Hi and thanks in advance.

Me and my partner are flying to heathrow beginning of august, we’re looking to buy two motorcycles for 2500-3500gbp each (renting seems silly as we will be riding to morocco and back for 6weeks prices are coming in at 2200gbp)

Does anyone know the process for foreigners buying and registering motorcycles in uk?

Hi Paul, it may be more of a mission than you think.
My friend is over here from Australia for 3 months, so we can do a trip into Europe.

Buying and registering the bike wasn’t too hard, but you need a UK address- he used my address to register a KTM 690.

But insuring it wasn’t at all easy, and very expensive. The only company we found that would do it were BikeSure, and it was £400 third party only for 3 months plus another £300 for European use.

I wasn’t able to add him as a rider to any of my bike policies, so it cost an extra £200 third party only for him to use my Yamaha WR250F.

Check the insurance before you buy a bike as it may be easier to hire. Maybe check with your Aussie insurance company too, which is something he didn’t do.


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This is what i needed to hear thanks.

Make hiring look a little more feasible.

Yep, buying is easy enough as long as somebody is happy to let you register it at their UK address.

MoT is an annual roadworthiness test but can be done at any bike shop, refers to bike not owner.

Insurance is the tricky one and as berin found, Bikesure seem to be the only ones who will do it, at a price.

Finally road tax which can be bought online as long as you have current title, MoT and insurance.

Let us know if you find a solution. I think others have found that insuring a EU registered bike easier than in the UK, but I don’t know the process for buying and registering a bike in the EU.

There still may be a case for buying if you’re off to Morocco as the hire companies may not let you do that, also you have to do a temporary import into Morocco which may be harder if it’s not your bike, and there may be restrictions on riding dirt roads on a hire bike.


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Paul:

This is a long-shot and a very speculative suggestion, but it might be an answer and it shouldn't take you too long to figure out whether it is possible:

Could you buy the motorcycle in the UK and then register it (plate it) in your home country of Australia? If that is possible, then you would have a non-European registered motorcycle and you could then purchase the well-known and bog-standard liability coverage - the "Green Card" insurance - for out-of-Europe motorcycles to give you the insurance coverage you need to ride legally. That insurance is cheap, about €70 a month or so, and is available from several different vendors (all at different prices - see the posts made in the last two years on the discussion This is where you get the cheap European insurance).

Once you have finished your trip, you could sell the bike in the UK very easily because it is a UK spec machine and therefore meets the safety standards (lighting, emissions, etc.) set by the UK government.

Be aware that although Australia requires carnets if you temporarily import a non-Australian registered vehicle into Australia, none of the Western or Central European countries, or Morocco, require a carnet for an Australian registered vehicle. Since you will never be importing the moto to Australia (only plating it there), you won't need an Australian carnet if you are allowed to put an Australian plate on it.

Michael

I'm fairly sure that every country in the world requires you to present a (previously unregistered) vehicle to an inspector physically inside the country to issue a license plate?

I think it's worth pointing out that UK is just a completely preposterous market for vehicle insurance. My third-party liability on my motorcycle for the season of riding here in North Europe was around 60 euros - that's from April through October. Someone with no record of no-accident driving with local insurers would probably pay more, but not by an order of magnitude. The insurance prices I hear from UK folks are definitely not normal.

Nope. I don't know about other countries, but in some parts of the USA that's necessary, other parts it's not. My state is one of the latter.

Yeah i think the uk could be in the too hard basket, looking at purchase buy back in ireland and croatia, eu definitely seems to be easier for insurance.

Thanks for all the input.