What is your citizenship? I'm no expert on this, but I do know that obtaining a European driving license is incredibly onerous compared to, say, a U.S. one.

I do not think that you will be able to buy a camper or a van. You can rent one. However, given the cost of the rental, it probably would be cheaper to travel lightly and get the smallest car available with standard shift and use the savings for staying at hotels or B&Bs.

http://www.kemwel.com/

the rules on rental vary from country to country. Italy, as a rule of thumb, does not allow your credit card to carry the CDW; France does. That's what the "basic" rate represents when looking a Kemwel or Autoeurope pricing--and you will not see it when specifying an Italian location. Cross-Border drop-off incur heavy fees. If you decide to travel by car in France and Italy, you will either have to have two rentals--one for each country--or make a loop with the rental at the higher Italian rate.

You might want to look at leasing a car. http://goeurope.about.com/od/drivingineurope/a/european-car-rental-vs-leasing.htm. I have bought a car to drive in France, and without the help of my landlord, it would have been impossible. You have to prove you are living in France to buy a car in France. I have bought 3 cars in UK, and it is doable there, but still a hassle. I have never bought a car in Spain. You can rent campers in Europe, Germany is the cheapest to rent in, but at the rental rates, plus fuel, leasing a car and staying in hotels, or gites or airbnb is cheaper, I think. You might want to look at gumtree.com (similar to craigslist in US) and see if someone will do a short term rental for a camper. Worth a look.

Buy a new Volvo wagon or SUV in Sweden through their program.

I think you can keep it quite awhile to drive around Europe, then return it to them, and they ship it to you in the States. In case you need a new car stateside!

Forgot to say, you pick up the car in Sweden, but there a several drop off cities in Europe. And Volvo takes care of all the paperwork.

I once bought a VW and picked it up in Paris and used it for two months in Europe. I shipped it home and had it for serveral years. I do not know if VW still has this type of program, but ask.

We did exactly what PeaceOut mentions. Bought a Volvo thru their Overseas Delivery Program. The 2 important things she left out 1. Car costs less and 2. You get 2 round trip airplane tickets. Another nice thing is that you can customize the car.

Peugeot (and maybe Renault) has a program where you buy the car and then sell it back to them; I think that is how it works.

The OP says they will only be there for 'a couple of weeks' is that worth the trouble? I can understanding it was a couple of months. He implies they will live in the car, do we know if that's ok? I think that's concerning. I doubt you can just pull up somewhere and sleep in the back of a station wagon. Where will they shower etc.

In the dark ages (1967), my parents did this. My Dad ordered the car (a Citroen) before the trip. We picked it up in Paris, drove it around France for a couple of weeks, and had it shipped home from the south of France.

I had to write the letters to (and translate the letters from ) Citroen, which, at age 17, made me very nervous. I kept telling my Dad that if he got a car equipped with some odd things, not to blame me--iodine quartz driving lights weren't in my college French class vocabulary lessons.

IIRC (which I may not), we didn't have to pay duty because the car was used when we shipped it home.

probably best to get it in france as italy has huge insurance requirements..

leasing is a good option.. i am leasing from "auto france" next month. while expensive it is a fab deal as you get a new car and full insurances and taxes included..

google them... citroen has a similar program..

Have a look at the Renault buy back leasing program. This might suit your needs.
http://www.renaultusa.com/travelpartners.asp.

jkbritt,

Leasing works for 17 days or more, which is more than the two weeks the OP mentioned. Moreover, it is much more expensive than a rental for that period of time.

a fab deal as you get a new car and full insurances and taxes included..

I wish prices were given. I will bet that for that period of time a rental is much cheaper, and the car probably less than a year old. The rates quoted by Autoeurope for a rental include the VAT. Only RR station pickup fees, road usage fees and a possible pollution fee for having an automatic are not included, and these add up to about $100 per rental.

My brother bought an overseas delivery Volvo wagon in 1990. He just had his first roadside breakdown at 299,683 miles. it was the alternator , it has been replaced and he will continue into the 300,000 mile range. BMW has a similar program. If you really want to camp -- you won't save money -- you could check out Westphalia for a similar program, then get the camper shipped home.

Buying a car in Italy involves paying one year insurance, as you are not known it would be at top rate, you can probably rent a limousine for the same amount. And then you would have to dispose it when you leave...

Buying and selling (if you can) for just two weeks is not a good idea. What if you haven't sold the car before your flight time. Do you abandon it in a car park? What if the car you buy, if it's a used car, has problems? Do you know enough about cars to know if it's got problems? What about the hassle of complying with the law in the country that you buy in, i.e. road tax, insurance etc?

Rent a car or camper, it makes much more sense.

You could not get mandatory insurance if you do not have an address in the country where you buy the car. You almost certainly can't register the vehicle in your name without a local address and proof of valid insurance, and that you have paid any tax due on the vehicle.

For a couple of weeks it is just not worth it. Hire a car or a camper. Campers will be quite a bit smaller than you are used to if you are from North America. Rental costs can be high and often, as in the US, don't include mileage, which together with fuel costs can make it as expensive an option as hotels/B&Bs for a couple of weeks.

If you were staying longer I'd suggest the buy back scheme (effectively a lease scheme)some Dutch Camper companies offer, whereby they retain the title and pay the insurance, but that is only worth considering for a longer period of time.

I can't imagine buying a van for just a two week stay. It just is not logical given the cost of rental vs purchase. And I know that you can not do this in Italy which requires an Italian drivers license (the test is only given in Italian) to purchase a car.

Look a using inexpensive B&Bs and or renting a van!!

Wow. Thanks for the immense response. First off, Im from USA. Connecticut specifically.

The whole idea behind this was to try to cut down the travel and lodging costs in half if not more. Obviously renting cars and hotels would be ideal, however that can get quite expensive.

The plan is to try to do the trip on a tight budget. Im an auto mechanic by trade an certainly know my way around an old cheap car. Numerous occasions I have bought cheap cars from craigslist here at home and driven them for quite a while without problems. In fact the car I have now is a 96 subaru wagon I bought for $800 and have done absolutely nothing to the car for the past 10 months but put gas in it.

I have quite a bit of experience with U.S. spec VWs from the 90's They are cheap to find and easy to fix. I was kind of hoping to have the same sort of luck abroad.

As far as sleeping, not sure how it is over there, but state-side there are plenty of places to park and crash for the night. Rest stops on the highway, 24hour service stations and the sort. We don't plan on bum status the entire trip. There will be a couple hotel stops mixed in here and there for quality rest and showering. Mostly in the car though.

I really have no interest in buying a car and trying to have it exported to the U.S. There are several European cars that I would love to do that to but I've heard that its more of a hassle than its worth. And that's not the point of this trip.

Im just kind of drawn to the idea of buying a car just for this trip and selling/giving it away when done. It may be lame, but I've owned A LOT of different cars over the years,most of which I bought for less than $1000, and would like to add a true foreign one to the list.

I though that maybe I could work out a deal with someone over there that if they register and insure it for me for a couple weeks, when I'm done with it they could have it. Problem is, I don't know anybody there.

My wife is/was pretty fluent in French through several years of schooling. However that was a couple years back now. Hopefully she still remembers. Can someone suggest a website that we may be able to make some contacts that she can talk to about all this?

Thanks very much everyone for the input! I got a mush larger response than expected.

godesshunter on Mar 20, 13 at 11:26pm
I have quite a bit of experience with U.S. spec VWs from the 90's They are cheap to find and easy to fix. I was kind of hoping to have the same sort of luck abroad.

Your story reminds me of the "used car lots" outside the American Express offices in Amsterdam and Paris. There were always a few V-dub camper vans for sale at the curb. But that was 30 years ago.

When I read all the responses about leasing/buying I wondered if they actually read your OP? Or read 'between the lines' at least. One wanting to buy something to sleep in to save money probably isn't considering buying a brand new Volvo or leasing a new car.

Forget it. Full stop. Because you can buy and sell old cars/vans in the States does not mean you can do the same thing in Europe. You need an address, you need full insurance - and even IF you could, you only have 2 weeks to buy it and then try to sell it again . . .

And no one is going to 'sponsor' you by registering and insuring a vehicle for a tourist.

Take trains and buses and stay in hostels. Or - raise your budget and rent a car.

Buying an old junker simply isn't doable.

Please forget the idea of purchasing.
These are the details for Italy: http://italy.angloinfo.com/transport/vehicle-ownership/buying-selling-cars/
and this covers France: http://france.angloinfo.com/transport/vehicle-ownership/buying-a-used-car/
Anyone selling you a car would want to get the paperwork correct or they could end up having to pay your fines and yearly taxes.
So without the correct paperwork no purchase. With no paperwork it will be hard to sell the car too.

Buying a car legally is not going to work these days. I did the buy/sell thing at the Amex office in Amsterdam Spaarne mentions but that was 40, not 30 years ago! ;^(

With 2 weeks, just rent the smallest cheapest car you can find and look into staying in hostels to save money. There are always cheap 1 star or no star hotels.

No European in their right mind would buy and insure a car for a stranger, of any nationality. In some countries anyone can drive the car with the owners permission, but in others that is not the case, it is named drivers only. Also usually the driver must have a valid licence from the country where the car is registered.

To do things cheaply rent a small car, and stay in hostels, or maybe consider buying a cheap tent when you get here which you can abandon at the end of your stay. There are plenty of so-called festival tents around for very little money which will see you comfortably through two weeks. Pop up tents are especially good value and you literally throw them in teh air and they are ready to go. A little gas stove and a couple of sleeping bags can be had cheaply too.
Don't think about wild camping though - some places you can get away with it, but usually you can't.

You can even get some great deal like this: http://www.sportsdirect.com/festival-tent-and-camping-kit-783238 or this: http://www.sportsdirect.com/campri-scout-dome-2-man-tent-783008 .
No doubt there are French/Italian shops which offer similar terrific bargains.
You will pay about €20-30 per night on a small camp-site with a tent like that.


Alternatively, save up for another year and then come and have more money to spend on the trip.

Abandon this idea. You can't get a proper license. You can't afford insurance even if you managed to get a license. No sane European would get involved with a scheme involving letting you use a licensed, insured car, and you've admitted you have minimal language skills anyway, so how would you even negotiate that? Even if your wife speaks a little French, could you discuss technicalities of insurance and licensing?
Fuel costs about $9 a gallon, there are significant tolls on highways in many European countries, in some you have to purchase vignettes to even use the highways, and you can't just pull over and sleep on the road in most countries without risking fines. And how would you get rid of the car after 2 weeks? Walk around without language skills and try to pawn it off to some stranger? No way this is going to happen. Go camping, stay in hostels, or wait and save up until you can actually afford the trip. Whatever your experience is with buying cheap cars and sleeping in them in America is completely irrelevant.

Ok. So maybe my sense of adventure is creeping beyond reality. I suppose I can live with that. That is why I came here for advise.

It's becoming evident through further research that the most logical thing to do would be to rent a cheap car and do a huge circle through the areas I want to visit and end up back at start again. That seems a little too cliche for my taste but perhaps its for the best.

Thanks everyone!