How could a Washington registered car travel to Zürich?

Question

About three months ago, I went to Switzerland from Germany by car. And when I parked the car in Zürich, I realized that the car (BMW Coupe 3er) that parked beside my car had a non-EU registration plate. When I looked closely at that license plate, I realized the license plate was from Washington DC.

First, I think it was just a fake dummy license plate that was put on the Swiss car, but when I observed more on the bottom corner of windshield, it has a sticker that stated some kind of parking subscription member, and it also mentioned Washington DC.

And then I peeked through the driver windows; I saw it had MPH measurement for speed (EU doesn't use MPH; they use KM/h).

Was that really a person who drove a car to EU from USA? Not quite a important question, but I'm curious about it.

Answer 1

After living in the USA for over 10 years, I moved to Europe. I did consider bringing my car from the USA to Europe, however later rejected that idea. Yet in the process I did look into various options.

There are several shipping companies that will ship vehicles across the Atlantic, usually inside containers on a ship, but for the right price they'll do air shipments too. Once the vehicle is in Europe, the same rules apply as for any other vehicles registered outside the country: you must re-register it in your the country of residence within a predefined period of time (usually 1 year, but it varies by country), do required adjustments if necessary (e.g. rules on turn signals being yellow/amber vs. allowed red colour in the USA), etc. The most important one is that the vehicle is not allowed to remain within the country for over that predefined period without leaving the country or being re-registered there.

Usually, it's the diplomatic staff that bring their cars over from USA to Europe, as the department of foreign affairs (read - taxpayers) is paying for moving all their stuff across. However anybody can do it, really.

So, the simple answer is - there are shipping companies that will do this for you. The cost is usually in the area of about $2000 for a simple car and growing for something bigger or more expensive (because of higher insurance premiums).

In addition to that, vehicles registered to US army will have plates of the home base location - and these vehicles would have also been shipped to Europe, but paid for by the Army (read - taxpayers again).

Answer 2

The vast majority of cars in Zürich have non-EU plates... Because Switzerland isn't in the EU!

But I guess you mean non-European. In this case, it is quite common to see US models on Swiss roads: as others have pointed out, they usually belong to US citizens working at one of the large number of international organisations in Switzerland.

It is worth pointing out that Swiss regulations allow US cars to be driven on Swiss roads without modification - for instance, they are allowed to use the flashing stop-light indicator paradigm. In the EU (i.e. over any border), the car would require european-style amber-yellow indicators that are independent of the brake warning light. Perhaps this is the reason why, in Switzerland, US people bother to ship their cars over, instead of just buying a local model.

Answer 3

There are a large number of US troops stationed in Europe, many of whom have cars with US license plates, the registration being that of their home state.

You likely saw one such.
The only alternative would be someone putting a US registered car on a ship or aircraft and transporting it to Europe that way. Not impossible, but given the cost being much higher than that of a rental car extremely unlikely.