Alright, a lot of you know that Lucas and I have Carla, our grey Ford Fusion. In December, I started looking into Jeeps, because I have always wanted one. I wanted to get a manual and diesel one, that I could take back to the US with me. Before I started searching for vehicles (who am I kidding, as I was looking for Jeeps), I priced out how much money it would cost to transfer a vehicle back to the U.S.
I found out that any vehicle transferred to the U.S. needs to have a U.S. EPA sticker on the engine in order to be shipped. If it does not have this sticker, it needs to be handled by an ICI, an Independent Commercial Transporter. This company will make sure all parts of the vehicle are fixed to meet U.S. EPA requirements. Shipping a vehicle with an ICI would cost approximately $2,000, last time I checked.
Furthermore, the vehicle is subject to U.S. tax. At the time of this post, the tax for cars is about 2.5% of the purchase price, and the tax for pickup trucks is 25% of the purchase price. But what is an SUV? It is neither a car, nor a truck.
Additional research has led me to the conclusion that a Jeep is built with a truck chassis, but is more than 50% passenger seating, so it counts as a car. We will see if this is still the same when I actually do transfer the vehicle.
There are more specifics from the government- if you are abroad for only a short amount of time, I do not believe you are subject to this tax. But do your research first!
Back to my Jeep research….I knew Germany had mostly manual vehicles and lots of diesels, so I began my search on mobile.de and Autoscout24.
I found 4 Jeeps that matched the criteria I was looking for. Unfortunately, all of them were in other countries, like Spain or Poland. I did not want to drive so far just to get a vehicle, so I kept looking. A few days later, I ended up finding a blue (my dream color!) Jeep Wrangler on a mechanic’s website. It turned out that it was a diesel, but was not a manual. That didn’t really matter to me anymore, that the Jeep was not a manual. I thought she was beautiful as she was!
The Jeep was located in Rostock, Germany, about a 6 hour drive away. This was good, because it meant I did not have to have license plates from another country to transfer it to Germany. The owner of the shop knew the people responsible for licensing the vehicle, and could take us there and help us get it licensed.
So we drove Carla up to Rostock one Friday, and checked out the Jeep and took it for a test drive. I liked the Jeep a lot. So we decided to buy it. We had trouble transferring the money, because the owner wanted to be sure that he had the money before he gave me the keys (that is totally reasonable, don’t get me wrong). The only problem was that I could not do a direct transfer of so much money. And I could not have gotten the cash with such a short notice. So I transferred the money, and hoped it went through. A transfer can take up to 3 days to go through.
We left, disappointed. Also, we tried getting the temporary insurance so we could have registered the Jeep in Rostock, but the temporary insurance is only good in the town you want to register the vehicle in. We did not know that! So there was no way we would be driving home with the Jeep that day.
I trusted the owner, because he had good reviews online and also sold multiple vehicles, and had a very prominent business.
So we drove 6 hours home, only to receive a notification that night that the money had gone through. We waited until the next weekend, and then we took a train back to Rostock. It took longer, but it was less driving for the both of us, and less money spent on gas. This time, we had the papers for the vehicle, so we got it registered in Essen and got license plates there, so that we could legally drive home when we picked up the vehicle.
The owner agreed to meet us on a Saturday, outside of his business hours, which was very kind of him. We picked up the Jeep, and drove it home. It was a much bigger vehicle than the small German cars we were used to, but I like it. I like bigger vehicles, and I love the fact that it is diesel. I get good mileage with it, and I love all the features it has.
If you are looking into purchasing a car from abroad, be sure to check out the U.S. Government website below first!
https://www.cbp.gov/trade/basic-import-export/importing-car
Another tip you may want to know: If you are buying a second vehicle in Germany, and selling the first one, you need to de-register it. You have to go to the KfZ in your city and de-register the vehicle. You can then contact your insurance agency and inform them that you have deregistered the vehicle. You can get the rest of the insurance back for the days you will no longer need it. Lucas and I plan on keeping Carla and the Jeep, Jeepers, for a while though!
“A TOURIST IS A FELLOW WHO DRIVES THOUSANDS OF MILES SO HE CAN BE PHOTOGRAPHED STANDING IN FRONT OF HIS CAR.” – EMILE GANEST