Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms help - importing to Germany

German Moggers, or anyone who might know.
Apparently it's not so easy for a German resident to get temporary insurance cover to drive a UK car to Germany for import. My friend Aiga's issues are:

I'd be grateful to hear from the Germans on your car forum how they insure a car in the following circumstances:

- car needs to be driven from UK to Germany
- car has currently got a UK number plate
- car will remain in Germany indefinitely
- driver/owner is resident in Germany only, not in the UK

Thank you! We'll get that Landy across to Heidelberg yet!

Any guidance appreciated.
I've exported cars myself, but even when I've been resident elsewhere I've also had a UK address and secured temporary UK cover.

Get a UK resident insured with green card to drive it to Germany Transfer ownership in Germany and then do all the TÜV and registration requirements when there?

Several guys on here have done this Parisa and I'm sure the MSCCD have very good first hand knowledge they can give you, I know quite a few members of the group on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/MSCCD.DE/?ref=br_rs

I could give them or your friends contact details via a pm if you or he are not members of the German Club if it would help.
http://www.msccd.de/

One TM member has just done the same to NZ having had 6 months touring UK with no fixed UK address, it wasn't cheap but it worked through Headley Insurance Brokers + ask to speak to Chris Watts. https://www.headleyinsurance.co.uk/special_schemes/morgan_sports_cars/

From an insurance perspective I think they are worried that you may be a Zigeuner .

I imported a few cars from the USA myself. But that was relatively easy, because these cars were picked up by trailer in Rotterdam.
UK is a special case, so far I have learned but no personal experiences... mainly because of personal insurance and the requirement to reside in the UK for 12 months before you would be insured.

In the following I am not talking about the usual requirements (contract of sale, tax paid, existing license number, valid MOT, etc., etc.)
I am only talking about ONE aspect, without which it does not work anyway to get a car out of the UK on its own wheels as a German .

The problems is that you can not get a „frontier insurance“ any longer.
Until last summer there was offered such an insurance via the ADAC (German Automobile Club). It was the only offer in the market.

This frontier insurance had made it possible to insure the car in the UK on a German collector as long as the car is taxed in the UK, has MOT, plates. That was like squaring the circle.

Allegedly, this insurance
http://www.tourinsure.de/en/home
now offers the same service (although it is actually intended for tourists abroad).
You should urgently contact this insurance company and have them explicitly and personally confirm whether they really insure the trip from UK to Germany with the intention of transferring the vehicle.

If this is not expressly confirmed by this one and only insurance offer for this cases all that remains is to pick up the car with the trailer or a freight forwarder.

Please do not attempt to transfer the car with a German short-term license plate or a red dealer plate. At the ferry port at the latest, this goes wrong during the usual police checks. In the worst case, the car is confiscated. Under German law, the use of a short-term license plate to bring a car from outside to Germany would be an illegal „remote registration“.

Exactly.. when we moved to Germany in 1992 that is exactly what we did, drove the car over as if we were tourists, then had it locally registered, Insured, etc and cancelled the UK registration, etc.

Many thanks everyone. Have passed all the advice on.
These things seem to be easier for the French and Dutch who swoop in to buy lotus every time the exchange rate is favourable. My friend tells me that the feedback has been that Germany is a particular problem. As she is a uk resident I did suggest making it an excuse for a road trip....

And that is what I did taking my Audi 80s from Bavaria to Holland.
The German bureaucrats in Miesbach weren't impressed but couldn't stop it.

When we moved back, in 1999 we took 2 German registered cars back to the UK. One was 3 years old, the other new. Both were supplied with temporary export number plates, valid for 1 month and including 3rd party insurance.
Registering them here was a bigger pain than exporting them!

Peter,
it is more fun if you don't take the oval plate route.
I was told I had to return the number plates as they belonged to the local council. I sent them a copy of the receipt that I had bought them.
We settled on me scraping off the TUV & tax round stickers and posting the scrapings back!

Happy days.