I bought a 2007 California Comfortline in Germany in June this year.. The process is fairly straightforward. I did a lot of internet research and narrowed the choice down to about 6 different vehicles. All these were in a radius of about 200km of Cologne (Ryanair fly from Dublin to Cologne) I e-mailed the dealers (in English) and made inquiries about each vehicle. Five replied and I arranged to go and look at them on a Friday and Saturday morning. Most of dealers closed for a half day on Saturday.
I managed to see 4 of the 5 I had hoped so see and got to see one other that I found advertised while in Germany- just didn't have time to get to one dealer.
The last one I saw I bought. It was from a company that converts T5's and now T6's to campers. He had taken the California I bought as a trade in against one of his own conversions. The company has a website
www.sunvan.de and I dealt with the owner Peter Kohler.
He spoke English and was very helpful. The vehicle was exactly as described. it had a complete service history. He also gave a one year guarantee on the vehicle and habitation equipment through a company called Intec. I checked with them before I bought the vehicle and they confirmed that they will pay a VW dealer in Ireland to carry out warranty repairs as per the conditions laid down in the policy. This was included in the price as advertised.
It took about 2 weeks for all the paperwork to be completed. There was a TUV inspection, export plates had to be fitted and 3rd party insurance had to be bought covering the period it would take to get the vehicle out of Germany. All this cost in the region of €300 and Peter Kohler did all of it. We paid by bank transfer and flew back to Germany, collected the van on the agreed date and drove to Cherbourg and home.
Since then we have covered about 4000 km in France and Ireland and the van is perfect.
To sum up. It takes time and it's expensive to over and back to Germany- flights, car rental and accomodation etc. On the other hand the California I bought is in perfect condition, it has the 2.5l engine, 3 zone air-con, cruise control and an awning. I speak very little German but most people I met had a little English. Of the vans we saw only 2 were worth considering. One from a main VW dealer and the one we bought. Two (non VW) dealers had really impressive websites but turned out to be guys selling from less than impressive portacabins. We are very happy with our California and despite the expense of getting it from Germany it represents better value that we could have got in Ireland or the UK.
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