Buying Spanish car in the Uk

You can't drive a Spanish registered car in the UK as a UK resident so you would need to get it transported at least to the border ( I have no idea if you can drive it in France ).
All debts stay with the car so any unpaid finance, fines or tax will be down to you.
Have a read through of Jim's Guides which can be found in a tab at the top of the page but please don't private message Jim as he gets inundated and your questions could help others on the open forum. There is a section on buying second hand cars if you scroll down but do read all the rest of his guides because they can save you some big headaches.
Some members have agreed a sale with a UK garage, having explained the circumstances and extra mileage and driven down here and once they have found a Spanish car  have had the UK car transported back to the uk at a cost of about €600.

Hi, we bought a left hand drive Spanish registered car in the UK. To transfer into our name we went through a Gestor in Malaga. Any gestor can do this for you. He charged us €90 to do the transfer but the Spanish government costs were approx 4%/6% of their value of the car ( they ascertain the value of the car, not what you paid for it) depending on which province you are in, plus another government admin fee of about €150. We then also paid another €88 to check that the car was free from all fines.  Hope this helps.

Thank you so much for this reply , really helpful.

At least we can go back to the seller with this information as there are clearly more costs involved.

On that note, can you advise what docs we should expect from the seller?

Thank you 

Thanks Cheryl

Much appreciated ...and noted about pm

Original vehicle registration document 2 parts

Copy of seller’s passport

Copy of seller’s NIE certificate 

Copy of bill of sale ( use one on the internet in Spanish)

Copy of your passport 

Copy of your NIE certificate 

Your proof of address ( copy of title deeds or a copy of the certificate/pardon/ empadronamiento 

Reards

"You can't drive a Spanish registered car in the UK as a UK resident so you would need to get it transported at least to the border ( I have no idea if you can drive it in France )."

You cannot insure a foreign registered car in UK with UK insurance. 

It is possible to insure with a Spanish insurer over the phone or perhaps online but you would need an address and an NIE at the very least. 

The seller either doesn't know the rules in Spain or else is deliberately not telling you the whole story. To avoid registration tax (not import tax as that would be illegal in the EU) you have to have owned a vehicle for 6 months.

Frankly unless you know exactly what you're doing and are sure you have all the T's crossed and i's dotted if you're set on buying a LHD car in UK I'd suggest buying anything BUT Spanish regged or French for that matter as with that you could have big problems if stopped in a car which is not registered to you and which the previous owner hadn't notified as sold to you through the horribly complex and unintuitive online only ANTS system.

The last car I bought in UK (to take to France not Spain) was Belgian regged and I got insurance for the journey on the VIN number.

Bottom line then, my advice would be to save yourself the potential hassle and buy in Spain when you get here. With a LHD from UK in the worst case scenario you could end up with a car which you can neither drive nor sell! 

Thank you so much for your comments ...this is proving quite complex, and we are really grateful for your comments.

We certainly don't want to be "stuck" with a car we can't use.

We just thought it would be easier to purchase a Spanish reg car here (UK) and drive over ....

We're moving to Spain in a couple of weeks and went through the same decision process facing you.

At the end of the day we're flying over and will buy a Spanish car in Spain to avoid all the pitfalls. As we won't have NIE on arrival I've hired a car for 2 weeks and my gestor is making a booking for NIE for soon after we arrive.

Thank you, we have NIE's and bank accounts already ....it's the car that's causing the most headache ...so all helpful snippets of information are gratefully received.