Morning,
welcome! and firstly, you're in the right place
We've all been at this point and its a great site to get advice...
There are many threads on here with what to look for, where to look and bits of advice in between (Padraic himself went through this process himself recently - i would look through his posts before we end up repeating it all again), but if there's anything you can't find an answer to, then someone will no doubt know it...
Personally I bought mine from Germany and imported it to Belgium (good ones in Belgium were as rare as rocking horse poo!), but my Mrs is German and so we managed the import process on that side ok, but it can be a lot of paperwork and phone calls to here, there and everywhere (and I can't speak for the UK import process what is involved there?...).
Of course all genuine T4 Cali's are LHD, so importing will have to deal with that too.
As Padraic mentions, the main thing is not being stung by a fake - plenty of dodgy one's out there... Do your homework and key here is check the paperwork matches what you're hoping for. You know T4s so you know what to look for in the base van, the key then is to give the Westfalia components a very thorough going over before accepting one - if things don't work, are broken or missing, this is where you will end up spending lots to correct... Not to mention the ever growing difficulty to source good replacement parts - buy to the best of your budget and hold out for the right one.These vans are generally well loved, but a beaten up one will disappoint you very quickly...
Germany, followed by the Netherlands are likely the hot spots for finding the most good vans - what we did was pick a region, trawl through the ads and then spend a weekend going round to see the ones we shortlisted - we managed to see 13 in one weekend...
If you decide to import one from abroad and if you can trailer it home then i think you will save a lot of hassle than trying to manage the transit plates etc, but maybe someone else has better advice on that...
The link below, if you haven't already seen it, is a great source of all that is T4 California - this is where you will find all the info, importantly what is correct for a model-year - good rule of thumb, if you find a van that has features that don't fit the model year as described below, then its likely a fake... At the end of the day, a fake (by which i mean a converted Caravelle or Multivan - but be careful here, a lot of these conversions are likely to have some dodgy history in how they came to be) could still be something of interest, but then don't pay genuine price for it...
http://www.westfaliat4.info/index.html
Good luck, be patient - though now's a good time to start looking, end of season is when most folks begin to sell...
