Hello All

I am looking to purchase a small displacement Dual Sport / trail / ADV Motorcycle in either the UK or Europe. I will be based with family in the UK but can travel to Europe provided registration can be transferred across so I can ride out after purchase.

A range of bikes would be considered between the lightest end on the spectrum a CRF250/300L and the XT660E/R/Z at the heavy end of the spectrum. DRZ400E, DR650, XR650, XR400, would all be considered - though I am partial to newer bikes with more parts availability.

I am very reluctant to purchase anything larger as I will be on the TET and do not want to be pinned under a large bike.

I have a DRZ400E that is adventurized and in Australia - if anyone is interested in a reciprocal arrangement or a swap

Hope to hear soon - i can be contacted here or on my email at terravstreads@gmail.com

If you are going to be living/based in the UK I'd suggest you buy there. But if you decide to go ahead with buying in mainland Europe, do your homework first on potential problems.

You cannot register the bike in some countries unless you are resident.

Problems getting insurance on foreign-registered bikes.

If you live in the UK you can't legally drive a foreign-registered bike that belongs to you—you don't comply with the temporary import rules, see https://www.eurococ.eu/en/blog/drivi...egistered-car/

And if you do decide to permanently import the bike you will need a certificate of compliance and will have to ensure lights and instruments conform to UK regulations.

__________________
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Hi Tim

Thank you for your response

Ah sorry for the misunderstanding - I would still be here as a tourist, not a resident or immigrant.

My first preference is the UK as well - it seems that registration is straight-forward for foreigners as long as there is an address - and the only stumbling block at the moment is insurance but there are 2 providers that seem to be able to offer it.

My initial idea was to purchase one in Spain/portugal but this seems to be an issue in these countries!

I think the main question is how much time you are planning for this trip, and what do you intend to do with the bike afterwards (sell it? keep it for your next trip?).

Having family in the UK obviously makes buying in the UK a lot easier, but consider that 1) UK insurance seems to be ridiculously expensive in general, and 2) you would be riding a non-EU bike into an EU country. I suppose if you're an Australian citizen anyway and bound by the 90-day Schengen limit, it doesn't make a huge difference, but it may result in extra faff if you want to store your bike within the EU between trips (in the UK, I guess you would have to SORN it?).

There are places in the EU where buying a bike in your own name as a non-resident is fairly straightforward - Estonia is one of them, there are others.

I have been looking at the various logistics relating to a non-resident registering and insuring and am not sure which country makes the most sense. The way I understand it Ireland has no yearly inspection and no sales tax, and registration can be done easily whether you are in the country or not, so I think that makes a lot of sense. I believe with e-residency in Estonia you can buy and register the vehicle, I believe there is sales tax, which isn't a huge deal, and it sounds like although their is yearly inspection it is still possible to insure for use outside of the country even if the inspection has not been done. UK sounds like there is a bit of a loophole where one can get the V5 in their own name just by using a mailing address, but as mentioned insurance, can be problematic and is also more costly. I am not sure if similar to Estonian registrations there are some insurance agents who would be willing to insure the vehicle if the yearly MOT had not been done or if perhaps the vehicle was registered SORN.
So far it seems like either of these options may work but curious to hear if I have basically got the logistics right, or if their is anything I am missing and what other countries are maybe worth considering.

E-residency is not required, it makes some things a bit easier though. There is no sales tax (yet), only a transfer-of-ownership fee. Inspections are yearly for vehicles over 10 years old, but 3/2 years for younger vehicles. You can insure a vehicle without inspection - in fact, the traffic law specifically states you are allowed to drive an insured but uninspected vehicle to a repair place and/or the nearest inspection station.

Will be solid 3 month trip - rental just did not make sense for this period.

I've done some more research and it seems Ireland would suit better as a country to register a vehicle in - so I've amended my enquiries for buying bikes from here - however, they are in shorter supply than in the UK.

I'm running into insurance headaches for 3rd party insurance now though - only knopftours seems to offer insurance - [s]dooby from lobagola seems to not offer insurance without a consultation fee[/s] and motocamp bulgaria are non-responsive to any enquiries.

I don't know about the UK or Ireland, but I suspect in both places there will be some facility by which a properly locally registered vehicle must be offered insurance by a local provider, even if the registered owner is not a permanent resident. You're looking at companies that offer EU insurance to e.g. American/Canadian/Australian plated vehicles - but if you buy a bike in your name in Ireland, you ought to be able to walk into an Irish insurance office and get mandatory traffic insurance for it, including a Green Card.

In the cases where I helped non-EU, non-resident people register vehicles in Estonia, we just went into the insurance broker's office next to the vehicle registration agency, and they got a month's insurance for something like twenty euros.

EDIT: I got curious and looked into it - seems like the Irish mechanism is here: https://www.insuranceireland.eu/cons...ases-agreement If you ask three insurance companies for a quote and they all refuse, you go to this government agency and they force a quote on your behalf. Obviously, it's likely to be quite expensive, but they mostly can't refuse to insure you.

As a long term member here that always give value to the community and industry in general (only one that writes here regularly from all of the "providers" mentioned here), I have to correct you in your stating that we are not issuing insurance if you don't pay a consultation fee (check your emails and quote the sentence if you can find it).

You wrote to us a couple of emails with extensive lists of questions to which you have direct replies to what we can and can't do (as it would be illegal, and Knopf very often does illegal things covering bikes with third party liability that are registered in a country where his POLISH third party liability insurance is WORTHLESS (he is not very knowledgeable or he plain doesn't care about his clients and sells anything that he can, both ways are ). Ask Knopf if his POLISH insurance is registered with National Bank of Ireland or with FCA, as it seems that if this goes like this, POLISH insurance company will also ran away from him like Axa did.

What we don't provide for free is legal advisory, as you have requested from us to define what can you do in EUROPE and what you can't do in Europe (if you can find any other market participant from the above mentioned that is available to offer such paid advisory I will give you and that person one of my healthy kidney's ). So i am honestly not sure what has not been clear from our side here again?
Your problem is that you don't understand EU legal framework, nor you understand insurance legal framework and what are you obliged to get and where. How will you obtain this is your "problem", will you get fined for playing around with using Polish insurance that is not registered with National bank of Ireland or FCA in UK, let us know

Since 2016 we have created special insurance product for different EU markets (Ireland and UK as well) where non EU citizen can buy a motorcycle/vehicle and get it insured through us as we got authorisations from the governing bodies in these countries to operate. But since people have started to abuse this unique product and have caused extremely high insurance claims, we were forced to abandon UK and Ireland retail market.

BR
Dooby

Thanks for engaging Dooby - I appreciate it and don't mean to misrepresent your business if I'm wrong - this was my understanding of your email.

I agree and am not expecting free services - just an understanding if I can or cannot purchase a product from you given my situation.

My confusion is still this

- Due to abuse/reckless claims, the custom insurance product you created is now unavailable as you describe here.

So I was not sure whether you still offered a product at all - the reply you gave was this.

In my email - I asked this because I was curious about purchasing insurance from you - I wanted to know if this was the process I had to go through with you to buy the insurance product from you


Which left me with the conclusion that if I had to buy the product from you I had to go through the legal advisory service.

My understanding is that as you don't operate in the UK and Irish retail market anymore - you won't insure any vehicles that are registered there for Green card. Furthermore anyone offering green card insurance in Ireland/U.K is not doing it legally.


I definitely don't, it is beyond my scope to understand it, I'm just looking as a consumer to see if anyone does offer a product for a motorcycle purchased in U.K/Ireland to ride Europe, that's all.

Hope that cleared things up from my end.

Cheers