Need insurance for euro road trip

[dean legg]

Hi All

You may remember I brought my 911 to St Maarten a few years ago, well I have sold it to a friend in Europe
It was all planned that when the car arrives I fly over and can drive the car around Europe for 2 months before dropping it off with friend in Portugal
Now here is the problem she can't find an insurance that will cover the car for the trip
She had one quote of 3000 euros for a year which seems high
Does anyone know of a company that can cover this, the car is still registered in st Maarten and the plan is to register it in Portugal when it gets there
I am booked to fly out this weekend so am running out of time

Thanks in advance Dean

[twistoffat]

Get her to Register it and add you as a named driver

[dean legg]

we have to get the car to portugal to register it thats the problem, so we need the cover first for the trip from rotterdam

[Paco Anton]

The problem in europe is that most insurance companies will want the car registered in the country before insuring it.

How do you plan to drive the car in Europe before registering it in Portugal? Where will it be registered? If you are keeping the St Maarten registration you could just keep you current insurance until you register it in Portugal. Otherwise get an insurance from the country where it will be registered while driving in Europe.

Maybe you can register it temporarily in the Netherlands since St. M is just a part of it (more or less) and then get a Dutch insurance. when I bought a car in Germany they issued me temporary German plates and then got a temopray insurance form ADAC (the German AAA).

Another option is that your friend can insure it in Portugal just giving them the VIN (I've done it in Spain), although they like to get the plate number ASAP.

BTW, I was in St. Maarten last summer. we rented a villa in Oyster pond and had a wonderful time. I hope I can go back some day...

[Porchcar guy]

If the title has been transferred to the buyer and you are shipping it and driving it for 2 months, the buyer/owner must insure the vehicle with you as listed as n additional driver. If you are still the owner, you can do the insurance. Perhaps you will need to ship the car to Portugal..not Amsterdam to effect the title/ownership and then take your trip. Must be a good friend to allow you to put 2 months of miles on the car they own and are willing to accept any damage to both the vehicle or the motor/transmisssion that may occur.

[wayner]

Keep your own insurance on it from back home and tell you company about the trip. They may ask for an additional payment but it should be easy. Once you deliver the car, then tell them it is sold.

[dean legg]

The car has arrived in rotterdam and I have sold it
Its registered in st maarten to my friend. We made an agreement to do this trip before I sold her the car
I have found a german company tourinsure.de which said they will insure the car for 2 months for 386 euros and have passed the info to my friend so fingers crossed
I'll let you know

Cheers Dean

[spuggy]

Cool Dean, seems like you're sorted, but I'll post anyway in case someone else has a similar problem - or who wants to take their car for an extended road trip holiday.

I took my car to Europe for an extended (but temporary) period, for personal use. I didn't want to register it there - you shouldn't have to for a temporary stay, there's reams of EU and local customs paper that all says you don't need to.

Despite what many minor bureaucrats will tell you - 6 months is often (incorrectly) cited as a "hard" limit - there is NO actual time limit. A specific example given in the official documents, is a student going over for a multi-year college course - fixed end date, so still considered a temporary stay.

Yeh, you need to read/understand this stuff and be prepared to quote/debate it with any jobworths you may encounter

Except that there's a real snag when you try to actually do this - almost all domestic insurance companies in Europe could only offer 30 day VIN-based insurance (designed for you to drive if from the docks, get it converted and registered) - they couldn't do anything else with a foreign registration. Most actually hung up when they heard either "30 year old vehicle" or "Porsche" - and the rest hung up when they heard "non-factory turbo car". Once I explained I didn't want "collector" or "speciality" insurance, that I wanted real "drive it all the time, everywhere, including to work and the shops, park it in the street" insurance, there was no-one left.

However. GEICO, for one, has an Oversea division does provides ex-pat insurance with the vehicle being driven on the original registration in another country - you need to keep tags and registration current in the originating country, and of course comply with all applicable road and safety legislations, like lighting, road-worthiness etc. - this is widely used by military serving overseas who take their own vehicles with them (except they tend to drive for 6 months and then register the vehicle, so they initially needed a little persuading that there's no hard 6 month limit in the regulations as well).

This insurance would have been cheap at any price - as I could find only one other carrier offering it, and they don't nominally offer to non-military (although they were kind enough to say it wasn't a hard exclusion and they'd review/consider) - but was actually locally competitive - pretty reasonably priced.

I'm still a happy customer.

For the Overseas division, 1-800-248-4998 from the US, or see
GEICO | About Overseas Insurance ~ Read about overseas insurance
GEICO | Overseas Locations