I brought my gtv over while it was still in pieces, when I moved to Germany from Montreal in '96. The import process as such wasn't complicated, although it was the moving company that presented the paperwork to the customs. I only had to give the right papers (the usual ownership stuff) to the movers.
As far as licensing it in Germany, it wasn't bad. Yes, the TUeV will be much more strict about stuff than you might expect. Assuming CH is like D, some specifics:
- they won't care about emissions as you should be registering it directly as a Historic vehicle ("Oldtimer" is commonly said in german.) Do make it clear that you want this historic registration, just in case. In D, historics pay much lower vehicle yearly taxes and lower insurance. You should also get an insurance specific to historic cars. Unfortunately in europe these typically limit you to 5000 km / year, which can be awful tight if you want to use the car regularly and/or for longer trips.
- wheels / tyres MUST be OEM. i.e. you must use an original wheel sold by Alfa for that car, unless you can provide the right paperwork to certify a particular wheel for use on that particular vehicle. Tyre sizes are strict, you will need either 165hr14 or 185/70r14 to pass the TUeV. (185/70R14 was an accepted alternate size as far as the TUeV was concerned.)
- You'll need to convert the headlights to euro ones. You'll need H4 euro bowls, lamps, and bulbs, and to convert the connectors to the larger spade size used on H4s.
- If you have the 70s style side lights and reflectors, you'll need to remove the sidelight bulbs. They didn't accept sidelights to be lighted, but they're just fine as reflectors. I rewired the front sidelights to the turn signals to mimic a more normal euro approach.
- they wanted me to add km speed markings on the speedometer face. I made stickers for 30 / 50 / 70 / 100 / 120 km/h and added them in the right place.
- the front USA version below-bumper combination parking lights and turn signals in orange are not legal as parking lights must be white. What I did was to take a page from newer bmw's and installed euro-style parking lights into the H1 driving light reflector bodies. Basically I got some older vw golf headlights from a junkyard that included these kind of parking lights, then copied the setup into the H1 reflectors. They insert into the reflector into a key-shaped opening (which I drilled and filed to shape) a couple inches off the center lamp axis. These were then wired up to the parking light circuit. The below bumper orange lights are now only turn signals.
- I was already using euro style rear light covers, so I'm not sure if they would have insisted on yellow turn signals at the rear or if red are also acceptable.
If your car is nicely restored, well presented also underneath, the guys doing the inspection will appreciate that and it'll help the proceedings. They will be scrutinizing the car for rust, chassis cracks, slop in the front suspension bushings, standard looking suspension and brakes (no fancy alfaholics bits...)
That's what I can think of for the moment. Again, I assume the swiss will be similar to the germans.
A lot of this stuff could be confirmed with a visit to the TUeV station that would be doing the inspection and talking with the guys about the rules for USA version cars.
HTH
Neil
