From UK, living in Europe for a year. My 90 days European third party insurance has almost ended. What to do?

[James Veitch]

I am very lost.

I bought a M3 in December of 2021 via my company (of which I am sole director) not knowing that I'd be going abroad travelling the next year.
I live and have property in London but I also have an Irish passport and I've been travelling round Europe. I took the car because I could bring my dog and I figured it would be cheaper and sometimes I could save money & sleep in the car. Freedom. The traveller. I checked before and my plan was to just get a new insurance plan when my 90 days ran out. There are even some that do 180 days but I couldn't find one before i left that would accept EVs. On the whole it's been working but now I have a problem.

• My 90 day European cover has now run out or is about to.
• I'm putting a LOT of miles on the car driving around. Drove from Montenegro to Sweden in two days for a job then back down to Valencia. This bothers me perhaps more than it should. But I have a hire purchase agreement that says I have to start paying for miles if I return the car with more than 40k on it. I'm currently at 12,700 and it's been a year. My agreement is for 49 months from Dec 2021. Then there's a balloon payment of 18k to purchase it outright.

It's getting a fair bit banged up over here due to some treacherous roads and some shoddy parking. As far as I see it my options are to:

• Keep the car in Europe. Cancel my current insurance, renew with another insurance company to get another 90 days.
• Keep the car in Europe and find some sort of European insurance for it? Move it over/ register it here for a year. I expect that might expensive and hard given I have no fixed address here.
• Bring the car home. Leave it there and travel around Europe not worrying about this. Less convenient but my dog's small so perhaps she's allowed on planes. I expect I could leave it in a garage somewhere but it would obviously still need to be insured.
• Sell the car to a dealer who will pay off the equity too. I'd have to have some body work done beforehand which could cost about 2k. Are they really still selling for above or market rates? How much could I reasonably assume I'd lose in the transaction? Has anyone done this?
• Pay it off outright and then sell to an individual. Again, probably would have to have body work done.

I'd really appreciate some advice. I don't know what to do and I'm having difficulty thinking about this rationally. Properly reading the leasing agreement I can see that I was meant to let them know that I was leaving the country in advance.

Meanwhile what does one do at the end of a hire purchase agreement? They tell me my car will be worth 18k and I can pay 18k to own it. Do most people buy it and then use that to sell to another dealership or sell it privately and then use that money to invest into a new car? Currently I feel like it's a liability not least because if I put more than 40k miles on it I'm charged .08p per extra mile.

Very much lost and any advice really appreciated.

 

[Js1977]

You've got me confused as you went from PCP to hire purchase and then lease. Anyways, probably call your insurance company and ask for options as they might extend it for you.