There are quite a few more reasonably priced examples over the border in Germany. And if you don't fancy the hassle of importing one yourself there are plenty of on-line agents who will do it for a modest commission.
I'm hoping that it is not going to be a major problem as the car is itemised on my household items that we are moving over. I've looked into this and it seems pretty straightforward. Famous last words
If only, you'll need to take the car along for an import mfk, same as an mot , for this you'll need the certificate of conformity from caterham for your car, it will need to be exactly as the coc says so emissions, noise etc and any non caterham parts can cause it to fail. The importer here paid a fortune for the exclusive rights and I here privately importing a caterham isn't easy. Importing any car from the UK is a ball ache but if they only certified a specific model just for Switzerland then your going to need to get hold of whatever 'special' parts they used (maybe a different ecu)
Can't the COC come from Caterham UK?? Why does it need to come from the Swiss importer?
When I imported my motorbikes, I requested the COC's from Kawasaki UK and Aprila UK, they were accepted at the MSK without issue, I did change my headlights to EU spec, but in Davos they didn't even check them.
When I spoke to Kawasaki Swiss importers they said that they would need to see / inspect the bike before they would issue the COC. But in the UK I just gave the chassis number and they posted them out.
I would give Caterham a call in the uk and ask if they can give you an EU COC. It will save a lot of hassle.
I meant to add that Kawasaki Swiss wanted 600 CHF (I think it was) for the COC, but in the UK they were posted free of charge out to me in Switzerland.
You can ask the UK or here for it, if asking the UK i wouldn't tell them its for Switzerland
Hopefully it will all be OK, when I was looking at caterhams though it was strongly suggested to me that the swiss car was different and a personal import would be very difficult
I have 6 months to sort this out (running on English plates etc whilst over).
I don't have an ECU (it's an old school Ford engined Supersprint on Twin 40s). I had it in Toulouse, France for seven years (where our actual bricks and mortar home is - we worked in a boarding school in the UK so live on site) and that was ok to do providing I had the controle technique sorted. I have a CoC already somewhere which should allow importation subject to the Swiss 'MOT'...again, fingers crossed....
The club (Lotus Seven Club GB) is very useful too.
I vaguely looked into this for my Supersprint (1700 xflow). Although it passed the emission controls in the UK when I first registered it - in 1991 I think, it wouldn't have passed the Swiss controls current at that time so I didn't think I would be able to import it.
At the moment it's gathering dust in a garage somewhere in England. A retirement project for me.
But I appreciate the thoughts...if emissions are the issue it's easier to tweak the carbs to make them leaner than rely on an ecu to sort out the issues. The other point of course is to find as 'controle technique' friendly garage