twistedmelon

That must be why a lot of the expats here are sitting outside the bars all day, their cars are in the impound

Culebronchris

Can I just check this?

I have a pal who lives in the UK and who brings his legally taxed, MOT'd, insured classic car from the UK over to Spain from time to time for the fun of driving it there and back. Obviously enough, it runs on British plates. I occasionally drive that car and I've always presumed that's fine provided I'm insured appropriately for it. I'm resident.

I hope that you were just avoiding a really tortuous sentence for the variations on the situation where Brits bring their cars from the UK and continue to drive them around on UK plates long after they have become resident.

Is that the case?

Rotor

Not always and its not simple, if the car is a hire car or an employers car then things are different....and complicated

paintermujer

In town today a local police car stopped and examined the number plates but didnt pull over.

Were getting edgy now.Our car dosent come back until thursday or friday and we have to have transport so we are stuck with it.

How can an english car with UK plates be on a spanish background plate with "E" at the side?????No tax disc?????

Fingers crossed.Just dont want hassle and were too tight to go and rent a car for a few days as we have spent £1,000sssssss on cars since being here.

cricketman

Get yourself an old Seat Leon/Cordoba/Ibiza

I've had my 11 year old one for 3 years, done 50k km (150k km in total) and had nothing go wrong with it (touch wood). And it's fun to drive!

Plus you can park these things anywhere as they are two a penny

twistedmelon

Sorry but if you use crossed fingers as a guide to life you need a reality check.
WHY are you driving a vehicle that you have no idea whether it or you are legal to drive
You can choose for yourself but what about an innocent party who may get involved because the insurance may be void and all because you are being "tight" and can't go without a car for just a while. Try a taxi or a bus.

paintermujer

Our car thats in for repair is an old 12 year old seat ibiza.But it didnt come at an old price and more recent repairs have made it an expensive car.

Thats not mentioning the money we spent on our UK reg LHD which suffered so badly in last septembers storms, and then sold so cheap.

A warning to everyone when it comes to transportation in spain. I hope youve got a deep pocket.

So we are going to put up with this other bucket and keep our fingers crossed.:fingerscr ossed:

cricketman

Oh dear. What happened, did the CAM belt go?

A 12 year old Ibiza shouldnt have cost more than 2k euros. Though I guess the same car would be a couple of hundred quid in the UK

paintermujer

Spot on - it cost 2000 euros.

But since weve had it its had lots of niggly but important problems including the oil pump and more which is being done now.

So we can add another 1100 euros on top of that.

jdr

Enlighten me on what a Spanish background plate is.
If it`s a commercial vehicle it won`t get changed to Spanish plates anyway.
Twistedmelon has a Spanish one classed as a van over here.

Rotor

Spanish car prices are crazy and usually poorly maintained also you have to be very very carefull where you take your car for repairs , Ive never come across so many cowboys ,a mixture of incompetence and outright crooks ,both back street and main agents , the latter being the worse.
There is some logic in bringing a RHD car from the UK ,normaly less than half price when over five years old , better maintained and dent free!

Some drivers cant cope with RHD in a LHD country but I wonder if they should be allowed on the road at all when this is the case

pete_l

I'm not sure that "cant cope" is the right phrase. There's no doubt that overtaking is *much* safer in an LHD car in an LHD country - you don't have to pull out so far to see past the vehicle in front, to see if there's anything coming. Plus if you have passengers (esp. in the back) an RHD is harder to see past them when entering roundabouts, as they tend to obstruct the view. I would think that given the choice, almost everyone would prefer to drive the "right" car for the handedness of the roads - whatever country they were in.

Rotor

Absolutley but you have to adapt to what your driving and people who cant have very little ability in any vehicle

pete_l

You mean like the Luxembourg[1] plated 40-tonner I was behind in High Wycombe a while back. It approached a small roundabout to take the first exit and picked the right-hand (i.e. oncoming traffic's) lane to leave by, as would be natural for an LHD road user. Luckily it was deserted at the time, though that might have been what confused the driver.

[1] It was an "L", coulda been Lichenstein or Latvia, I don't know and didn't care to ask the driver

paintermujer

The "van" was parked outside our gates today when I heard a loud car beep.Looking out of the window there I saw the guardia looking very interested in it.

We have given them the info we have.They have gone away to do some checks and will be back later if something is wrong!!!!!!!

Nice men though for the guardia.