UK Import Duty at 10% and VAT at 17.5%, if you pay £3.5K for the bike, that's nearly £1000.
Then you need to arrange with the japanese seller / exporter / shipping agent to properly crate up and ship the bike to the UK, + shippers handling fees. If its not crated correctly the bike will be trashed when it arrives.
Expect you will pay up to £1000 for this, all in with the right crating.
So that's approx. £2000, taking your £3.5K NSR straight up to £5.5K!! This tallys with what that UK importer (bridgemoto) said in MCN last week on individual bike import costs.
The UK Grey Importers reduce this cost by shipping full containers of bikes. Hence lower shipping cost per bike. I'm not certain of this, but they may also have a commercial invoice stating value for the whole container, rather than for each bike, which could be a lower value than each bike added together. Hence lower duty per each bike in the container compared to an individually imported bike with a commercial invoice for the full value paid in Japan. As I said, uncertain of this, but its done sometimes this way for exports out of the EU.
Going down the single bike import route is not a bad idea as GooBike are listing over 200 SP + SE models up for sale in Japan. Good choice and possibility to find a great condition bike. I expect what you need is a damn good contact in Japan, to do the viewing & buying on your behalf and arrange the crating / exporting / shipping.
Bridgemoto in the UK say they will help source & ship specific bikes in Japan for UK buyers. That could be a solution, if they have regular containers coming into the UK, you will save on shipping costs, then it depends what their finders fee / admin fee is.
This link gives more detail on the process involved
http://www.epoi.com/faq.html
If I was doing this myself, I'd seriously think about flying to Japan to look at the bikes myself. OK, its going to seriously add to the cost, but what the hell
Travelling around Japan on the Bullet Train, looking at bikes to buy, my idea of a cool holiday, compared to laying on a beach in the Costa del Crap for 2 weeks 
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Rich
MC21 Track Bike / RS250 NF5 'Spencer', NX5 'Cadalora' & NXA 'Aoyama' / RS500 / Two Brothers Racing RC30
Last edited by RichG on Mon May 12, 2008 8:16 pm; edited 2 times in total