Purchasing a Car in Germany -- bringing to Bulgaria

Actually, there's a better way to do all this

Option 1: Go to Germany and buy your car. Send it to Bulgaria via car carrier trailer. Fly to Sofia and collect your car.

Option 2: Byu the car form Germany. Drive to Bulgaria with the German plates - absolutely no problem. Then decide in Bulgaria if you want to change the plates with Bulgarian or keep the German ones.

Option 3: If you buy a car that is not registered in Germany (I do not adwise on this however), then you will need temporary (transit plates) for your trip to Sofia. No need these to be Bulgarian transit plates.

Option 4: Hire s.o. to do all this for you.

I had no problems bring an Austrian car into Bulgaria, and I was allowed to drive on Austrian number plates for one year, then they need to be changed.

I used an Austrian Insurance company during this time. However my problems started when I registered my car with the Bulgarian authorities.

The Bulgarian side of the transaction was straight forward, but the cancelling of the Austrian insurance was a nightmare.

Part of registering a car in Bulgaria is the destruction of the existing plates, and part of the Austrian cancelling process is the “Return” of the old plates..!!!

Austria was insistent that I return the plates, and for several months I was paying two insurance company policies.

I finally obtained help from an Engineer in Bulgaria who was au-fait with vehicle paperwork. He wrote to The Ministry of Transport in Sofia, who sent a legal document to be forwarded to Austria.

This worked fine, and Austria accepted the legal document informing that the number plates had been destroyed.

It’s my opinion that Bulgarian people are not bureaucracy driven in their outlook, and inject a degree of common sense into a problem. Whilst in Austria paper trails are ridged.

In conclusion my advice would be to buy a car in Bulgaria. If I had done this I would be about a thousand Euro better off, and would have pre-empted any possible problems.

I hope this helps a little.

Hello again...
What I was trying to say was “If I were to do this again, I would just buy a car in Bulgaria”…

)

Thank you for the awesome responses!

We need to pick up some things in Germany and do not enjoy flying so purchasing car in Germany currently makes the most sense for us.

As we are US citizens how does one register a car in Germany once we purchase it. We will not have a German address.. which as far as I can tell we would need to properly register and insure...

Is this what German transit plates would be for?

Driving from germany to bulgaria is motorway all the way till Romania, In Romania you need to know if you want to use bridge Number 01 or the new bridge number 02, to enter Bulgaria, both bridges can be reached via some new Motor ways that have recently been finished in Romania, so they may not be on older sat navs, for bridge number 02 the nearest way to get to Bulgaria is to head for Calafat in Romania also you will get to drive along by the river Danube. if you want more info PM me, we drive from the UK and back 2 times a year,