Car transport to Switzerland from the UK

Reading to the Swiss border, one car and one crew

Your car is loaded once and unloaded once. In between it stays inside the same enclosed trailer, behind the same Porsche Cayenne, with the same crew at the wheel from your door to the Swiss address. There is no depot in Kent, no partner haulier in Basel, no second driver who has never spoken to you.

Collection is from wherever the car actually sits — a house, a showroom, a storage unit, an auction hall, a paddock — and the run picks up the M4 or the M25 towards the Channel. The crossing is made by tunnel or ferry, chosen to suit the load and the hour rather than a fixed timetable slot. From the French coast the work is mostly motorway: down through Reims and Strasbourg towards Basel for Zurich, Zug and the German-speaking cantons, or through Troyes and Dijon for Geneva, Lausanne and the Vaud.

The trailer that leaves Berkshire is the trailer that clears the Swiss frontier. Because every Swiss run crosses France end to end, much of what governs car transport to France applies here as well, and the whole movement is booked as one job under our European car transport service. You deal with one person before, during and after. That is the point of doing it this way.

Switzerland sits outside the EU customs union

This is the part that catches people out. Switzerland is in the Schengen area but not in the EU customs union, so a car travelling from Britain to a Swiss address crosses two customs frontiers rather than one: the UK–EU boundary at the Channel, then the EU–Swiss boundary. A car going to Munich or Milan clears customs once. A car going to Zug clears it twice, and the second clearance is the one people forget to budget time for.

Described generally, an international road movement travels under a CMR consignment note, with export and import declarations raised for the vehicle and documents establishing what it is and who owns it — registration document, invoice or valuation, chassis number, and identification of the consignee. Where a car is going out temporarily rather than permanently — a concours, a rally, a race weekend, a season in a chalet garage — a temporary admission procedure is commonly used, and an ATA carnet is the usual instrument for that. Which route suits your car depends on why it is going and how long it is staying.

What you will not find on this page is a duty rate, a tax percentage or a promised outcome. Those turn on the vehicle, its status and its declared value, and are matters for you or your customs agent.

Alpine timing, winter, and the last mile

The motorway network will get a car to Zurich, Bern or Geneva in almost any weather. What changes with the season is the final hour, and that is the hour worth planning properly.

Several high passes close for the winter — the Furka, Susten and Grimsel among them — so a car bound for the Engadine or Ticino in the cold months is routed through the year-round tunnels rather than over the top. Winter tyres or chains are required on Swiss roads when the conditions and the signs demand them, and a towing outfit carrying a low car needs more margin than a saloon: longer braking distances, gentler gradients, and no improvising on a snowed-in hairpin at dusk.

Resort addresses deserve the same honesty. A chalet lane above Gstaad or a village street in St Moritz may simply be too narrow, too steep or too tight for a tri-axle enclosed trailer to turn in. So we ask about the final approach before the date is agreed, not on the morning of delivery. Where the trailer cannot reach the door, the car comes off at the nearest workable point settled with you in advance and is driven the last short stretch by the same crew — never handed to a stranger with a set of keys. Slots around the holiday weeks go early, so booking ahead buys you a choice of day.

Geneva, Zug, Zurich and the cars that go there

Swiss movements repeat in a handful of recognisable shapes, and the route is planned differently for each.

• Chalet cars. A car that lives in Verbier, Gstaad or St Moritz for the season, goes out before the snow and comes home in spring. The timing matters more than the mileage.
• Collections. Cars joining or leaving a private collection in Zug, Geneva or Lugano, often one at a time, often on a schedule the owner would rather nobody else knew about.
• Purchases and sales. A car bought in Britain — at auction, from a dealer, from a private seller — going to a Swiss buyer who wants it to arrive exactly as photographed.
• Service and events. A car returning to a UK marque specialist for work and going back out afterwards, or travelling to a concours, a hillclimb or a circuit weekend.

Older and more valuable cars make up a large share of it, which is why the trailer is specified the way it is; the same thinking behind our classic car transport work applies whether the car is a pre-war tourer or something with a warranty. Whatever the reason for the journey, the structure does not change: one car, one crew, Britain to Switzerland and back if you need it.

How the car travels, and what you get at both ends

The trailer is a Brian James Race Transporter 7 — enclosed, tri-axle, with an electric tilt bed and a powered rear door, so the loading angle stays shallow enough for a low front lip. A synthetic-rope winch loads cars that should not be driven on or off. Restraint is by wheel sleeves over the tyres only; nothing is passed over a wishbone, a sill or a subframe, and nothing is tightened against the suspension for hundreds of miles. A daylight roof means the car is loaded and inspected in real light rather than by torch, and low-profile chocks with rear chassis rollers keep those shallow angles honest at both ends.

Enclosed matters more on this route than on most. A journey of this length crosses winter grit, road salt, motorway spray and mountain weather in a single run, and none of it reaches the paint. If you want the reasoning in full, it is set out on our enclosed car transport page.

A photographic condition report is taken and signed at collection, then repeated at delivery — same crew, same reference points, same eyes on the car in Switzerland as in Britain. That is only possible because nobody else touches the vehicle in between. Hardier cars can travel on the open aluminium tilt bed instead, on exactly the same one-car, one-crew basis.

Getting a figure, and getting a date

What a Swiss run costs turns on the things you would expect: where the car is, where in Switzerland it is going, whether it runs and steers, ground clearance, the season, the customs route, and whether the trailer travels back empty or with a car the other way. If there is a return load in either direction, say so at enquiry — it usually improves the number.

The estimate calculator gives an indicative figure in a few seconds, and our guide to the cost of transporting a car to Europe explains what actually moves it. Both are indicative only. A firm price is issued in writing once the two addresses, the car and the customs position are known.

Dates are worth holding early for anything crossing the Alps in winter. What does not vary, whatever the date: one car on the trailer, one crew from the door in Britain to the door in Switzerland, and one number to call while your car is on the road. Speak to us directly on +44 7308 614008 or at info@skorta.co.uk, and tell us what the car is, where it sits and where it needs to be.