Покупка ч.1: Италия. Buying car in Italy, export and transit across EU

This is my story of buying the car in Italy and registering it for export taking into account some Italian origin specifics. For those, who need just the answers and list of the documents in a nutshell, scroll down to TLDR section.

Once we've made a deal with the seller regarding the car, the hard part started. I needed to find out how-to and all legal aspects of export/transit/import procedures.

It all started quite peculiar. I've started searching various European forums (expat etc.) and first few days all the info I came across was that you cannot export a car from Italy by driving it if you aren't an Italian citizen.

Car seller was also investigating the issue and finally we found out that it's actually possible and auto-agency (auto-agentur) can do the stuff required. So I contacted the auto-agency the seller referred to find out what documents do I need and how does the process go.

Process is following: seller and buyer come to the agency with a signed sales contract. The agency makes an export notification for the car and gets the temporary plate. They need the original documents of the car, the two Italian plates, an identity card (or passport) from the seller and buyer, and also signatures of both. They've also mentioned that the whole process takes a day: if you submit the documents in the morning, you get the temporary licence plate next day before lunch (e.g. in Finland it takes roughly 10 minutes). The price for the service is 220€ and they've also mentioned that I should get a temporary Italian insurance as well. Here I should point out that 'temporary Italian insurance' valid for about a week costs (surprise-surprise!) same as basic insurance for whole year in Finland (around 600 €). That all wasn't good news for me.

I've contacted my Finnish insurance company and they've said that they could insure my Italian car by its specs and VIN (so without licence plate) and we've agreed that once I buy the car, I need to contact insurance company, send them car specs (comprehensive list: VIN, make, model, year, engine volume and power, curb weight) and they will send me the green card which I could print out somewhere on special green paper, that they'll send me home in advance, so I can take it with me to Italy.

While making that agreement I've been constantly mailing the the agency rep in Italy, asking her to double-check about the necessity of Italian insurance and quote any legislation that actually requires that. After a few days she finally replied, that it doesn't matter which insurance I get as long as I've got one. Also it turned out that the whole process could be much shorter if instead of visiting the agency branch in the nearest small town we go straight to main office in Bolzano (75 km drive), we could save one day and 100 eur on service fees. Sweet!

So all legal and technical questions are settled, time for logistics.
Trip there was pretty straight forward: flight to Milan and then I've found suitable trains from www.trenitalia.com (as that was the cheapest option). About the trip back I'll write a separate post.

Now all the preparations are done, flight to Milan booked and I've set off.

At the train station I knew, that tickets are bought from a ticket machine. What I didn't know is that machines are different for different directions and I had to go to the other side of the station to find the correct ones. During the journey I was supposed to change trains three times. However, once I got aboard the first train, it turned out that it had broken down. That wasn't a problem (at least I thought so at that point) because the ticket is valid for the route with no time limitation within one day, so having waited for an hour for the next train I was finally on my way.

Surprise came at the last transfer. It turned out that the last train (for final leg of my journey) from that station had already left, so there was either an option to sleep somewhere in that town or take a taxi for the remaining 60 km… If I only knew that taxi was going to be THAT expensive. Oh well, but I was finally at my destination. Now here's the comprehensive description of buying and export processes.

TLDR: Process goes as follows:

1. Get insurance from your local insurance agency (they should be able to insure the car by tech specs + VIN) — green card. You DON'T have to get an Italian insurance (as Italians tried to persuade me initially). Update: it turns out that in some countries insurance companies can't insure a car without licence plate number, so check carefully with insurance companies around. Of course, expensive Italian insurance is always a plan B.

1a. Important: print out in clear big font your full name, home address, ID document number and car details (later you'll see why).

2. Go to Italy, check the car, blah-blah

3. Together with the seller go to the bank (seller should make an appointment at his bank beforehand) and make the payment there. Alternative option: go to notario. As a result you should have a receipt from the bank, that you've made a payment to the seller for a car and indicate the car specs there. Also you sign the sales contract in the bank (you can draw a contract together with the seller, just use common sense). You'll need two witnesses to seal the deal.
Note, that if you pay in cash over 10 000 eur you've got to register at the police — I don't know how.
Alternative option: In Austria there aren't such rules, so if you happen to be close to Austria (as I was, just 15 km from the border) go to a bank in Austria and make a payment there.

4. Together with the seller go to nearest main office of auto agenzia (you can use also a smaller branch, but then there's a good chance you'll have to wait for one extra day, because they need to send documents to main office and back).
Things you take there:
— yourself and seller with ID documents
— both licence plates from the car (so seller has to prepare the tools for taking them off)
— bill of sale and sales contract
— car's "carta di circolazione" and "certificato di proprieta".
At agencia basically seller has to do the talk (unless you're fluent in Italian): he should say that he wants to sell a car and point out that you are going to export it to Finland in my case. It would be good if seller contacts the agency beforehand and finds out if anything has changed in rules etc, since I've done this in 09.2015
Now the magic happens: car is deregistered from seller and taken off Italian roads (licence plates are taken) and registered for export under your name. When you're asked to give your personal info and car info give the paper from point 1a. The thing with me was that they've managed to make 3 mistakes in my info, so be very careful and ask to cross-check everything before they print out the owner change form, because at least in my case they said they can't correct and re-print it and made all corrections with pen and put couple of extra stamps. Correct VIN is crucial. Whole procedure costed in 09.2015 81,50 eur and took about an hour (and if we decided to do that in local branch, it would have taken 1,5 days and 220 eur, so feel the difference:))
Things you leave the agency with:
— one cardboard temporary car licence plate (check that number matches to the one indicated in the owner change form) Important: plate is valid within EU for 5 days only.
— car's updated "carta di circolazione" and "certificato di proprieta"
— owner change form (tt 2119)
— receipt for paying the agency services

5. That's it. Attach the licence plate at the rear window inside (since it's not waterproof) and given that you've got the green card, you should be good to go.

Thanks for reading, in the next parts I'll tell about the transit across EU and import procedures in Finland.