Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

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Valentine11
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Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby Valentine11 » Wed Aug 07, 2019 7:36 am

Apologies if this has already been asked but I couldn’t find a similar situation. We are moving permanently to our holiday home next month and wanted to bring our uk registered car over. We expect to have residency status before 31/10. We know that once we are residents we can no longer drive our uk registered car but is there a grace period after we become residents to either return the car to the UK, sell it in Spain or re register in Spain? Many thanks.

elusive
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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby elusive » Wed Aug 07, 2019 8:13 am

I think its 60 days to get the process started if you intend to exchange plates according to the link below. Imo its easier to sell it in the uk. Hire here for a few weeks and buy a car during that time

https://www.citizensadvice.org.es/faq/c ... -in-spain/

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costakid
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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby costakid » Wed Aug 07, 2019 9:02 am

once you are resident you can not drive a foreign plated car.

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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby Valentine11 » Wed Aug 07, 2019 10:30 am

Thanks for the advice. We need to drive down because we are bringing our pet and she cannot fly. We have thought about buying a spanish registered car here in the UK but that seems to be fraught with paperwork and insurance issues.

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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby casita-bonita » Wed Aug 07, 2019 12:15 pm

We brought our car over when we moved here and transferred it to Spanish plates. Used a Gestor to handle the process and it was an absolute breeze. You also need to consider the cost of second hand cars here in Spain which typically is getting on for double the price of an equivalent UK car, and more often than not they have huge mileages on them..

If you like your car and are happy to drive RHD over here then certainly don't dismiss importing it and putting it onto Spanish plates. We have been driving RHD here for 10 years and never had a problem, in fact I prefer it on the tracks around where I live. Only tricky time is when you go ointo a car park and have to get the ticket.
Regards

Bob

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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby elusive » Wed Aug 07, 2019 4:06 pm

Totally understand re your pet. That has a big effect.

I guess its the waiting on brexit and whether theres a deal which means whether theres a transision period. If there is then you dont need to rush re getting residencia.(you need to file for it after you have been here 90 days) which gives you abit time to sort the car out.

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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby ashtondav » Sat Aug 10, 2019 4:36 pm

casita-bonita wrote:We brought our car over when we moved here and transferred it to Spanish plates. Used a Gestor to handle the process and it was an absolute breeze. You also need to consider the cost of second hand cars here in Spain which typically is getting on for double the price of an equivalent UK car, and more often than not they have huge mileages on them..

If you like your car and are happy to drive RHD over here then certainly don't dismiss importing it and putting it onto Spanish plates. We have been driving RHD here for 10 years and never had a problem, in fact I prefer it on the tracks around where I live. Only tricky time is when you go ointo a car park and have to get the ticket.
But how much did it cost? Last time i looked, 13 years ago, it was not a trivial sum and I think over €1,000

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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby El Cid » Sat Aug 10, 2019 7:59 pm

There is no easy answer to that question unless you know the value that the tax office puts on it and what it’s CO2 emissions are. The legal fees ITV etc are much the same for any car. Import a new big car it could be 15% of the value plus the rest.

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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby alpineSi » Sun Aug 11, 2019 8:25 am

If your Spanish is up to it, you can work out the registration tax here: https://www.dieselogasolina.com/calcula ... ienda.html
If it isn't, tell us the year and model and I (or someone faster) will do it for you.
After that add on whatever modifications and possibly additional paperwork may be necessary.

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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby casita-bonita » Sun Aug 11, 2019 9:36 am

Can't remember the cost exactly as it was 10 years ago. Definately well under 1000euros tho. Wheras to buy the same car, but a spanish one would have cost many thousands more..

No import duty it was considered personal chattels as we had owned the car for more than 6 months prior to moving over.
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Bob

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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby casita-bonita » Sun Aug 11, 2019 1:34 pm

Thought I'd have this on my PC email archives. This was 10 years ago to put my Merc 4x4 onto Spanish plates. Needed the Engineers inspection report as I didn't have an eu certificate of conformance. Which BTW would have cost more to get from Mercedes than the engineers report.

Matriculation tax 1785.34 to be exempted

Yearly Road Tax: 50.00

A special ITV: 114.00

Traffic Office and Colegio Fees 2009: 115.00

Other: Gestoría, engineer and plates 340.00
(VAT Included)


TOTAL COST (1) 619.00

The other costs to add to this were the Baja Consular from the British consulate and changing the headlights. To this day I'm not convinced that they needed changing as there is no lenses moulded into the front glass and a pair of adjusting screws on each headlamp for up/down and left/right. Anyways that's by the by as I sold the old headlights on ebay and covered most of the cost of the new replacement LHD lights.

Gestor did it all. My only contribution was getting the car to the engineer for inspection and the ITV station for the extended test.


As a simple price comparison, right now to buy a 6 year old Merc ML250 model in in the UK would be around the £11k mark (ebay), whereas here in Spain same car is around 20,000 euros (autoscout.es).
Regards

Bob

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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby Paulinmalaga » Sun Aug 11, 2019 2:30 pm

Great price, and very good Yearly Road Tax price for a Merc 4 x 4....50€, My Renault Megane was more than that 10 yrs ago.
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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby casita-bonita » Sun Aug 11, 2019 4:14 pm

It's normally more than that, 107euros pa, Our Smart is 15euros pa which I would have thought costs more to process. The Merc was matriculated in Aug so I guess that it was only part year road tax.
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Bob

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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby alpineSi » Mon Aug 19, 2019 3:07 pm

I did it two years ago in northern Spain and posted this to another thread:

CoC cost: 100€
- Toyota CoC (in English), was accepted by ITV station without any question. It's Spanish law that a Euro CoC is valid - ignore people who say it isn't. I can find the BoE reference if you come up against problems. My CoC was missing something though so we had to get a letter from Toyota with the extra info.

- ITV costs: 54€.
There's no statutory charge for an "import ITV", it's just some stations making a quick buck (for comparison, the next year's ITV was 49€). It will take longer though, because they take photos and use tape measures! 
N.B. it's my understanding that the Spanish finally passed into law the regulation that means a foreign MOT is valid for import purposes; you could save a bit of hassle by looking into that. 

- Headlight costs: 160€
I ordered headlights from a 3rd party supplier online for about 80€ each. Fitting is fairly easy on most modern cars; just need a screwdriver, a wrench and a spare afternoon. Everything came off the front of my Toyota in about 10 twists. Guides are available online for pretty much every car.

Paid a garage 10€ to level these lights with a special box. This didn't work, so I ended up doing it in a dark car park with a measuring tape myself! Again, guides available online.

-Fog light cost: 46€ 
Also ordered an original second rear fog light from a scapyard (in Sweden, via eBay). In my case it was easy enough to cut into the rear bumper and fit. Some cars actually have space in the other cluster so you might just need a a bulb and some wires. 

n.b. I removed my non-factory-fit tow bar out of fear it wouldn't pass (it wasn't on the CoC or registration docs).

-Gestor costs: 40€
I didn't have time to go to trafico so paid a gestor to submit the paperwork.

-Number plates: 25€
Ordered some plastic ones online as I didn't like the Spanish metal look.

-Trafico Taxes + fees: in my case 300€

Fees: Trafico's processing fee was around 90€. 
Registration Taxes: 215€
Taxes depend on the car's value, age and power. This site gave me exactly the same figure the gestor found in their big PDF file: https://www.dieselogasolina.com/calcula ... ienda.html

- Road tax: in my case 215€
Then you have your local council road tax, known as the IVTM also calculated depending on the model and CO2 emissions.
Estimates here: https://www.dieselogasolina.com/calcula ... -ivtm.html

After all that I've since scrapped the car and got about as much as all the above!

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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby spanish_lad » Thu Aug 22, 2019 7:59 am

I have done a few cars since I´ve been here - a 2002 jaguar in about 2015 cost about € 900.00 total. A 1995 ford fiesta in 2017 cost around € 500 total.

Its a fair chunk of cash, and alot of messing about back and forth to malaga,
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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby costakid » Thu Aug 22, 2019 8:29 am

A 1995 fiesta in 2017. Was 1 owner done 5000 miles or sentimental value?

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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby El Cid » Thu Aug 22, 2019 9:41 am

alpineSi wrote: Taxes depend on the car's value, age and power.
It's based on CO2 emissions, not power.

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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby alpineSi » Fri Aug 23, 2019 8:30 am

They seem to be calculated differently. If you look here https://www.dieselogasolina.com/CALCULA ... -IVTM.HTML then it seems that IVTM tax is based on CV, which I called power.

The matricula / registration tax seems to be the one based on emissions. https://www.dieselogasolina.com/calcula ... ienda.html

Or the other way round maybe! On my new car which qualifies for an eco sticker, the matrícula was free (exempt) and road tax is 20€ a year in CyL.

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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby El Cid » Fri Aug 23, 2019 9:48 am

Yes, you are right - I was referring to the registration tax. I should have made that clear.

The IVTM is based on fiscal horsepower, not actual power. It's more closley related to the capacity rather than the actual horsepower. The fact that most engines are now small and turbocharged means that many family cars now fall into the lower IVTM rates.

Sid

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Re: Bringing a UK car to Andalucia

Postby spanish_lad » Mon Sep 23, 2019 6:52 pm

costakid wrote:A 1995 fiesta in 2017. Was 1 owner done 5000 miles or sentimental value?
as far as i can remember, it was less than 60,000 miles, full dealer history. a bit of a 1 geeky owner from new by all accounts. the thing looked like it had just come out of the showroom.

El Cid wrote:The fact that most engines are now small and turbocharged means that many family cars now fall into the lower IVTM rates.

Sid
hence why i´m not driving my mums old omega.. lovely car, but a 2500cc v6 makes the IVTM just under 300€ / year... the megane is 52€...
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