Shipping car from SoCal to the Netherlands

[M4Dutch]

Hi all

I am moving (back) to Holland soon and am thinking to ship my 2016 m3 comp over. Does anybody has experience with that?
- tips in regards to shipping company
- what needs to be adjusted to be road legal
- cost for making it road legal

Anything else I need to consider?
Thanks!

[ried]

Import taxes may just kill you.

[M4Dutch]

Since I lived here in the us long enough and owned the car long enough, I can ship it as household. No import taxes, thats the catch.

[Jim45678]

you need to switch front lamps for LHD and replace rear lamps so you have orange / amber turn signals

u need to change radio wave band to Europe , Farenheit's to Celsius, install Europe map in navigation. Mostly coding besides rear lamps.

[M4Dutch]

Originally Posted by Jim45678

you need to switch front lamps for LHD and replace rear lamps so you have orange / amber turn signals

u need to change radio wave band to Europe , Farenheit's to Celsius, install Europe map in navigation. Mostly coding besides rear lamps.

Thanks! Thats it? Thats actually not too bad…. Can they change the instrument cluster from miles to km's as well?
Thanks for the reply, appreciate it!

If anybody has made this move recently let me know what shipping company you've used!

[Jim45678]

I did it My car was bought in California and moved to Poland.

yeah, you need to replace instrument cluster- i forgot about it. I paid about 500 euro for used one and you need to code it as well - 15-20 minutes job.

So physically you need to replace rear lamps and instrument cluster (unless you want to leave miles and kmh). For lamps you want to order VLAND OLED or get used in Europe. I did the vland oled and i'm happy with them.

I did also paint the front bumper to get rid of orange running lights on the sides. You need to code them out and then give it to body shop - they will do the work with front bumper.

if you have any further questions let me know.

[M4Dutch]

This has been super helpful and its good to know that I dont need to adjust that much. The instrument cluster is more a convenient thing that I can do later in time as well.
I will definitely look into those tail lights.

Thanks man, appreciate your help!

[Jim45678]

PS: you will loose bmw online services etc if you car equipped with. I cannot activate US car in Europe talked to bmw official, to coders and so on... not happening

[M4Dutch]

Im not too worried about that. My m3 is a 2016 and the original subscription ended last year or in 2020 or so and I haven't missed it a single second.