Based on my recent experience re-registering (UK to Portuguese plates) a left hand drive UK plated 1999 CLK230K (W208 - Automatic) cabriolet here in the Algarve, Portugal.
Re-registering an EU sourced car in Portugal is not quite as simple/cheap as it may first appear. The paperwork is also a pain, so unless you speak and write Portuguese you will be better off using a local Portuguese agent to process your vehicle matriculation. As you can imagine there are plenty English speaking agents around that do just that and, in most instances, for a reasonable fee.
Firstly let’s try and drop the term 'import' because my understanding is that the word no longer applies to vehicles that are already EU registered. You used to have to ‘import’ an EU registered vehicle into Portugal and pay the required ‘import duty’ but now that is no longer possible the authorities here had to come up with another revenue generating scheme, hence the introduction of the CO2 ‘tax’ imposed when bringing the car in to be registered on Portuguese plates.
If you wish to bring a car into Portugal and re-register (matriculate) then it is of prime importance that the vehicle has, included in it's documentation, an ‘EU certificate of conformity’. The reason for this is to do with vehicle emissions (CO2 output) and how the Portuguese authorities ‘process’ the matriculation of your vehicle.
Without that cert you will need to jump though a whole heap of hoops to end up with a Portuguese plate on your car.
As an aside, it is my understanding that these certificates were required to be issued in the EU with new vehicles before 2000 but until that point it was not a requirement for the CO2 value to be added. In general you will only find the CO2 emission value stated on post 2000 vehicles.
First off the vehicle will need the standard Portuguese equivalent of an MOT. The test centre needs to be approved to carry out pre-matriculation roads tests on ‘foreign’ vehicles. The one for the Algarve is in Loule near Faro.
Take along your registration docs, a passport and the EU certificate of conformity which, to make the whole process easier, (must[/u]) state the CO2 Value (output in grams per kilometre) of the engine.
Without a stated CO2 value the car will need to be tested for CO2 output (on a rolling road) at an approved test centre here in Portugal. This is in addition to the MOT and will incur extra costs/time. Unfortunately, for some vehicles, they have a rolling road/emission system that can test manual cars but not automatics. At the time of their (rolling roads) installation it seems that the Portuguese government felt that Automatics would not factor in future tests so they opted for the (no doubt cheaper) manual only options.
If the car you wish to matriculate is automatic plus does not have the CO2 value stated in it's certificate of conformity you will be looking at a hefty ‘CO2 registration tax' for want of a better expression. Because the rolling roads they have will not produce the correct results you could be faced with up to double the CO2 tax to pay.
Typically, on a car with a CO2 emission output of 240gms/KM, the (one off) CO2 ‘tax’ will be in the region of Euro €3500.00 so, before you bring that bargain car of yours into the country, please bear that in mind. If the car is Automatic and does not have the CO2 value stated in it’s EU certificate of conformity then you could be looking at a bill of around Euro €7000.00 for the same vehicle! I came up against that problem but managed to get around it in the end.
The Portuguese customs don’t simply apply the tax at a value per gm/km instead they take the value (off the certificate of conformity or based on the rolling road test) and apply it to a cooked up mathematical formulae that had my local MB dealership and MB in Lisbon baffled as to where the formulae came from. From what I can deduce they have created a formulae to substitute the loss of ‘import duty’ in favour of a newer emissions tax.
It will also pay you to make sure that the registration documents match exactly the information marked on your vehicle. This includes the engine number and the VIN chassis number in full.
In my case the UK DVLA missed the last digit off the VIN when the car was re-registered in the UK after the first owner brought it into the country from Germany in 2001. This caused a few admin problems and resulted in me having to take the car back to the local test centre once again just to get the VIN checked to confirm that it matched the EU certificated of conformity.
I also needed to get the local MB dealer to issue a letter confirming that the Engine number was as stated in the cert as well.
On top of the above you will of course have to pay for the Vehicle Road worthiness test (MOT) and other associated admin costs. None of which cost anything near the cost of the so called CO2 emissions tax.
Road tax is now on a sliding scale here as in other EU countries. The smaller the engine/lower CO2 output the less you pay.
Finally. Car prices in Portugal seem to be way above the EU norm for some reason and I guess that is why people bring cars in and go though all this. If all you need is a cheap run around or a family type saloon car then you will save yourself a lot of grief if you simply sell your existing car in the UK and buy a car here that is already on Portuguese plates. If however, you have a prized MB that you have nurtured for years or can't bear to part with it then the matriculation route may be the way to go.
On the maintenance front costs are generally cheaper and rust (here in the south) is a none starter.. rest easy in the knowledge that once your prize wheels are settled into the Algarve rust will not feature in it's future.
