I recently found out i will be moving to germany in july. ive heard they are very stringent on their vehicle inspections. i was wondering if anybody has any tips to make sure my car passes inspection? i am buying a stock exhaust here soon and i will be taking all the parts off that aren't stock so hopefully that will help. what all do they look for in their inspections? lights, leaks, etc? thanks for any help!

I think they look for everything - brakes, lights, emissions, noise levels...maybe more. When I bought my DSM from Germany it had tons of paperwork with research and tests for just changing the factory whee;s from 15" to 17". They are pretty strict there so make sure your dsm is flawless.

I think you need to cover Euro 2 emissions standard. However are you sure you will need to be examined like a German car does? You are going to drive your US license, right?

From what I remember when I was there.. Emisions have to pass but you can have aftermarket exhaust. Lights and brakes have to pass as well. They actually put the car in a dyno type thing and run the car to make sure all the brakes work. If you are going to have an american drivers license, US armed forces type and plates, is not going to be as bad because you don't get taxed as germans do. So aftermarket parts and engine horsepower was not an issue when I was there a couple of years ago. Please have fun, you will never forget it!

Almost everything was right here. In what region do you move when you are in Germany? some inspectors are easier to handle than others. There are lost of local groups and a very helful community called dsmworld.net. some of them speak english.

In Germany there is a test called "Hauptuntersuchung" (major inspection). Everything on your car will be checked, like the complete suspension (shocks, brakes wheel hub play), wheels and tires (minimum tire tread depth is 1.6mm, but 2.6mm are recommend), lighting, leaks, visual inspection and emission inspection. The emission inspection is not as hard as in the US. It's easy to pass even with a high flow cat converter. but that requires a stock fuel management. Main reasons to fail the emission inspection are too high or too low CO² and O² values. There's no NOx test, so EGR-deletes are no problem.

bodykits out of the US&A are a huge problem. The inspectors don't have any quality report so nobody knows if they break righ around the corner. Actually every part without a quality report ("Gutachten", "ABE") has to be checked detailed before it is allowed to drive around with it. unfortunately DSMs (especially Turbos) are rare here so there aren't any reports. if you find the right inspectors you can get special permits

PS: I hope your car isn't too loud. The cops will pull out every car that looks sporty and loud. You'll might be lucky for not speaking german, haha. Germans suck at foreign languages.