Importing a car

[caroline]

We are thinking of bringing over a left hand drive car from Switzerland to use when we and our family are on holiday. As property owners here but not fulltime residents,is this a load of hassle?What do we need to do?

 

[Deanscroft]

I imported a left hand drive Opel Zafira from the UK about 3 years ago. It is quite a complicated proceedure for which I recommend you use one of the specialists who advertise in the Bulletin. I used a lady name Margarite who was excellent. The main parts of the process are as follows :-

The car will need to have a European Certificate of Technical Conformity. Depending on the age of the vehicle and whether it was originally sold in the EU when new then this should already be with the vehicle documents. If not then a full (and expensive) technical inspection will need doing in order to issue one.

You will need to get the vehicle an ITV test certificate from the nearest ITV Centre (Inca) This is the Spanish MOT test.

All the vehicles paperwork is then taken to Trafico in Palma and the Spanish Registration applied for. You will get stamped photocopies of your docs back so you can continue to drive.

About 4-6 weeks later the Spanish registration and numberplates are issued.

Your next question is `How much does it cost?´

Hard to answer this as it all depends on the value of the car as you have to pay an import tax which when I did it was 4% up to 1500cc and 6% over. This may have changed since then. Also this is an official value provided by trafico which could be more or less than you paid. Add to this the registration fee (50€), the local vehicle tax (150€)and the Specialists fee (200€) and it all starts to add up.

My vehicle was valued at 8000 euros and I paid close to 1000 euros to change it from UK plates to Spanish.

 

[cujimmy]

As the last post says its quite expensive and time consuming,if you have not bought this car yet a better bet would be to buy one on mainland spain, generally cheaper than Majorca and no import transfers to worry about

 

[JMD40]

Why not contact Mallorca solutions who can advise on current requirements and costs. They visit Puerto Pollensa every Tuesday - give them a call to make an appointment - they certainly take a lot of the hassle out of the situation for you.