ItchingtoTravel

Young 60's couple in initial planning for European trip (Spring 2015) for 3 months. We have looked at traveling by train, by RV, and now contemplating buying a new car and picking up at factory in Europe. We know that we can make arrangements stateside through European Delivery programs. Any advice? We are also interested in inexpensive yet clean and safe accommodations - possibly cabins at campgrounds and/or hostels. Thoughts? Any advice would be appreciated.

DebitNM

We did thid in 2011 and bought a Volvo. Great experience and only way to buy a European car. Volvo has the best program with price, options, airfare included for 2 and more. The car comes with 2 weeks of paid insurance, you can buy more for reasonable price. We drove to Norway with ours before turning it back in for shipment home. We stayed about 3.5 weeks in Europe all told.

bobthenavigator

If you want to buy a car anyway that makes good sense.
If not, look at the French buy-back lease plan that is excellent for long term usage. We did the Peuguot lease plan via Kemwel for 8 weeks one time and the price was very good. It is best to start and end in France, but not required.

Michael

The buy-back lease plan makes more sense than purchasing a car in Europe unless you need to replace your car in the States and want a higher end car: Volvo, Mercedes, BMW. However, the buy-back lease program makes sense only for longer periods of time (50+ days) because the insurance and registration are front-loaded on the lease. In other words, divide the cost of the lease by the number of days, using a minimum time and then a period of two months, and compare the per day price of the two.

If the European stay is limited to a month or less, it is can be cheaper to rent a car and have the CDW carried by one's Visa card (mine offers insurance with no deductible). However, this does not apply to rentals in Italy.

kybourbon

Many VISA cards don't cover the insurance for Italy (a few do, but depends on the bank that you get your card from).

Most lease-buy cars have to be picked up at airports or major cities.

DebitNM

AMEX has car insurance for $24.95 [flat fee, $17.95 if Calif. resident] if their card is used for car rental in most places{Coverage is worldwide, except for vehicles rented in Australia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, and New Zealand**.} There are a few term which are pretty reasonable:

https://www295.americanexpress.com/p...verage/home.do

Ingo

A friend of mine is driving right now all over Europe with a Peugeot that he got through that French buy-back lease plan. Works very well. Start and end in Paris, no problems taking the car into Czech Republic etc. which is a problem for rental cars often (insurance problems.)

ItchingtoTravel

Thank you everyone for all your advice. We will look into the leasing/buy back programs again. At first glance, they seemed pricey. We are also examining the possibility of buying a car. Naturally, this will need to be a car we will be happy with for a long time. Thanks again!

ReillyQ

We have done both - picked up a BMW in Munich (not available in August), dropped it off in Amsterdam. Did the lease/buy back thing with a Renault. We picked up the lease car in Frankfurt and dropped it off in Paris. Since on that trip there was 4 of us, the cost for a lease seemed reasonable. They said for 2 people, the cut off of lease/buy back versus rent was 17 days. We were doing 23 with 4 people so it really was economical. You get a brand new car, pay only the agreed upon price, and get 24 hr road service (which we never needed) and also "0" deductible on any damage included in the lease. The only mark we got on the car was when my husband forgot to tuck the outside mirrors one time and scratched one significantly, but no problem with the "0" deduct. We filed a plan that was taking it from Germany, into Switzerland, Italy and then France. No problem there either. The lease company picked us up at the Frankfurt airport and we dropped it back off at the Paris airport.

Both worked very well. The purchase had the advantage that they gave us a full tank of gas, a % discount on the price, plus full insurance but that was in 1997 and even then they would void the insurance if we went in Italy or Czech Repub. However, our daughter did it in 2006 and by then the Czech Republic was fine, cannot remember about Italy. You do have to be without a car while they ship it back stateside and it does have to be built with all epa and other safety features in the USA.

As regards accommodations, we usually stay at 2-3 star hotels because we prefer ensuites. If you have not already, look at the Rick Steves books, he usually includes many varieties of rooms, bed and breakfast and hostels for economical travel. When our daughter did a semester in Europe, they did a lot of them and used Rick as one of their sources.

Have a wonderful trip.
Regards, Mary Ann

DebitNM

Oh,thought of another drawback of overseas purchase. I am guessing it's the same for all manufacturers; but we had to pay for the car in full [we got financing which was a bit tricky, since you had to get the loan before the car was in the US] a month before we left to pick it up. So, in addition to the issue of getting a loan [USAA did it, a few others will too] you have to make payments before the car gets to USA.