Car import from Germany

Hi. Does anyone have experience with importing a car from Germany? Thanks in advance

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Would you want to do it yourself or have a company do it for you?

A colleague imported a car from Germany and then found out that he wasn’t entitled to the ten years of free servicing that that brand/model usually comes with. I don’t know his numbers but he said that in the end he had not saved much money after all.

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Not personally but a friend imported and resold a couple of new cars back in ~2010 when the Euro crashed vs. CHF. As a result the price for many second hand cars in Switzerland was easily a few 000 higher than the cost of imported, brand new cars in Germany.

If I recall well Switzerland killed this by introducing a tax on either power or emissions. It is calculated on the average of all cars imported. Therefore it stops individuals cross border shopping for 1 luxury car but does not impact the big dealers who might import high power Audis and low power Seats, for example.

I remember thinking this was Swiss protectionism at its worst

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This is right, but if you buy the car via a german dearler close to the border (normally those one can reduce quite a lot the tax as they pay it in a bucket and not per individual car.

That’s right. I bought an import one in the swiss dealers and I did not have the warranty neither the cerise included in CH, but you should have it in Europe :frowning:
So if you live close to the border or you go often, it should not be a big deal, but otherwise as I, it is quite painful

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There are Swiss companies which specialize in importing new and used cars from Germany. You pay a markup for their service, but you still save. The advantage is that you have a local service package, etc. and they can minimize the horsepower tax because they import many different cars each year. They also know take care of the import for you. I’d recommend taking a look at these.