Exporting cars (was From Italy)

> because I've known the DVLA get arsey about such things. I've exported a > couple of Range Rovers to Greece over the years, and they were major league > pains about exporting a car that wasn't in my name about the last one I did > (last March). I figured they'd be as bad bringing in as taking out. >

Could you tell us more about these problems? The forms seem rather vague about what constitutes exporting a car: I've sold two Bentleys in the last year to continental buyers, but in both cases I simply treated the deal as taking place in the UK, but to buyers who had, respectively, Italian and German addresses. One of my buyers, at least, was quite used to the procedure, and happily towed the car, completely brakeless, on a rope from the car park at Harwich onto the ferry behind his elderly Volvo. Do the problems arise when you want to carry on using the car abroad, permanently, yourself?

In news:c1us5o$mim$ snipped-for-privacy@news.freedomsurf.net, Autolycus decided to enlighten our sheltered souls with a rant as follows

They weren't happy because the last one I took wasn't registered to me at any point and I was trying to get an export certificate for the new keeper. I think they thought I was trying to get round the SORN regs by having the car officially out of the country or something, they DID mention SORN, but I wasn't particularly listening to them.. I just remember the DVLA in Trafford Park being a bit snotty about it. Eventually they did issue the export certificate, but it took a fair bit of persuasion, ringing the previous keeper etc. Trying to explain that I was a trader trying to deliver a vehicle I'd been asked to source, to a bloke in Greece (who's name the export certificate was in) seemed beyond their meagre mental capacity... even though I delivered another Range Rover to the same bloke a few years earlier and everything was hunky dory.

TBH I don't know exactly what happens when you try to use the car yourself abroad because both cars I sent to Greece ended up in Zakynthos, where the Police etc don't care about your car if it's UK registered and you don't look Greek. The first Rangey I sent there is still wandering about on a '99 tax disc and hasn't been MOT'd or tested in any way since it got there. The tax and MOT expired on the last one I sent last May... Same bloke has a Nissan 4x4 pick up thing and that's been there 12 years with no mot or tax. Island is littered in old British junk being driven into the ground by ex-pats. I wouldn't fancy driving one back here though, that's for certain.