So now I have been in Munich, Germany officially for one month now. We are getting settled into our new life here and its been very nice. I am a little surprised at how cold it has been though. When we arrived at the end of February it was sunny and fairly warm. It really felt like spring. But about a week later it started snowing again and it was like winter came back for a while. It is still really beautiful but just feels like it should be time for spring to come soon. (Note: I wrote this post about 5 days ago, and since then…spring has definitely come! It is BEAUTIFUL here!)

We are attempting to buy a used car in Munich right now and have had some funny experiences with that.

We spent a lot of time on autoscout24.de (like most people in Germany looking for used cars do) and found a few used car dealerships that had the car that we were looking for. We thought it ‘feels’ safer to buy a used car from a dealership than from a person (doesn’t mean its true, just felt better). Well we went to the first dealership and found a big used car lot with a bunch of numbers offices that were in small trailers around the lot.

I was waiting for someone to come up to us to ’sell’ us a car - isn’t that what car salesmen do? Especially used car salesmen? Well, no one came up to us and we walked around looking for the car we had come to see. Everyone working there happily ignored us. I thought it was very strange.

We finally found the car we came for on the lot, but no one to let us test drive or see inside it. So we looked for office #12 (which is who supposedly was selling it - according to the Internet advertisement) and could not find it anywhere. There were offices 1-10. So we asked around and of course no one knew.

So finally we called the number on the advertisement and the person said “I am not ever there, but since your there I can meet you in 45 minutes”. This was very annoying, so we left and went somewhere else.

we went to another used car dealership/lot. When we arrived we were still ignored by the sales people (but now I am used to it). We found the cars we wanted to see. So we went to the salesman and told him we wanted to see inside and test drive this car.

He asked us if we were exporting it and we said no. We told him that we moved to Munich and are living there now and we are looking for a car. He said okay, no problem. Then he said this is the price, there is no negotiation, just so you know. We were like, okay, whatever…what are you supposed to say to that? And also that he only accepts cash. We thought that was also a little strange considering this was a pretty huge car dealership.

So we wanted to drive it, so he gave us the keys and said “go drive around for 10-15 minutes”. When got in the car, we noticed that there was no gas in it at all. we went to him and told him. He proceeded to just open up his wallet and gave us 10 euros and told us to go to the gas station and get it ourselves. :) I thought that was really funny…we were laughing about that.

So we took the car to the gas station and put some gas in it, and drove around for 15 minutes or so. It was so strange to me that he did not go with us (which is what ALWAYS happens in America when you are buying a car).

Well, we really fell in love with the car and definitely wanted to buy it. On our 15 minute drive we even went to the bank and got the cash we needed to buy it. We were so excited.

When we got back to the dealership we told him we wanted to buy it and went into his office to do all the paperwork to buy the car. My husband was asking many questions and clarifying many points (since this is the first car we were buying in Germany, we had a lot of questions).

My husband asked him about the German law where if anything goes wrong with the car for the first year, the seller is responsible for it. He just wanted to know more about this ‘warranty’.

The dealer looked at him (mind you this was exactly when we were going to sign the contact to buy the car) and said, “I am not going to sell you the car”. Of course, a little confused, my husband asked some questions and the guy had just decided that he was now NOT going to let us buy the car. He said that if we would buy the car for export using our Lithuanian address he would sell it to us. Otherwise he would not sell it to us.

Looking for a used car to buy in Germany? Start here:
AutoScout24.de
Mobile.de

So we left a little disappointed that we could not buy this car that we fell in love with. But we were really thankful that we did not buy it because we think that he was planning on saying that we were buying it for export - even though we were not. We think that he believed that since we were so new in Germany that we did not know about the ‘warranty’ laws and might not notice if he registered that he sold it to us for ‘export’…even though we clearly told him the first moment that it was NOT for export.

He only changed his mind about selling us the car once we made him aware that we knew about certain laws. I am sure he was planning on selling it to us as a car for export weather we knew about it or not. So although we loved the car, we are very thankful to have not bought that car from that dealer.

It was a crazy experience with the test driving alone, getting the gas for ourselves - then ultimately having the seller decide at the MOMENT we were going to sign the contract that he would not let us buy it. But I think it all worked out for the best in the end.

So we are still looking for a used car in the Munich area. Wish us luck! It looks like we might need a little of it :)!

If any of you out there have some tips or advice about buying a used car in Germany please help me out by leaving it in a comment below!