Buying a car
We we have been renting a car then some friends let us borrow one of their cars for a while. Now we are renting a car again. Driving five different cars in the past couple of months. We decided it was time to buy a car, but before we could buy a car we had to have some of our immigration paperwork completed. The last few weeks we have been searching online for cars and learning about the car buying process in Spain. We planned to buy a used car with cash so I didn’t look at financing.
Things to consider: Europe is getting more and more strict about emissions standards on cars and Spain has a rating system C, B, ECO for cars. ECO or C being the best. If you have these ratings then you can drive in major cities or areas with restricted emissions standards. The goal is to phase out gas and diesel cars by 2035. The electric grid is pretty good here for electric cars but we live in a rented apartment and using the public charging stations is expensive and very inconvenient so we ruled out an electric car. If we owned our apartment we would consider installing a charging station in our parking space, but we aren’t in that position yet. We decided to look for a car with a C or ECo Rating.
Spanish cars also have to pass a safety and maintenance inspection after they are four years old. This needs to be done every one or two years depending on the age of the car. This iTV test is indicated on the windshield with a sticker and the date of expiration. You have to make an appointment at a designated iTV station for the inspection and if your car doesn’t pass you have one or two weeks to get it fixed and reinspected.
Cash isn’t king when buying a car. The sticker price on the car is often the finance price and the cash price is a little higher. Apparently banks give the car dealers a kick back from the financing and they apply this to the price of the car because in the long run the financing will cost more than the discount. There are also licensing fees that may be added to the price but might be included in the price. It is important to ask the dealer how this works.
We needed our NIE number which is an identification number that all Spanish residents need and we needed our Empadronamento which is a registration you get from your local city hall to register your address. These two documents are needed for many things in Spain and you can’t buy a car, register your kids for school or many other official things without them.
Test driving cars isn’t always possible. Some car dealers will only let you test drive after you reserve the car and if you don’t like it you forfeit the deposit. The test drive is to check mechanical problems. Other car dealers will let you test drive. I am not sure how this is determined but it is very odd.
We started researching cars online and after time realized there were big online clearinghouses for cars that pull dealer data so it was best to find the car look at the photo then figure visit the dealer’s direct website and contact them through that. If you do a general search you might find a car you love but it will be across the country. Many of the large dealers will transport cars for you but you can’t test them before you do this. We decided to only look for cars in our province. Most dealers have a filter where you can indicate what province you want to look in.
Automatic cars are about 20% more than manual cars. We can both drive a manual but the driving is very active and a lot of stop and go, which sucks when driving a manual. There is so much to pay attention to when driving to add shifting is an unnecessary extra distraction.
The license number, and insurance are added to the car. The license plate never changes and the individual gets added to the car. Insurance also costs considerably less here than in the US. I wonder if that has to do with national health care so the insurance agencies aren’t covering accidents and medical just the car. I don’t know but we were quoted less than $500 per year with deductibles between zero and $300.
In the end we found a Fiat 500L that has four doors, some cargo space is a diesel and an automatic with a C eco rating. We hope to ski this winter so having a little extra room for gear and possibly the dog to join us on a few road trips is pretty important.
The actual car buying experience took a little over an hour after we found the car we wanted, we were able to test drive it and the paperwork included two signatures, a money transfer. Then we wait for a week for them to clean and inspect the vehicle and to transfer the license plate and registration to our names and to find insurance.
Sun Family in Spain 