I have looked at many threads on the issue of importing a personal car from the USA and it seems people find it precarious and informatino unclear on requirements and outcomes...

Does anyone know of a definitive and very clear source on the steps and requirements for importing personal car FROM THE USA to Geneva? Some swiss websites were thrown out there on some threads, such as TCS, but I have not seen a clear to do or check list on any source. It seems many have tried and ended up confused and unsure if they can properly import, register and insure the car. Sounds stressful and I am wondering if best to sell our cars here and purchase one in Switzerland. Then again we may only be in Geneva for 2 years..

My second question is that our car is a 2008 Honda Odyssey Minivan, presumably a car you don't see much in Geneva or Europe at all...I am wondering if this would be a bad idea because it is big and perhaps unfamiliar in terms of construction to the Swiss authorities who handle car registration...our other option is a 10 year old Ford Focus wagon...would fit in more on the streets but it is old and over 100k miles..

I am assuming that to purchase a car in Switzerland, even used, would be a bad deal compared to importing one of ours?

If your not paying for the shipping it *may* be worth it, if the car was never available here then you are going to have issues, the road worthiness test (mfk) will be more complicated.

If you are paying for the shipping etc then forget it, you will be throwing your money away.

Rule of thumb is only speical / very expensive cars are worth shipping over, unless you have a strong emotional attachment to the car.

Personally I wouldn't bother, sell them in the US and lease a car here, you may find you don't even need a car in Geneva (if you can find a place to live with parking!!)

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Yay, just the kind of answer I was looking for (and my gut feeling as well)...may I ask had you been in my situation in the past? Do you lease a car? Is that easy to do as foreigner?

THANKS

Yes we imported one of our cars, the rest we sold (the one in my avatar) we imported it as it was not available here and it was a birthday present for my wife.

The whole process was expensive and a right pita !

If your company is paying for you relocation then that may ease the pain, but I would try asking them to lease you a car or give you some cash instead, eg ask them for just the money it would cost to ship your cars here and back.

Many thanks, very useful info.
jen

I also second the buying here - Switzerland actually has a decent used car market (imo) - and although the Odyssey is available here (I think) you might run into issues. We brought over a Routan, it has mostly been ok, but it isn't available here and that has caused us some problems for servicing and repairs. And shipping it over was stressful as we had to handle all the details.

Money wise we are probably sill ahead (but I must add our car was less than a year old when we moved, and selling it without losing tons of money wasn't an option) but it has been trying at times with my nerves

Have a look here

Www.autoscout24.ch

For the price of cars here, see if any of your cars have been imported (the focus is of course here, don't know about US spec)

An old focus with 100k km on it is going to be cheap (Swiss cheap lol)

Their car has 160'000 km on it (100k miles) so it will be even cheaper for an equivalent car.

There are a lot of used CH cars that are sold at 100 k km (62k miles). Most people in Switzerland do about 15-20k km per year (9-12k miles) depending on if you need to commute to work.

Great site, thanks!

Hmmm now that i see the price of a 2006 Odyssey which is more than we would get for ours here, I wonder since they do appear to sell Odysseys in Switz does that make things any easier in terms of importing? Or is it all just a big PITA?

Are minivans uncommon in Switz?

Km are king here, over 100k and no one is interested

Minivans are quite common, depending on what you class as mini vans lol

Mercedes vianos, vw's and all the big 4x4's are very common.

You have to take autoscout prices with a pinch of salt, a lot of cars sold by dealers are very overpriced, and just about any car with a new mfk is worth around 3k

The biggest worry is the cost of repairs, eg I just paid 16x the price here for a spare for one of my cars (they only imported 101 of them here) that really hurt !!

I'd ask your company what they can do for you as shipping the car will cost a couple of thousand

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http://www.swissr2.ch/
http://www.tk16431.com/

To look at just the $$ side of things, you need to add the cost of transportation and the cost of changes to the signal lights and any other changes that might be needed to bring the car up to EU/CH specs (if the specific model variation is not sold here). Keep in mind that if the EXACT model is not sold here, you will be spending time and thousands of CHF (no exaggeration) to get the car up to spec.

My neighbour just brought back a Prius from Canada (yes a model sold here). He had thousands of CHF of work and the whole noise testing BS up in Bern because the model was "slightly" different.

In addition to the money, you will need to get someone else to do all the running around since you do not know how things work and there is the language issue as well.

Leave the cars and move on with your life. You will be happier.

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Do or do not, there is no try(ing). Yoda

Exactly!! We paid nearly 5k to import our car, only difference to Swiss spec was the bodykit is slightly different (different spoiler) but we still had to go through noise and emissions test and the extended mfk.

I should add that minivans (5-7 pass) are very common here. Ford, Opel (GM), Honda, Toyota etc. all have models.

There are lots of good options that are 4-6 years old with under 100k km.

One thing you might not be used to coming from CA is that in CH we have winter and summer tires (no "all season" stuff). Often you will have both sets of tires mounted on rims so you just do a switch. Winter tires are often on black metal rims with wheel covers and summer tires are normally aluminium. In the car ads you will see that people mention the second set of tires/rims.

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Do or do not, there is no try(ing). Yoda

Forgot to say, non original part are a big no no, so if you have aftermarket wheels or you have chipped the car, changed the induction etc etc you will fail the mfk, the car need to be original or the parts you have changed need to be swiss certified

mfk (German) or l'expertise (French) is the technical check of car's road worthiness that needs to be done at importation and then periodically depending on the age of the car. These tests are done at the Cantonal level where you live.

I've just had a look at the honda's on autoscout, I really wouldn't take any notice of the prices of them, no one in there right minds is going to pay 28k for a 2006 car with 100k km on it here

plenty of brand new / nearly new 6 seaters here for that money

I can only assume as there are only a handful of them here the dealers have no idea how to price them, or are hoping for expats to come over and buy them.

Another vote for selling there, buying here. We had Honda Accord we loved, "thought" it was pretty much standard worldwide, and would be just paperwork to reregister in CH. After CH200 replacing dead battery after being in container so long, further SFr 3k of parts replacement & labor for totally non-functional differences, plus several hundred more in MFK tests, registrations, etc. we said Never Again.
Salt in the wound is that CH used cars are generally well kept, serviced, and priced - in our case we could have replaced our Accord with little aggravation and had a few grand left in our pocket.
Good luck with your decision.
PS gas and diesel is a lot more $/gal here, you might decide to downside on the car or engine displacement/HP after you get here

look at Seat Alhambras - they are a good value for money minivan

here from autoscout:

http://www.autoscout24.ch/de/autos/s...&yearfrom=2010

searched: Seat Alhambras, 2010 and newer and automatic. If you go manual, you can get cheaper (by about 10k) and more to select from.

I had an entirely different experience importing our 2009 Honda Odyssey into Switzerland, where it is not natively found, and would do it again.

We paid around $3,000 to ship it over from New Jersey (used Rinkins International) and spent around $2,000 for the conversion, which entailed installing new parking lights, full cleaning of the vehicle including the engine compartment and some other minor work plus the garage taking the car to the MfK for testing and inspection. Overall maintenance (oil changes, wipers, etc.) has not been an issue and parts are available in Europe as many Honda parts are shared across their offerings. Getting insurance was not a problem either; I had to provide them with some specs (found via Google) and approximate value (converted to CHF).

We did buy a set of winter tires and snow chains before we left the US.

There are only two minor downsides that we have seen. One is that the Odyssey is a larger vehicle than many found in Europe so finding a parking spot can sometimes be a challenge. The second is that you can't receive all FM radio stations as the US standard is frequencies at odd number intervals (e.g. 105.5) whereas some European stations are at even frequencies (eg. 105.6). In both cases it has not been a real issue.

You need to do the math yourself and make your own judgement call. If you own the car outright and it is in good shape with low mileage, then it can work.

Absolutely, yes .....

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