Bought a French car with the intention of taking it to Spain – not a straightforward process.

Bought a French car with the intention of taking it to Spain – not a straightforward process.

I just bought a French left hand drive car with the intention of taking it to Spain.  I will need to wait 6 months before registering it in Spain in order to avoid the import duty.  I was intending to take it to Spain about Feb 2014.

I thought this would be relatively straightforward but it has not worked out that way.  My first problem is that UK insurance companies do not want to insure foreign registered cars.  The second problem is that the UK Government does not allow UK residents to drive foreign registered cars in the UK.  I therefore have a car which I can not drive.

I had thought of registering it under UK plates and then taking it to Spain.  I could register it as a UK car which would overcome the insurance obstacle and this would allow me to drive it in Spain for 90 days.  However, there are a number of UK requirements that have to be met.  These are similar to the conditions imposed by the Spanish Government when we want to register a UK car in Spain.  The first requirement is for left dipping headlights and the second is for a dual marked speedometer.  My left hand car fails on both these requirements.  The lights dip for Europe not the UK.  All the French and Spanish cars I have ever driven only have kilometre markings on the speedometer.

I feel I am running out of options.  I have contemplated transporting it to Spain and then trying to insure it there.  I don’t know whether Spanish insurers will insure non Spanish cars – does anyone have any experience of this.

There is a great deal of experience among the members of this forum and I would be grateful for any constructive advice and suggestions.

I look forward to hearing from you.

PaddyW

As your plan is to take it to Spain, you will obviously have to change the plates to Spanish plates. There are some insurance companies in Spain that will insure foreign plates for 3 months and then you must change the plates to Spanish ones. So the normal procedure would be to get the insurance on your French car froma  Spanish insurance company and apply for the Spanish plates at the same time. Not sure how long that takes but you would have a window of 3 months to be able to drive the car in Spain. Not sure if this helps you or not..

very tricky one

you could wait 6 months and then pay for a transporter to spain only to find out that the paperwork for the french car is incomplete which could very easily render the car useless.

i think this is a case of trying to save money wrongly because cars in spain have never been cheaper.

scrap it or sell it and just buy spanish