How to guide: Buying a car in Germany

[cressers]

OK - having done this, I thought I would share my experiences on this, and put down some information to help others.

Background - Why Germany?

Car prices in Finland are higher than the rest of Europe due to the import tax charged. As such, when we were wanting a used car, the prices here started me browsing on German car websites. In became clear that the prices were significantly lower. I knew there must be a catch, but I started looking for it with interest.

After a while is became clear, you need to pay full price in Germany (including tax, unless you are a business) as well as Import tax to finland. On top of this you have transport costs, winter tires, registration fees, and some other bits and bobs.

Basically, the more you spend the more you "save" for us, we paid 16k+5k in costs, compared to retail of 28k€ in Finland, so worth it.

For us, it came out about 6k€ cheaper than in finland after all this, and was worth the effort.

Considerations about German imports

You may find it slightly harder to sell the car if its an import, some Finns think some cars miss key features (on BMW - A nordic package, for example) - but in reality this only applied a few years back, but the risk is there.

You are limited by language. There are many cars, but you need a dealer who speaks english and can help with the paper work. There are some agents in Germany/finland who supply a service (look at car, do background check etc) - but for me the whole point was to save cash, not pay someone to do it for me. IF you buy in a small town, then getting export plates will be impossible if you dont speak german.

Finding the car

I used http://www.mobile.de
It has a search in english, and all german used dealer stock is on there (BMW, MB etc) so you dont need to trawl lots of sites.

You can get an idea of the tax amount from looking at the recently imported cars - find make/model/year/km and you will get a rough idea of the ball park
http://www.tulli.fi/fi/yksityisille/aut ... /index.jsp

You can also call them, and they will tell you roughly the amount.

What options are essential in Finland

From speaking with friends, and searching forums i found the following.
- German winter tires are not suitable for Finnish winters, so dont bother with those (unless the wheels are good)
- Heated seats, a must in Finland

That was pretty much it.
Mobile.de allows a lot of search filtering, so its pretty easy to find the right car.

Warranties
Warranties offered by dealers are useless as you can only take the car back to them. Some, BMW Europlus for example are valid EU wide. So its worth checking the details.

When you have found a car

Haggling - there is some wiggle room, maybe 5-10% depends on the price. Try and get them to add things on. I bought some winter wheels at a good price, so they made some more money, but I saved over finnish prices. So win-win

We went with a main dealer and a europe wide warranty, so I agreed the price and the details before seeing the car in person. If you stick with dealer francises the reliability is better, and you have the marque to fall back on. But German main dealers are pretty trustworthy compared to backstreet dealers.

Assuming you want to pick up the car, you need to agree with the dealer that they will sort out the export papers.

You need
- Certificate of Conformity (CoC) - this makes you work in Finland much easier
- a commercial invoice after the purchase showing price etc
- export plates/Insurance - most dealers will do this. Beware, there are 2 types - Red plates- valid in any EU country for 3 days or Yellow - valid only in germany. I took yellow as I was taking the germany - finland ferry, but beware
- Registration document of the car

You can arrange Insurance also in Finland with just the Vehicle ID (VIN) number. I used if.fi as I had no insurance history, and they came out about 1000€ a year less that pohjola, Tapiola etc. But this will depend on you.

Thats it. I agreed to pay in cash, and it was all pretty smooth. You can do bank transfer, credit card - whatever you agree with the dealer.

Getting there and home

Getting there is easy, flying to main airport. if you search on Mobile.de you can filter by post code. But the trains are so cheap and easy in germany that I left it anywhere: the dealer I found was 3 hours by train from Munich, but it was easy to get to using train and the dealer picked me up at the station.

Getting home is a little trickier.

You have the choice of
- Germany (Rostock/Travemunde)-Helsinki using http://www.finnlines.com - take 30hrs, and its boring.
- drive up through germany>denmark>sweden then ferry to Helsinki/Turku (I didnt have the time in my schedule for this, but this was cheapest and most fun option)
- Germany>Poland>Latvia>Estonia>ferry to helsinki (I heard the roads are bad, crime is high - I stopped there, but others may have different opinions)

Back in Finland- What to do now?
You need to go to Tulli when you land. Now, this is not at the port, but in the centre of helsinki.
Its at Vilhonvuorenkatu 12 B,Helsinki

There are other offices listed also http://www.tulli.fi/fi/yksityisille/aut ... paikat.jsp

You can mail the forms in, but this is really empty, takes no time - and they help you with all the paper work- everything is in english.
Form Tulli you need:

-the permission paper to drive the car on finnish roads
-you can also fill in your C02 tax form. The decision for me came in 2 days.

From Tulli you go to katsustus and get the car inspected.
http://www.a-katsastus.fi/Sivut/default.aspx

Here they need the german registration documents, as well as the CoC document. You also need to ask for temporary plates.

They will charge you about 220€ and then check the car - takes 30min. You get temp plates and remove the german ones from the car-

After you have done this, just wait for the letter from Tulli. You tax amount will come, pay it - then take the decision letter back to Katsustus and get your proper plates.

Now call your insurance company and let them know your license plate.

Done.

Summary

Its not hard. I personally would avoid non dealers unless you can get german help, or a really looking to for a bargain.

Every step of the way the finnish authorities are helpful, and answer any questions.

Do it, it was quite fun!



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[narsingoju]

Hi, Thanks for the excellent post. Infact I approached a dealer to transport the car from germany and was looking for some help on how to register here it finland next week, that's when I came across your post. Your systematic procedural information/suggestions had made my job very easy now. I regret I had seen this post just after I had an agreement with a local dealer otherwise I could have saved some more money from your valuable suggestions.
Thanks Again---

[Rosamunda]

cressers,

What about non-German cars (eg Toyota)? From your experience, is all that you wrote valid for any make of car?
(We are looking for a LandCruiser, German not a problem - my other half speaks the language)

[sinikala]

I agree with most of that, it sounds quite familiar. Some comments ...

In became clear that the prices were significantly lower.... Basically, the more you spend the more you "save" for us, we paid 16k+5k in costs, compared to retail of 28k€ in Finland, so worth it.

I was looking for a low mileage car. I found that for a fixed budget - in our case €10k for a second car in 2005 - after the cost of travel, car purchase, shipping, import tax, registration, fitting block and cabin heaters, and a new set of winter tyres, we could have purchased exactly the same car in Finland... The difference was that the Finnish car would have have had 150k on the clock, whilst the German car had 72k. As folk here tend to change their cars less often, low mileage examples are very rare in Finland.

Finding the car

I used http://www.mobile.de
It has a search in english, and all german used dealer stock is on there (BMW, MB etc) so you dont need to trawl lots of sites..

My strategy was a little different, I selected the place I wanted to buy from. You need a place with a good choice of cars = a big city. You don't want it to be too far from the major ports i.e. Rostock, and preferably with an airport. Hamburg was the best choice for me. It has a population a little less than that of Finland and more used cars than you can shake a stick at.

I selected the brands I was interested in and visited the websites ... e.g. http://www.ford.de and search gebrauchtwagen for the location of interest. You only need basic german - my O-Level from 1987 and dict.leo.org was enough to get me by.

Getting there and home
Getting home is a little trickier.

You have the choice of
- Germany (Rostock/Travemunde)-Helsinki using http://www.finnlines.com - take 30hrs, and its boring.
..

You missed the easiest method. You drive the car to the Shipping company office at the port in Rostock, take the keys to the guy in the office the ask him to send it to finland for you on the next available boat. Hand over your cash and ask them if they would be kind enough to call you a taxi to the train station. Take a train back to wherever it was you flew in to and fly back to Finland.

The only down side with this method is that you need to keep to a tight schedule in obtaining the car as you must have the return flight booked, I gave myself 4 days and even had time to take a train down to Herford for the day to visit my kid bro.

When the car arrives in Finland you go and collect it.

20 mins in a taxi + 2 hours in a train + 2 hours in a plane beats 30 hours on the boat. Not a hard choice.

Every step of the way the finnish authorities are helpful, and answer any questions.

Things must have improved in the 6 years since I went through this process... whilst it was relatively straightforward and painless, I wouldn't go as far as saying anybody I encountered in the process was helpful - apart from the Ford Dealer in Hamburg.

[FinnGuyHelsinki]

It' worth noting that the tax (it's not import tax, but tax for the car like it's paid also for new cars bought in Finland) is calculated from the sale price of a similar car in Finland, so it's not relative to the purchase price in Germany (or wherever else you buy it). E.g. http://www.ottoauto.de has a list/search engine for actual tax amounts and a calculator for an estimate (Tulli ultimately decides the final amount).

[FinnGuyHelsinki]

cressers,

What about non-German cars (eg Toyota)? From your experience, is all that you wrote valid for any make of car?
(We are looking for a LandCruiser, German not a problem - my other half speaks the language)

Any car that's sold within the EU as new you should have no problems with.

[stephanHKI]

Hi,

some comments, as I went through the process just end of last year:

1. Try to guess the import tax before buying a car in germany - the import tax is based on CO2 emissions (except for really old cars) and is calculated from the finnish value of the car.
- find desired car on mobile.de (or other sites) and find out the CO2 emissions
- find same model with about same mileage and extras on nettiauto.com -> get a good guestimate for the price
- check with the list from tulli how much % you will have to pay
I was off by only 50 euros in my calculations. it gives you a good idea

2. For the above reasons and the extremely high value of four wheel drive vehicles in finland i would really consider not to get a land rover or other 4WD vehicles...

3. make sure the care you buy has been in use for 6 months and 6000km, otherwise Finland considers it a new car and will charge, on top of the import tax, also the VAT and they don't care if you already paid it in germany.

4. there is a Tulli in the harbor where you can get your temporary plates. To get temporary plates, you must have insurance valid in finland already. So, get the insurance the moment you buy the car in germany. I just called Pohjola and faxed them the registration documents. Insurance was valid immediately.
Please also note that the Tulli office in Helsinki downtown is closed most of the day. They do not want anyone walking in there, they explicitly ask people do deal with them by mail. Therefore: do the initial paperwork in the harbor!

5. you might not safe much money compared to buying in finland but you usually get a lot more extras and a lot less km on the clock for about the same price

6. german winter tires are perfectly fine in the Helsinki area, but I wouldn't use them in the country side or up north.
if you get a decent set of winter tires in germany with the car, take it.

[FinnGuyHelsinki]

6. german winter tires are perfectly fine in the Helsinki area, but I wouldn't use them in the country side or up north.
if you get a decent set of winter tires in germany with the car, take it.

That works only as long as there is no snow and no ice. One can always argue that driving slower will get you through the other days (of which there were quite many in Helsinki last winter), which is partially true as it is possible to not have an accident even with summer tires, but if you don't have the possibility to use public transportation or stay home when needed and you _have_ to be able to drive basically every day, you will want to have proper winter tires on your car, the central European ones are not suitable throughout the winter anywhere in Finland.

[Rosamunda]

2. For the above reasons and the extremely high value of four wheel drive vehicles in finland i would really consider not to get a land rover or other 4WD vehicles...

Not sure I understand what you mean. If 4WD have a "high value" in Finland then surely that's a good reason for buying one in Germany. Isn't the tax rate calculation for 4WD the same as for any car (ie based on CO2)?

We bought a duty-free new MB in Germany in 1988 in the pre-EU days (and we still have it running) - the procedure was of course a bit different then but we imported it to Finland in 2001. One thing we did when we moved here was to have it Dinitrolised (ie sealed underneath) - not sure if that is still necessary but our MB is 23 yrs old and has no rust underneath

[stephanHKI]

2. For the above reasons and the extremely high value of four wheel drive vehicles in finland i would really consider not to get a land rover or other 4WD vehicles...

Not sure I understand what you mean. If 4WD have a "high value" in Finland then surely that's a good reason for buying one in Germany. Isn't the tax rate calculation for 4WD the same as for any car (ie based on CO2)?

We bought a duty-free new MB in Germany in 1988 in the pre-EU days (and we still have it running) - the procedure was of course a bit different then but we imported it to Finland in 2001. One thing we did when we moved here was to have it Dinitrolised (ie sealed underneath) - not sure if that is still necessary but our MB is 23 yrs old and has no rust underneath

The point was that the vehicles are in Fi extremely expensive (and they usually have high CO2 as well) therefore the import tax might easily be more than the value of the car in germany.
Colleague of mine thought about importing a range rover but the car tax would have been around 24k while the car was below 20k in germany.

[Upphew]

Not sure I understand what you mean. If 4WD have a "high value" in Finland then surely that's a good reason for buying one in Germany. Isn't the tax rate calculation for 4WD the same as for any car (ie based on CO2)?

Yes the percentage is same as for any car. But the absolute € comes from tax-% x value in Finland, thus with high values, the tax, €, will be high too.

[vagrant]

I know one opposite example: new car was imported from Finland to Sveitsi, so the car had pre-tax price (the cheapest pre-taxed cars are in Finland, in fact), then guy paid taxes here.
What would be if someone would like to import pre-taxed car from Switzerland to Finland, should you pay finnish taxes, if yes, then it is probably hopeless...

[Muddy Zuk]

why would you say german winter tyres are no use in Finland? winter tyres from continental will still be winter tyres from continental wether purchased here or there?
So i guess the winter tyres i bought in france for driving there would be no use for a finnish winter?
not trying to be bitchy here but how did you come to that conclusion?

[jas_rho]

why would you say german winter tyres are no use in Finland? winter tyres from continental will still be winter tyres from continental wether purchased here or there?
So i guess the winter tyres i bought in france for driving there would be no use for a finnish winter?
not trying to be bitchy here but how did you come to that conclusion?

The rubber used is different. The stuff used here can handle the colder temperatures. I am not an expert or anything on this but my buddy has brought many cars from germany and a few have come with snow tires as well and they have been horrible to drive with.

[stephanHKI]

Yes, central european winter tires have different rubber mixture.
finnish winter tires are softer (and you get studs here too).
but I found german winter tires useful, though not perfect, in Helsinki.
When temperatures go down below -20 and there is a thick layer of snow or ice, surely central european winter tires will have problems.
Still, during most winters, roads are clear and temps are only that low for a few weeks.
So I stick to my opinion that central european tires are ok for the Helsinki area.