How I put my UK track car on to German plates

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Parent Category: Old projects

Category: Project RX8

Created on Thursday, 10 May 2012 19:47

Last Updated on Friday, 11 May 2012 10:30

Published on Thursday, 10 May 2012 20:52

Written by Dale

As I talked about before, the English insurance situation at the Nürburgring is not getting any better. As such I've sold one Mazda (my MX-5 turbo), and bought another one (RX-8). The reason being that the RX-8 would be easier to put on German plates. The photo above might actually be the last one taken with UK plates on, as the deed is done, and this is how I did it.

1. Choosing the right car

For my UK to German track car, I chose a car which is late model and easy to convert. Later models have an EU type approval number on the V5 and a Certificate of Conformity used by the dealer to register the car. Of the two cars I wanted (Honda S2000 or Mazda RX-8) both had CoC documents just a phone call away. Not to one of the many rip-off merchants, but instead to the manufacturer's UK importer. Both are 'european' models. An example of a bad car to try and import would be a Mitsubishi Evo VIII FQ-something. This is actually a Japanese model imported to the UK and not available across Europe (it has no European type approval number). Another bad example would be ANY modified car. All modifications to a German car must be backed-up by paperwork that simply doesn't exist for most UK parts. And single-part approvals for each eBay or home-made part get pricey really quickly...

2. Prepare the paperwork

I needed the following paperwork for the big day:

• UK V5 document in my name
• Bill of sale or receipt (to prove ownership)
• My own ID (passport)
• Proof of German residency
• Proof of insurance (EVB number)
• Certificate of Conformity cost me £75 from Mazda (has all the boring specs about weights, towing weight, load, power, etc...)
• Proof of passing the German MOT, which is in two parts:
  • - HU (Hauptuntersuchung) the main MOT
  • - AU (Abgashauptuntersuchung) the emissions test

The final two pieces above were the biggest step, but luckily the RX-8 makes a lot of things easy...

3. Pass the German MOT (TüV: HU & AU)

So as I said, the RX-8 is a cool car to swap from drive-on-the-left UK spec to drive-on-the-right German spec. The fog-light is centrally mounted at the rear, and the reversing lights are on both sides. So no need to swap rear light clusters. In fact, all I needed to modify was the headlights as the beam pattern would dazzle people driving on the right of my positon... i.e. every German coming the other way.

New LHD headlights from Mazda were over €1000. Damn my HID Xenons! Second-hand prices ranged from €400 to €900. Way too much money for my Yorkshire tastes.

So I conceived a third way... dismantle the headlight and 'swap' the beam pattern. Sounds crazy, right?

Well, I saw this thread on RX8Club. And although the original poster was talking about splitting the headlight in order to spray parts black, you could see the plate to make the beam pattern could be swapped...

... so I did! Well, actually 'we' did. Thorsten and me invested a whole evening in saving me €1000. I owe him a lot of beer and pizza... but anyway. We tried splitting the lens of the first light using the heat gun. It was long, arduous and a royal pain in the ass. It took over three hours. The next one we split by putting in the oven at 90º Celsius (hot enough to melt the glue, not hot enough to melt the plastic). This worked a treat!

In the photo on the left you can see the light being warmed up (under a tea towel to prevent direct heat melting the plastic).

Underneath you can see the little metal part that makes the beam pattern (look for the slight change in the bottom straight-edge). Yes, we simply flipped this around, front to back. One locating pin was snipped. That's it.

Lights back together, the beam now going up to the RIGHT side and not the left. To pass emissions, I burnt off my tank of pre-mixed oily fuel and filled it with regular 95 RON. Oh, and we put the catalyser back on too, and replaced the accessory belts too (one was looking bad). It was time for the test. Test passed, not a single problem and emissions as good as a new car back in 2004. Excellent! At the same time as passing the tests, I also had the H&R springs added to the logbook.

4. Registering the car

I took all the paperwork gathered from the above adventures to the 'Zulassungstelle' in Adenau Rathaus. First you turn everything over, then you head next door to have your plates made (i paid the €12 extra to choose my number). It took a while as I had to queue for 90 minutes, and then all the details from the CoC had to be entered by hand, but we got there in the end. Interestingly they also wanted me to remove my UK plates and surrender them.

Costs to register my UK car on German plates:

HA/AU TüV test and H&R springs added to paperwork - €140
CoC papers from Mazda - €100
Registration - €62
Plates and mountings - €41
Road tax - don't know yet
Insurance - twice as much as my fully-comp UK policy (I have zero no-claims here, and am starting my insurance 'career' from scratch in Germany)

BUT the comfort and peace of mind from insurance that includes coverage during touristenfahrten, practice and trackdays as standard? - PRICELESS!

Action photo above by http://dennisvdmeijs.nl/

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