Import guide
Every document, hand-off and delay between a US dealer lot and an Austrian registration office — and where the time really goes.
People ask how long an import takes and expect the answer to be about shipping. The crossing is about two weeks of it. Almost everything else is paperwork, and the paperwork is where a schedule is won or lost.
The car is identified, the listing and the title are checked, and the seller is verified. A title problem — a lien, a salvage brand, a name that does not match — is cheapest to discover now, and it is the single most common reason we walk away from a car.
Somebody stands in front of the car. Photographs, panel gaps, undertray, cold start, error codes, and the window sticker if it is still with the vehicle. Only then does money move, and it moves against the inspection report rather than the listing.
The car is trucked to the port. US export clearance requires the title to be lodged with customs before the vessel loads — a fixed statutory wait that no amount of urgency shortens, and the most common source of a missed sailing.
Two weeks or so, depending on the port and whether it is RoRo or a container. This is the part of the timeline you can neither influence nor worry usefully about.
Unloading, EU customs clearance, duty and import VAT. Then the Austrian side: the NoVA assessment, single approval where it is needed, §57a, and finally registration and plates. The conversion work an American car needs to be road legal here — lighting to EU specification, the speedometer — happens in this window too.
Thirty-one days is a good run, not a promise. The crossing is predictable; the two ends are not. Export clearance and the Austrian approval step are where weeks appear, and both are document problems rather than logistics problems — which is precisely why we would rather spend an extra day at the start getting the file right.
If your car has no European CO₂ figure, Austria invents one from engine power. What that costs, and what to do about it.
One is cheaper, one protects the paint. The decision depends on the car rather than the budget.
The import calculator runs the same engine we do, at today's ECB rate. Or tell us the car and we will establish the real basis in writing.
