 I had a look at the metadata on the video as well
11:44 and confirmed that it was in the same location that the listing was.
11:48 So it was firming up to be fairly legitimate,
11:51 and based on the images I could see that it was in fairly decent condition
11:54 and everything kind of looked above board and all good.
11:58 So I started strategising. I thought, well, how am I going to be able to tell
12:02 this is actually a legitimate vehicle before I go sending this bloke money?
12:06 And I thought, you know what I'll do? I'll get an inspection done.
12:09 So I said to this guy, let's agree on a price and I'm going to get an inspection done.
12:13 And I knew that when the inspector would come to his home address,
12:16 they would take pictures, those pictures would obviously dictate whether this was real or not.
12:21 So I had that done, that ended up costing me about $250 US, and it was great
12:25 because they not only did a condition report, they then took a stack of pictures.
12:28 And as you can see here as I flick through these, these are all live images.
12:32 And obviously the vehicle didn't look as nice as it did in the walk around video or in the sales shots.
12:37 But it did show that it was indeed legitimate.
12:40 It also showed just a couple of the small issues that the vehicle had in terms of oil leaks
12:44 and missing bits and pieces and stuff like that.
12:46 So once I got those, I was fairly satisfied that it was all legitimate and ready to go.
12:51 So next step for me was to actually buy it.
12:54 And this is where things started to get interesting.
12:57 So I sent this guy a deposit. It was originally $1,000 US over PayPal.
13:02 He received that. I then sent the balance, and this cost me just under $30,000 US
13:08 in terms of the balance of the payment.
13:10 So I sent that all over to him. He received it.
13:13 And then I thought, "Okay, what do I do with it now?"
13:15 Getting it to Australia is the ultimate goal, but I want someone to look over it.
13:18 And I found a Humvee specialist on the internet that had a number of these,
13:22 that had restored a number of these, that had really good reviews as well.
13:25 So what I did was, "Okay, I'm going to take this. I've bought it.
13:29 I'm going to ship it over to him. He's based in Wisconsin.
13:32 And then I'm going to get him to fit not only a four-speed automatic transmission
13:37 because it still had the original three-speed,
13:39 but also get him to go front to back on it to make sure that all of it was above board."
13:43 Next step for me was finding someone to ship the vehicle to him,
13:47 and that proved to be quite a complex process.
13:50 So I needed to find someone who was willing to transport this from Arkansas,
13:53 where I bought it, all the way over to Wisconsin,
13:56 where this guy had a workshop and he was going to work on it.
13:59 I ended up finding someone who was willing to do it.
14:02 Again, that was a complex process from overseas
14:05 because you're dealing with people who are being told that you're from Australia,
14:08 and they don't love the fact that they're dealing with someone internationally
14:12 because it all just sounds like an absolute scam.
14:14 Thankfully, though, they came through with the goods,
14:16 and they ended up arriving to pick up the vehicle to transport it over to Wisconsin.
14:22 Okay, so next part of the story, it arrived finally in Wisconsin,
14:26 and my buddy over there started working on it.
14:29 It was pretty cool because he sent me a stack of update images along the way.
14:33 So it was everything from the transmission being pulled off the vehicle
14:36 to it being up on the hoist, some of the things that he changed.
14:40 So the portal axles needed a little bit of revision work.
14:43 I also needed new tyres. The original tyres were pretty crappy,
14:46 so he got a new set of tyres for me.
14:48 A lot of the rubber bump stops on the bonnet needed replacing.
14:51 So you can see here they were quite weathered,
14:54 so the weather had eaten away at the rubber bits,
14:56 and these are pretty important to make sure that it is going to stay intact
15:00 when you open and close the back of it.
15:02 Also, this down here, I had him fit an airlift bumper to it.
15:06 It originally didn't have that, and it kind of looked a little bit strange.
15:09 So obviously not planning on dropping it out of any planes anytime soon,
15:12 but I wanted to have that fitted.
15:13 He also fitted a brand new pioneering kit,
15:15 which is the thing that's under the rear of the vehicle.
15:18 He changed over this grille for me as well,
15:20 so it's a slightly better breathing grille to keep the engine cool.
15:24 And then he also made some changes to the front end as well.
15:27 So we added that brush guard to it.
15:30 It originally didn't have that when I bought it.
15:32 He also fitted the four-speed auto to this instead of the three-speed.
15:36 So there was a fair bit of work that had to go through
15:38 to have that process completed, which I was happy with.
15:41 And this is when it arrived to his workshop on the truck
15:45 that mysteriously picked it up from the last place.
15:48 So that all sort of went well.
15:49 He ended up holding onto this for a little while,
15:52 so there was a lot of work that needed to be done to it.
15:54 The process was all pretty seamless and straightforward.
15:57 He was a consummate professional, and I am glad that I went through that.
16:01 So these are a couple of his other Humvees as well that he was selling.
16:04 So one of them is up-armoured, unlike mine,
16:06 and he also has a truck in the background there as well.
16:09 So, yeah, all that work was done and everything was good to go.
16:13 Next step was getting the vehicle from him in Wisconsin to Los Angeles,
16:17 because Los Angeles was the port that we were using
16:19 to transport the vehicle to Australia.
16:22 One of the big issues that I ran into here was being permitted
16:26 to actually export this vehicle from the United States to Australia.
16:29 This is a military vehicle.
16:31 Obviously, the US doesn't want it being exported from the US
16:34 to an embargoed country where it can be used against their civilians
16:38 and their army to do sort of nasty things.
16:41 And obviously, the process of exporting it then requires you to get that authorisation
16:46 and for them to understand that you're the owner of it,
16:48 getting the authorisation and that you are only going to send it to Australia.
16:52 So this process took about three months.
16:54 So for that three-month period, it was sitting in his workshop.
16:57 Work was completed. I paid to have all the stuff done.
17:00 Ended up costing around US$20,000 to have all of the work done to it.
17:03 So it was a comprehensive list of stuff that took place.
17:07 I finally got the approval to have it exported,
17:11 and using that approval, I was able to then have it shipped to Los Angeles.
17:15 One of the risky things here as well is that you need to have
17:18 the vehicle's title shipped with it.
17:20 So during the whole transit process, the vehicle's title was sitting in it.
17:23 And in the States, if anyone had realised that,
17:26 they could have simply taken the vehicle, they would have had the title.
17:29 They could have changed it to their name and stolen it effectively,
17:32 and I would have had sort of nothing to do with it.
17:35 So I ended up finding a bloke that was able to transport it
17:38 from Wisconsin to Los Angeles.
17:40 Now, the thing I loved about this is when he picked it up
17:43 and started sending me progress pictures,
17:45 he was driving an F-150 Raptor, and it looked absolutely unreal.
17:49 So obviously he'd done a stack of work to it,
17:52 but he was transporting it across the country.
17:54 And these update pictures as it was being transported were pretty cool.
17:57 I just loved seeing it on the back of his Raptor,
18:01 getting sent all the way across the country there
18:03 until it finally arrived in Los Angeles,
18:06 where it was basically in the port waiting to be sent to Australia.
18:11 Got more sort of pictures here of the transport process as well,
18:16 which is pretty cool.
18:17 So the next issue I had was when it arrived in Los Angeles
18:20 to be transported to Australia, this is a video of it,
18:23 at the port there, they sort of go over it to make sure
18:25 that it's all there and everything's legitimate.
18:28 It ended up sitting in the shipping yard for about a month and a half.
18:31 And the reason for that is it arrived just as all of the shipping problems
18:36 started to happen.
18:37 So shipping became very expensive very quickly.
18:40 And as a result of that, thankfully I had prepaid for everything.
18:43 So it was just waiting to have a ship allocated to it
18:45 so that it could arrive to Australia.
18:47 It was finally loaded onto the ship,
18:49 and it was setting sail for Australia from the port of Los Angeles.
18:54 Okay, so at this point I'd spent a fair chunk of cash on this,
18:58 and it finally arrived in Australia.
19:00 And I thought, "Okay, we're home and hosed.
19:02 All that has to happen now is they do a final inspection on it.
19:05 It's a biosecurity inspection, and then it gets released to me,
19:09 and I'm good to drive it."
19:10 Well, it arrived in Australia, and I get a call from the fumigation place.
19:16 They basically clean all of these vehicles before biosecurity comes through,
19:19 checks it all, and ticks it off.
19:21 And I thought they were joking on the phone, but they said to me,
19:25 "Yeah, you need to take the engine out, and the whole thing needs to be taken apart."
19:29 And I thought, "I don't know if they're taking the piss,
19:31 or if these guys are actually being genuine."
19:33 So I went down there, and I said, "What's going on?"
19:36 And the guy said with a straight face, "The engine needs to come out.
19:39 You need to pull the whole interior apart."
19:41 And I'm like, "Why does the engine need to come out?"
19:45 It's literally--you can see through everything.
19:48 It's made of, like, aluminium.
19:51 Why does all this need to happen?
19:53 So apparently there is a special procedure,
19:55 which I discovered later on, for military vehicles.
19:58 And with military vehicles, they need to be able to access every single crevice
20:02 because obviously if this had been in Iraq or Afghanistan
20:06 or just anywhere where there were these contaminants that could be coming to Australia,
20:10 they wanted to be able to inspect them
20:12 and make sure that they weren't going to escape and ruin livestock in Australia.
20:16 And as a result of that, he wasn't kidding.
20:18 I had to take the entire thing apart.
20:21 So I basically took time off work with my brother to take it from its current state,
20:27 which was just like that, a complete vehicle,
20:31 to this state where it was completely pulled apart
20:34 to the point where we had to virtually remove every single exterior portion to the car,
20:39 all of the interior panels.
20:41 We had to take the cooling stack apart so you could actually see between it.
20:45 Every single point that you couldn't see from the outside
20:48 had to be visible from any inspection point they had.
20:52 So yeah, obviously it was a bit of a depressing process
20:55 because it all had to be taken completely apart.
20:57 We had to remember where everything was.
20:59 Some of the stuff obviously hadn't been taken off for quite some time.
21:02 So it was--yeah, there was a fair bit of work involved in making sure
21:06 that we could actually get it to the point where it could be cleared by biosecurity.
21:11 That's where we thought everything was going to be home and hosed
21:14 and we wouldn't have any more dramas, but that's where the cowboys got involved.
21:18 So once biosecurity cleared it, the fumigation mob wouldn't let me leave.
21:23 They said I needed to pay them cash because they had to hold the vehicle.
21:27 And I was like, "Well, I only held the vehicle because you couldn't clean it
21:30 to the point where it could be cleared by biosecurity."
21:33 And they basically insisted that I pay them cash,
21:36 and I had to basically go to an ATM, withdraw cash.
21:40 They wouldn't give me an invoice.
21:42 So it was just the dodgiest place in the world,
21:44 and unfortunately at every single touchpoint along the way,
21:47 someone is trying to extort you.
21:49 They're trying to take money off you and trying to make as much as they can out of this
21:53 because they know the second this has arrived in Australia,
21:56 you're not going to just leave it there and go, "Well, I'll just forget about it now."
22:00 You're going to pay them every single cent that you have to.
22:02 So yeah, basically that was the process.
22:05 I finally got it taken out of there. I paid them the cash.
22:08 I don't want to ever deal with them again, and I wish them no ill will,
22:13 but I just hate people like that that take advantage of others.
22:16 It's pretty disappointing that those companies exist,
22:18 and they're obviously in use by other companies here in Australia.
22:22 So yeah, that is the story. How much did it end up costing?
22:25 To be honest, I stopped adding stuff onto the budget
22:28 because it started to get a little bit depressing,
22:30 but I suspect there's about $70,000 or $80,000 Australian dollars' worth of money spent on it so far.
22:36 Probably even more, but like I said, I'm not going to continue looking.
22:40 So getting insurance for it was a little bit tricky,
22:42 but I got it insured for the money that I spent on it, which is good,
22:46 and it's still yet to get registered, so that whole process will eventually happen
22:50 because I've got to add reverse lights, proper indicators, and all that sort of stuff.
22:54 So anyway, that is the story of my Humvee.
22:58 I hope you enjoyed that. We're going to do a review on it as well.
23:01 So when that goes live, you'll be notified of it,
23:04 so make sure you subscribe and hit the bell icon as well to be notified when it does finally go live.
23:09 If there is anything you want to know, I know this is a bit of a long video.
23:12 We went into a stack of detail there, but I thought I wanted to share the whole process
23:16 just in case you're going down the path of it.
23:18 If you do have any questions about importing a car to Australia,
23:21 let me know in the comments section below, and I will answer as much as I possibly can.
23:25 If you did like this video, please make sure you like it and you share it with your mates,
23:28 and if you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon.
23:32 But until next time, take it easy.