Traveling to Europe with your own car

[RaspberryLatte]

Hi,
This is my first post here. I have a few questions related to overseas car travel and hope that someone would help me with some information.


Next year my husband and I want to travel to Europe for 3 months and we would like to ship my car so that we could use it there. We've been renting a car several times for a long-ish period of time and each time just the rent cost us an arm and a leg. One day on average cost us $90, not including fuel. My husband is very tall and he won't fit in just any car. It has to have a good amount of headroom, and those "bigger" cars cost a lot to rent in Europe.



I own an older Land Rover LR2 (2013) which is the car in question. It is paid off and I have a title for it. I bought it here in the US and it is made for the US market. Does anyone know if driving a car that is made for the US market could possibly be an issue in Europe? I heard that in Europe they have different rear lights or something like that. I'm not very knowledgeable about cars, so please forgive my ignorance.



I checked one car shipping company and it looks like we can ship our car from Jacksonville, FL to Bremerhaven, Germany. We can travel in Europe for 90 days with our US passports and without needing a visa. We're familiar with 1-3 months travel, so that's not what I'm concerned about. All we want to do is to have our own car so that we wouldn't have to worry about every possible scratch and huge repair bills. We want to have peace in mind, that's why we want to try and take my car along to Europe and see how it goes. We really don't want to rent or lease a car, and we're very used to our own car and feel very comfortable driving it.



The average cost of shipping the car round-trip would be around $1,800 or so. If I compare this price to the rental cost we've paid in Europe, it is roughly equivalent to 20 days of rental cost. And we'll be using it for 90 days, which would save us a lot of money. And if we have our own car, we can even get a tent and camp at the inexpensive campgrounds -- they have them everywhere all over Europe. This might save us a lot of additional money if we don't stay at hotels every single night. And we love camping. Overall, I just want to have a peace of mind, flexibility, freedom, and not to have to worry about scratching and denting a rental car, and also not to have to depend on the local transportation (been there, and the worst part is all those railway strikes that suck joy out of your trip!).



I can't find clear information about the car insurance for using your US car overseas. I'm sure there are people out there who took their cars overseas for car shows or travel, so perhaps someone can chip in on how the car insurance in Europe worked for them. Were you able to use your own US insurance and/or just pay more in order to have coverage in Europe? I'll call our car insurance company this coming week, but I also wanted to see if anyone here had some experience with insurance for their car that they have shipped to Europe for a short time. Not for moving to Europe, which requires you to register your car and get the local license plates. Just travel or a car show. I'm a European but I've never had a car when I lived in Europe many moons ago, so I don't know anything about insurance for a US-registered car.



Also, did anyone face any problems when driving your car overseas? For example, maybe you had to buy a mandatory permit to use a certain country's highways. Or had to have that oval sticker on the back of your car with the "USA" on it (not sure if they're mandatory for the US cars).



We're planning to take our car back when we return to the US. We only want to use it for those 3 months and not to have to rely on trains and rental cars. This is not about importing the car, just to travel with it and personal use.


Hope someone has had some experience with taking their car overseas and can answer at least some of my questions. Thank you in advance!