s2krwd

Hello guys,

Let me first introduce myself, I am Nico from the Netherlands and im new to the Greek S2K scene, so hello

In about a month im visiting a friend of mine in Greece and had the idea of goin by plane to Greece, staying for about a week, buying a S2000 and drive it back to the Netherlands. unfortunatly i cant find anything on the internet regarding the export of a car from Greece. Do one of you guys know how this works?

Thx

Don Molina

Hi Nico,

you're lucky since I've been through the process back in the summer of 2013 when I brought the family's Lexus with me to Switzerland.

First of all you will need export plates to drive the car since you're not a Greek resident and as such you can't register it at your name under a GR plate. In stark contrast to the ease of getting Zoll plates from DE that you can use wherever, in GR the export plates are being issued from the Economics Ministry and you will need a customs handler to run the paperwork for you.

Searching for "πινακιδες τελωνειου" brings more results for importing, but with your Greek friend you can look for export related stuff. Back then I used ektelonistika.gr and it was fine. Most of communication was through email and phone, and while I did go and pick up the papers and the plates I did have the option of getting them shipped to me.

The papers will be a temporary registration and a 3rd party liability insurance that will cover you all over Europe so you can drive wherever you want. The guys at the service will also tell you what papers are required and I would tell you mine, but the car was registered in a company and I left the EU so there will be differences. In my case for example I needed to state explicitly from which customs I would leave the EU and enter Switzerland (Como/Chiasso) which I don't think you would need to do.

Most certainly you'll need a bill of sale (private contract that states that you are the owner of the car), a confirmation from the Transport Ministry that the car was exmatriculated from GR, etc.
Anyway, the plates are valid for a month after being issued and their cost depends on the engine size. My 4.3lt was about 400EUR I think, but I'm not exactly sure.

The above is the GR way, meaning getting all the papers from GR.

The other way is the "EU" way, but I'm not sure it's going to work so you need to check with GR authorities to make sure, most probably the Econ and Transport ministries.

I think that if you have an exmatriculated GR car, you could use the old (cancelled) registration and get temp plates from NL. In Zurich I can get plates for a couple of days with about 100 EUR with insurance included, slap them to any car registered in CH or the EU, and drive wherever I want. However in CH owning a car is not much different than owning a TV or a laptop, but in GR the tax authority is heavily involved and car registration, ownership etc is quite burdensome and bureaucratic so double check that you can put temp NL plates on an exmatriculated GR car to export it.

The customs handler that helped me told me that it's not really possible, but it could be just to justify his work so can't really confirm
In any case if you go the "EU" way you'll need to know which car you'll be picking up before going to GR since you'll need the VIN and other information to get the temp plates.


As soon as you have plates/insurance then you have all the papers you need to take the car from GR to wherever.



Now you need to import the car in NL. Most probably you will need a Certificate of Conformity that you get from Honda. You can talk to Honda GR as they were the importer, but the papers come from EU Headquarters and it's the same paper with your VIN number so doesn't really matter where you get it from, just shop around for ease, cost, time. In my case CH dealers wanted 300CHF, Toyota Hellas did it for 60EUR with expedited shipping

I don't know the tech inspections in NL, but in DE and CH you need different kinds of certificates (TuV, etc) for modded parts, so if you do get a non-stock car get in touch with the changed parts dealers/importers in NL. For example in CH for wheels, suspensions, etc the cost of the certificates ranges from 100-250 EUR and if the parts are custom made it can go from over 500EUR for an exhaust to much-much higher.

Or shop on car.gr for OEM parts and swap them out to make things easier. If tech inspection is lax, then forget it and just enjoy.



Whatever you do, a week will only be enough if you have selected a car beforehand. If you fly down and shop around you'll need to go with GR export plates and they take about a week to be issued from the moment you have all the paperwork, and with GR bureaucracy you can easily budget another week to get the papers together.
If you have selected a car beforehand and fly to pick it up then you can either get temp plates from NL or DE and drive it north or start the GR export plate process in advance so you can drive the car around in GR and then drive back up.



In any case, make sure it's worth it because for a 10k car, you will need another 1k to go to GR and drive back up, plus a good 500EUR for papers just to do the trip. I know that Greek S2000s are really cheap because everyone is trying to get rid of them now that they can't enjoy them but you can easily add 25% of the price to random costs here and there to get a car back at your place so you have to price that in.

It might be better to shop around in mobile.de for something in DE that you could just go pick up in much less time, much less hassle, and the same amount of money or less.

And then drive down to GR in the summer to visit your friend and enjoy the S2k in the huge playground that GR is

s2krwd

Hi Don Molina,

Thank you very much for all the information. So to exmatriculate the car from GR I only need the private contract (bill of sale, this is just between seller and buyer if im correct right? and i need a confirmation from the transport Ministry? Is the confirmation hard to get and is there in every big city a office from the transport ministry?

I assume when i have the confirmation i go to costums and they will do the rest of the paperwork?

Thanks again for all the info!