Importing a car from the UK

Unless you are very attached to your car, apart from the obvious disadvantage of having a RHD car, it will likely be very expensive to import and matriculate your car to Spanish number plates.

Thank you but not sure RHD is a huge disadvantage, I spent 9 years in Northern Europe driving  a RHD car with no problem. however I cannot seem to get an idea of what the costs are to import into Spain, get lots of good idea/bad idea but no specific costs. Have you done this or tried to do so? It would be really helpful to have comments from someone who has gone through the process. As I said at the start, as the cost is unknown it is impossible to judge. All I know is if I sell mine here and purchase a similar one in Spain, the difference is 7-9,000 euros more for the same car!! Are we saying if costs that much to import and you have no idea of the car’s history?

Firstly there’s the cost of matriculation. Depending on vehicle, changing the headlights are normally the biggest cost.  I’ve seen costs of 2.500€ quoted for headlights alone - again, it depends on the vehicle.  I have a friend who brought her Toyota Sports (GTR?) I think it was with her - headlights were a swine to get and the cheapest she was quoted was 2.200€ for both - and that’s just the units themselves.  Cost of fitment, obtaining ficha técnica and ITV is on top of that

Along with Brexit comes import duty if the vehicle is less than a certain age.  I don’t actually know anyone who has bought a car in recently, so I am very hopeful that someone who has done so will respond to this thread.  That aside, there seems to still be a lot of confusion arising as to whether import duty will actually be charged.

Thanks again, I am aware of the the implications but cannot find the actual costs, you indicated that it is an unknown but I am finding it hard to believe that the costs of importing a car is 2/3 times more than the value of the car.

It appears import duty is 31% of cars value, as well as Emissions tax if emissions are > 120 GPKM, (unless vehicle is imported as part of a residency application) :

https://www.womenalia.com/blog/post/importing-a-uk-car-to-spain

That is interesting as I have been told it is, at most, a VAT equivalent (21%?) of the value but no idea how they value the car, assuming it is 31% of its current value, it would still be less than half the cost of buying the the equivalent (assuming the base value in the UK) in Spain. No further on in my quest for clarity it seems.... Perhaps I may become an advisor to others as I go forward?

To bring our Honda Civic (value about 9k) over post brexit would have cost us 4000 euros (thats for everything).  Ana Berbel Oller based in Albox is brilliant and provides a complete breakdown of all costs. 

Thank you, very helpful and gives me something to work off.

Our car is a zafira cost a lot less to matriculate.  Closer to 1500.  Could you ask for a quote from a garage that can do this for you? We used Taller Daydo Antas.  This was in 2020.