I live in the UK, and I have a spanish left hand drive vehicle which I wish to sell. My personal circumstances prevent my returning to Spain.

I have an interested buyer of my vehicle here in the UK, but I am not sure how to go about selling and be legal in terms of spanish law. There are many eastern europeans over here that will pay for LH drive cars because of a market back in their own country.

The car is spanish road worthied until Jan 2011, and officially I am the registered owner, thus responsible.

In the UK we have a tear off portion to the re-registration document that is legally displaying a change of ownership, but the spanish documents are not as sophisticated. The prospective buyer of my car will happily provide me with a signed letter taking full responsibility for the car, and stating he has purchased the car from me. He is also willing to provide me with a copy of his National I.D. (Slovakian) He also has trade plates covering his dealer status.

Anyone know how to go about this?

Thanks!

Jim.

Hi,

See this site for information.

http://dgt.es/portal/es/oficina_virtual/vehiculos/cambio_titularidad/

I know it’s in Spanish but if you split up the various paragraphs and put them through this translation site, you will get a pretty good idea of what you have to do. This site provides a more literal translation than Google or Babelfish.

http://www.studyspanish.com/translator.htm

Hope this helps..

fb

Thanks for the response.

This guy (potential buyer) needs to give me details of a mate in Spain in order to do the deal. In other words, pretend the deal is being done in Spain, even though the car is here in the UK.

Thats what I make of it, it does not refer how to do a deal in the UK. The spanish embassy in London reckon I need to get it registered here, but because the car has no mph on the speed indicator, its expensive to modify the car when aside from that, the light clusters need to be changed too.

Maybe I just lose the bucks…......................just scrap it.

Dunno.

...the car has no mph on the speed indicator, its expensive to modify the car when aside from that, the light clusters need to be changed too.

If re-registering in the UK you could consider getting a replacement speedo from a scrappies, likewise the rear light clusters which shouldn’t cost that much. I take it that’s because the car has only one foglight and one reverse light, in which case its then a very simple wiring swap, extending the reverse light wiring to the other side of the car and the same with the foglight. If the car has two of each then you don’t need to change the clusters. I’m not certain whether the speedo actually needs to be in mph or even functional. I ran a Citroen XM with a duff speedo through two MOT’s; it’s not a fail item (or at least it wasn’t then in 2006). 

Re-registering is a lot simpler in the UK than it is in Spain! Talk to the people at one of the regional DVLA offices.

fb

Hi again,

To register the car here, being a LH drive it is required to pass the VOSA emmissions (amongst other things) test. This costs ?180 plus petrol. (nearesr place miles from me) The car failed for the reasons given. MPH must be on the speedo in UK. Mine being an older car has kilometer only.

Costs of conversion plus a retest, plus also a central locking system problem, then another re-test is not worth my while. I have a Slovak wanting to give me cash for the car “as is” and prepared to sign a declaration of total responsibility for the car, which I am not prepared to do, because it would not cover my liability. I was wondering if I could copy all my documents, get his details and write up a sale contract and send registered post to Spain. Do you think that might work. Its road covered and insured until 2011.

Or just scrap the car.

Thanks,

Jim.

When a vehicle is sold in Spain and both the buyer and the seller are private individuals it is normal for them to go to Trafico together.  The seller would normally present the Ficha Tecnica, the Permiso de Circulacion and his original NIE number or a Notarized photocopy.  In certain provinces thay also ask for photo ID from the buyer and the seller.

When they have established that there are no outstanding speeding fines or road tax (impuesto de circulacion) they will transfer the name to the buyer on the spot.  It costs 40 euros.

If the car is under ten years old there is also a 4% transmission tax to pay.  This tax is normally the responsibility of the seller. The documentation cannot be transferred until this tax has been paid.

The buyer could also go to Trafico with a photocopy of the seller’s passport but it must be stamped by a Spanish notario.  He will also need to show the original NIE of the seller or a Notarized photocopy. If there are any outstanding speeding fines, parking fines or road tax he will have to pay them before the documentation can be transferred into his name.

Just one final point, when a Spanish registered vehicle leaves Spain for good it must be registered as ‘baja’ from the system.  This is done at Trafico.  If this is not done road tax will continue to accumulate on a yearly basis.

Chris Dann

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