anne c

I DONT WANT TO APPEAR TOTALLY THICK BUT, WOULD IT BE CHEAPER TAKING MY SEPTEMBER 2000 TOYOTA AVENSIS TO SPAIN. OR BUYING A NEW CAR WHEN WE GET OVER THERE. WE INTEND BUYING A NEW OR NEWER L/H/D CAR AS OURS IS 6 YEARS OLD. I THOUGHT WE COULD TAKE IT OVER AND AFTER 6 MONTHS, WE WOULD HAVE TO GET SPANISH PLATES FOR IT? THIS WOULD BE THE TIME WHEN WE WOULD BUY A NEW ONE.
PLEASE HELP, AS WE ARE STILL NOT DECIDED WETHER WE ARE GOING TO DRIVE OVER OR GET THE PLANE AND HIRE A CAR FOR A COUPLE OF WEEKS.
THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HELP IN THE PAST.
ANNE.

zel

Well it's entirely upto you what you want to do, there is nothing stopping you from taking your RHD vehicle over to Spain and using it for upto six months before either returning it to the UK to sell or registering in Spain, you could even register it in Spain straight away and not have to worrry about their import duties as it sounds like you've owned it for more than six months. Remember to take the original bill of sale with you to Spain!

If you're going to do this is get yourself down to Halfords and buy some "Headlight beam deflectors" that one puts on their headlights when driving on the other side, it stops you from blinding the oncoming traffic with your RHD headlights.

One thing I would say is long term a RHD vehicle becomes a complete pain in a LHD country (and vis versa) simple things like toll roads, parking barriers and the most problematic thing is trying to overtake another car as you can not see past it unless you have a passenger.

Remember to factor into your funding of a new vehicle that Spanish new/second market is quite expensive compared to the UK, so be prepared!

Hope this has helped.

pwwm

Also I would add that if you wish to become resident, as soon as you apply you have one month to change the plates, not six months as it used to be.
But we bought both our LHD from UK and changed them here. see link further down re change of plates etc.

pwwm

Pheasant Plucker

I read something on surfandalucia.com about someone who imported a RHD car from UK and regestered it in Spain.

Here is the link to the item
http://www.surfandalucia.com/index.p...=145&Itemid=61

pwwm

I have friends whom I helped to transfer both their RHD to Spanish plates but headlights do need to be changed to conform, the little bits of sticky tape over the lights etc will not pass the ITV.

pwwm