Buying a used car in Europe
Replies: 22 - Last Post: Aug 13, 2012 12:18 AM Last Post By: pmack
jump to
Buying a used car in Europe
can anyone give us some advice? We are from Australia & are flying to Paris & then traveling to Morrocco. We would like to buy a second hand car & drive our way to morocco, but it is hard to find any information on foreigners buying cars in the EU. If anyone has some websites or information that can help us that would be great.Cheers
1
Try searching for this topic on this branch because this has been discussed quite a lot. In France you'll have a lot of problems doing this as you have no permanent address. Your best bet would be in the UK3
One caveat (though you're probably aware of this) in case you try to buy a car in the UK: in mainland Europe we drive on the right side of the road, while UK cars are RHD.In general: forget about buying (or even renting) a car if you plan to spend most of your time in cities.
I've heard positive reports about car leases from France - a forum search should help you dig that information up.
4
You can purchase a LHD car in the UK there are specialists in this. However prices are (for some odd reason) higher then RHD cars. You can find them on ebay too. But you still need a local address for insurance and registration, just like any other country in Europe.So you dump the car in a Morocco???
7
Agree with 6 the UK is the easiest place to buy and register a car and for second hand cars it is certainly cheaper than france , italy or spain. There are loads of used LHD cars in the uk now, just check out ebay or gumtree (especially london). But how long is your trip? You might be better using public transport.8
Right now it is a buyer´s market. So whilst it is relatively easy to buy a car, selling it at the end of your trip might well be problematic if you want to recoup most of the money you spent on it in the first place.I trust you will be returning to the country where you bought it otherwise it means doing an import, a time-consuming and often expensive business.
Selling it in Morocco will cost you an arm and a leg in import duties, including dumping the car there. The car will be entered in your passport and you will be liable for either taking the car back out or paying import duty on it.
9
+ I trust you will be returning to the country where you bought it otherwise it means doing an import, a time-consuming and often expensive business.The advice from Tony above is VERY important. Selling my Belgian car in Spain was impossible, registering it took me 7 months (well of course I was working so only could do this now and then, but still no one seemed to know what the next step was for me, I guess if you have lots of time you could do it in about a month), a ridiculous amount of effort and stamps, and about 800 EUR (which is considered cheap because it was old and has very low HP)
10
Peejee, 7 months??? It took me just 3 weeks, for a Dutch registered car..and that is because they had to write up the "ficha tecnica" specially as it was the one of it's type in Spain...Still I had a lot of running around to do from one office to another.I some how think the OP could not give an a** what happens to the car after use, dump it and move on!
11
Ribeira - where were you when I needed you ! I never thought of writing this question here as it is not really travel related. I really, really googled the internet and probably read the whole internet 4 times :-) Not a lot of info to be found. And none of the officials in Gijon were able to tell me how the process works. Do a google search - you´ll be amazed how many threads there are about people who do not know how to do it, and lawyers who are eager to help.I went to a gestor and they had no idea either !
Mind you, I did lose time going to hacienda and employees telling me "el jefe esta de vacaciones, y el es el unico que sabe". That one alone cost me over a month. One of them was so friendly to start scrolling through one of the Spanish law books though.
But like I said, I was working at the time so only could go to governement agencies now and then. And ALWAYS some document was missing (or needed a photocopy, which unfortunately was not available in the office there)
España es differente :-)
13
Mind you, Barcelona with all its foreigners is probably different than Gijon, where they have a foreiger asking this once a year :-)14
I some how think the OP could not give an a** what happens to the car after use, dump it and move on!R_S, I suspect you are correct in your assumption. However, I hope we are wrong unless the OP has a load of money. Dumping a car in Morocco and walking away is not an option. The car will be entered in his/her passport when s/he enters Morocco and there will be a big problem when s/he tries to leave the country without the car.
