Down-underhand tactic

My wife and I are Australian travelling to UK and Europe arriving in April. We are going to be touring for 2-years and after an initial 4-week spell in the UK are off touring Europe (the big bit across the channel) for 8-months. After that it's back to the UK for a period. We've pretty much decided to lease a car for the 2 years we'll be there but would welcome your expert advice on two points: Do you have a view on the 'best method' of equipping ourselves with a car for the time we'll be there? Buy or lease? We're totally flexible on make / model but thought something like a Citroen C4 would be ideal for continental touring. Over here we own a Mitsubishi Outlander; we like the car and its 5-year comprehensive warranty. We've checked practically every car insurance company we can identify on the internet with regard to touring and the longest any of them are prepared to offer cover is for 90-days in any one trip. As we'll be away for 8-months clearly that won't do. We even checked the Caravan Club who told us they don't cover non-UK residents then kept secret whether they would cover residents for that period or not! Do you know any insurance companies that offer extended stay comprehensive motor insurance? We understood retired Brits do this sort of thing all the time; how

Asked on 20 February 2010 by P.L., via e-mail

Answered by Honest John
All I have on insurance is at www.honestjohn.co.uk > useful
websites > insurance and warranties. As long as you have a UK address (friends or family?) to register the car to you can buy a car in the UK. You can't in Spain. But the UK is currently the cheapest country for cars anyway. For used you could go to a supersite like www.cargiant.co.uk . Have a look now. For newer cars (though not necessarily as new as the reg) try www.motorpoint.co.uk For completely new cars at a discount the best is www.drivethedeal.com , but then you would need to order and pay for the car well before you arrived to ensure delivery. These days, cars are mostly built to order and we no longer have fields of unused ones sitting unsold.
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