Last updated 21 September 2026 · the paperwork side of buying a car here
Registration is the part of buying a car in Italy that people get wrong, and it is the part that costs them weeks. The car is the easy bit. What decides whether you are driving next Tuesday or next month is whether you did the steps in the right order and turned up at the MVRO with a complete folder.
This page is the process in order, including the two genuinely different paths depending on what plates the car is wearing when you find it.
AFI stands for Allied Forces Italy. Under the SOFA, eligible members register vehicles into a separate system from the Italian one, on AFI plates rather than Italian plates. A vehicle can be in one system or the other — not both — which is why converting a car from Italian plates is a real process with a real form, not a change of sticker.
Eligibility is proven with your CAC or NATO equivalent. Bring it to every appointment; without it you cannot use the AFI system at all.
You need an Allied Forces Italy driver's licence, issued after testing on post, before you take possession of a vehicle. Your stateside licence does not substitute. Book the test as early as you can — people routinely agree a price on a car in week one and then discover they cannot legally drive it home.
Everything downstream depends on this, and you can tell from the plates.
An Italian-plated car must be de-registered for export before the MVRO will issue AFI plates. That is done through ACI/PRA — the Italian vehicle registry — and produces a Radiazione per Esportazione receipt. The MVRO issues plates and AFI registration once you can show it.
Two practical consequences. First, this is the long pole: budget for it and do not promise anyone the car will be on the road by a given date. Second, agree in writing who is handling the radiazione — you or the seller — before you pay. A seller who has done it before will often handle it; one who hasn't may not know the form exists.
Arrive with everything. A missing document is the single most common reason for a wasted trip, and the office is not able to take your word for any of it.
Insurance has to be in place before registration, not after, and a stateside policy does not transfer. Beyond that:
That last one is the one that catches people on Path B, because the plate number changes when the car converts to AFI. Talk to your insurer about the sequence rather than assuming the policy follows the car automatically.
Registration and inspection are two separate things. Every vehicle needs a safety inspection, and you should expect to need one within a couple of weeks of registering. After that, newer vehicles follow a schedule and older ones are inspected more often.
Inspectors are checking roadworthiness against both Italian law and garrison standards — brakes, lights, tyres, glass, emissions equipment. A car that has sat on a departing family's driveway for two months will not automatically pass, and neither will one with a cracked windscreen you had stopped noticing.
The inspection is also what makes the vehicle eligible for tax-free fuel rations. Given Italian pump prices over a three-year tour, that is not a rounding error.
The Government of Italy authorises each AFI sponsor to register a maximum of three vehicles. Registering a second brings additional road tax in euro, scaled to engine size — so a big engine is a recurring annual cost here in a way it is not at home. Factor that into which car you buy, not just into whether you can afford it once.
Registration has a mirror image on the way out: an AFI-plated car cannot simply be handed to an Italian buyer, and it cannot be abandoned. Whether you are selling into the community, selling onto the Italian market, or shipping it home, start the conversation with the MVRO well before your final month — the same ordering problem applies in reverse.
Browse cars already on AFI plates The full buying guide
PCS Wheels aggregates listings from the dealers serving this community. We are not affiliated with USAG Italy or the Department of Defense, and this page is orientation, not regulation — confirm current requirements with the MVRO.