I've seen recently a lot of posts about importing cars from germany given the strength of CHF. I am also thinking about importing a car from germany. One way to increase benefit and reduce risk is to make a group buy. That should (?) give us more negociation power with dealer. The reduced risk comes from sharing experience with all the admin stuff.

My assumptions:
- time of purchase: August 2011
- Model: Audi A4 Avant Attraction 1.8 TFSI 88(120) kW(PS)
- Km: 0-10'000km
- Dealer: in germany close to basel or any other one.
- Selling contracts are individual
- Payments are under your own responsibility.

So the question is are you interested ? Do you foresee some issues?

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Most of the dealers along the border are geared up for selling to CH and will handle all the admin, MFK test etc .. therefore not sure how useful a group buy would be.

Yes that's a very valid point.
I have the impression that the prices are also higher than other german dealers who are far from swiss border. I checked with a small sample but needs more research.
Maybe a group buy can help on the price side.

I've been studying the used car market for about 3 months, as in another two I have to buy a car. I'm looking at a car from about 2006-2007 with around 200ps (or quickly chip-tunable to that, e.g 1.8T, 2.0TFSI or 2.5T engines). What I've found is that for these it's just marginally cheaper to buy from Germany, as after you add the taxes and import duties, the gain is at most 1500eur, although normally it's less than 1000. Maybe for newer cars this is not the case, but have you thoroughly checked your figures?

For special and certain high value cars, buying from Germany (or aborad in general) makes sense.

For ordinary cars, yes you may save buying it, but resale is equally lower.

Also remember, that the sticker price here in CH is not the price the dealer expect to sell at. Most large companies have flottenrabat with certain brands and even without, you can normally negotiate a healthy discount. Also cars come in general with more standard equipment here than in Germany.

These are my working assumptions:
- AUDI a4 avant TFSI (120ps) less than 10'000km:min price is 37'000 CHF on autoscout24.ch
- Same car in Germany: in average 27'000 euros (incl. VAT, price displayed on audi.de)

1) assuming change rate 1.25
2) VAT in germany 19%
3) VAT in switzerland 8%
4) processing tax in CH: 4%

cost from germany: 30'619 CHF

So there is 7'000 CHF win at least.

I don't agree to this logic: It depends on how long you keep the car. I bought my 2004 A4 1.8T imported by a Swiss garage and yes, it was singificantly cheaper than what AMAG had on sale with 9000 km on the clock. (so it is pretty exactly what the OP is looking at). If the car is at the price range around say 40.000 CHF and you can save 10% it's 4k in your pocket. If you sell the car some 80k kms later and the price is between 15 and 20k CHF, the same 10% are how much...?

Besides: When you sell it as an "older used car", the import does not make the same 10% - people will be much more critical about the state a car is in after 8 years than if it was an import at 9.000km or not.

equipment & options could be a factor.
But I've seen also that the audi a4 avant 120ps is far less popular in CH than in germany. Here you find more the 160ps model.

I once dropped by thefollowing Car dealer in The Black Forest and was impressed by the huge number of second handVW and Audi they had. Since they seem to have a big monthly turn over , theyseemed to be reasonable with their prices and aiming for a small profit. Theyalso seemed to be fairly decent. Yet, I did not find what I was looking for,but would certainly contact them next time I am shopping cars.

@ OP: Does the dealer you have in mind only sell Audi's or other cars.. I'd be interested if I could get an SUV with low KMs on it (less than 50K) and not less than 3 years old if the deal makes sense. I'm thinking VW (toureq), BMW (x3 range) or Lexus etc.. Nothing Korean..

If you give me a website for the dealer.. I could take a peak.

I was looking at Audi dealers in germany & close to Basel (Weil am Rhein). But actually I'm open to any dealer with the Audi model I had in mind.

Does this traders bring the car from Germany?

I'm looking to buy a car, specifcly a BMW, but looking for the prices now in bmw.ch and bmw.de the difference is huge.

The same car from bmw.de can be 40% cheaper.

Monsieur Vertigo.... Time to buy my friend with the EU / CHF rate I think we can take a hard look at this. I'm very interested in a BMW X5 which is not more than 4 years old and not more than 50K run.