Leaving the money grabbing issue to one side for the moment does it not all boil down to the basic fact of the country of registration of the vehicle and the fact that the person registering the vehicle has to have a registered address in that country.

Margaret

Shouldn't be. Years ago, I obtained a carnet for my Australian registered vehicle from the AA in London without problem.

[QUOTE=NearlyHomelessNick;442194]Been looking into this myself, countries that require a carnet must be presented with one.

no, NZ vehicles can be imported carnet free on the temporary import scheme
Importing a vehicle temporarily (Factsheet 35) | NZ Transport Agency

For those in the UK it's actually very cheap to register your bike in Ireland.

The problem is that the UK RAC have/try to have, some hold of carnets for Irish bikes too. Otherwise you might be able to plead your case to ADAC.