A nice German lady went into a test station and asked for an MOT on her 3-y/o German-regd Corsa. It - predictably - failed on LHD lighting issues. She then said that she needed an MOT to renew her [German] car tax as she was working as an NHS nursing sister over here and wouldn't be returning to Germany until the spring at the earliest.
What should she do? Re-registering/insuring it here for, possibly, only a few months seems a bit like over-kill. Does she even need to pay German road tax if it's here?
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She has to keep it legal in the country in which it was registered in order that she can drive it around Europe. She has to cross the border and MOT it in Germany. Yes, she has to pay German road tax. Sounds like it might be too late to advise that this is done before tax and MOT expire, I wouldn?t want to drive to Germany in an illegal car.
It?s still not strictly legal however, you?re only supposed to to do this for 6 months in any 12 month period. Incidently, I do this the other way round and bring mine back to the UK every now and again to keep it legal, but I also (for different reasons) have a Polish MOT with an exemption for its head lamps.
Maybe she should check her insurance, my UK company are fine as long as they know exactly where I am all the time, they don?t want any "surprise claims from around Europe."
Hope this helps
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It sounds like the nice German lady is assuming that an MoT test is equivalent to the TüV control on Germany, which it isn´t. MoT is 1 year, TüV 2 years etc etc. An MoT will not be accepted by any KVZ-amt here.
Normally EU insurance is valid outside of the country of residence for 6 months of a 12-month period.
If she intends to stay in England, she should buy a RHD car already on English plates, and with luck her no claims bonus (a % in Germany) will be transferred to her new English insurance company. Or, buy a set of RHD headlights on eBay and Mot/register the LHD car she has already in the UK. This could be fiddly - it certainly was for me, bringing my RHD Astra to Germany.
She would then, of course, be left with an LHD car with little value in the UK, and have to switch the lights back over when she returns to Chermany.
Hope this is of some help.
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Or she does what one of my neighbours (a retired vicar, no less)did and keep her foreign-registered car on foreign plates for five years until it was recently replaced. If she keeps her nose clean parking and offence-wise, no one will ask. You can buy annual expatriate car insurance through specialist brokers in the UK for most countries in the world so I expect Germany is the same.
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Good luck finding an expat German insurance broker.
I fear this is a non-starter.
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For a limited period of time she doesn't need to change the headlights, she can drive it with beam deflectors. Of course getting LHD beam deflectors in the UK is not the easiest thing to do so I had to make my own from a RHD set and some blck sticky back plastic :)
I needed them because I had imported my Berlina from Italy. It passed it's MOT with the beam deflectors as well BTW
JaB
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