I suppose the regulations may have changed but we bought a house in France in 1999 but didn’t move full time until 2007. We found ourselves in the position of being able to get cheap flights but having no transport in a very rural area. We bought a car and insured it despite being nonresidents - our cheque book had “non residents” on it. We then found a garage for rent in Carcassonne and flew into that airport.
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I seem to remember the airport carpark at Bergerac, when it was just a field, half full of rusting old heaps belonging to second home owners. These days, it’s all been spruced up.
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Of course you can register a car here, even if you are non resident (I have several times in the past) and my French insurance polices permit anybody with a licence to drive them, including my Australian resident daughter. Though the excess is different for the policy holder and named drivers and others.
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Carcassonne was much like that with cars almost abandoned. We didn’t like the idea of just leaving the car like that, hence the renting of a garage.
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Although now resident in France, I still have here the right hand drive Landrover I brought over about 2010, and re-registered here at our French address as a French registered vehicle. Its been insured with Axa without any issues ever since. We had previously brought over a right hand drive Saxo and re-registered it here about 2004, also insured with Axa. I went through all the usual enquiries/procedures and inspections with the ‘ministre de l’ecologie du developpement durable et de l’énergie’, and the local Prefecture to obtain the Carte Gris each time. It was clear to insurers and bureaucrats that we were only here for occasional holidays. So I don’t think there has been any change in acceptance of this process for about 20 years.
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Thanks, @JaneJones, for quoting the law (ref here: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI000028807383 ). I’d previously read only people’s opinions.
I wasn’t going to contribute further, because this is one of those topics where opinions frequently get inflamed.
However, the link you quote applies to French people (“Le domicile de tout Français”) only, doesn’t it?
If it also applied to non-French, it wouldn’t indicate a non-French-resident person could register a car in France because the “lieu où il a son principal établissement” would not be in France.
Maybe this is a rule honoured more in the breach than in the observance.
One of the posts in this thread states that to register a vehicle here in France"you need to provide your fiscal number and your social security number"??? Does anybody know if this is correct because i can,t see the relevance of having to do so?Can ayone who has recently registered a car provide us with the correct information as to what documents are required please,thanks in advance.
You do have to be a full time resident to buy a car in France despite what people may tell you.
The ANTS website now insists on at least à carte de séjour to complete the process. If you have a good friend or relative living here you could drive their car with the permission of the Insurer and the owner.
My son drives my car on holiday from UK with a UK license with no problems!!!
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Hi,i have just looked on the Service Public.fr website for documents required for obtaining a carte grise and i can,t see any reference to needing to provide a carte sejour or a fiscal number or a social security number???Can anybody who has actually registered a car recently and knows what the correct procedure is please let us know, thanks.
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Mark Rimmer is currently re-registering vehicles for a friend who has moved to France from Germany (vehicles have German plates) and they’ve become a little stuck as they they have the German equivalent of a CDS but not a French one yet and ANTS are wanting one. The prefecture seem to be fast-tracking the procedure somewhat helpfully so they can get the CDS to then use for the Carte Grise. This is all second rather than firsthand experience but that bit at least does seem to be the case, although again, they are resident here so perhaps that is why.
Another rabbit hole? 
I like cars 
so I’ve registered a fair few here, a secondhand one from Germany, two new ones from the UK (one on tax free plates and one not*), one secondhand one from the UK (which didn’t even need to be here because it was only a couple of years old - no CT), one from Italy and one I owned for years from Ireland (ie no invoice at all) and two purchased new locally (the latest in June) and I have never been asked for a CdS (which I don’t have) only ID, for example my passport.
“*” only issue I ever had was with a Golf GTD I bought new in the UK and tried to register here a month later. The lovely tax ladies looked at my invoice and told me I needed to pay the TVA and reclaim the VAT from HMRC 
… or come back in five months 
which I did.
As I occasionally postulate, there is actually more flexibility here than the anglo-saxon attuned mind seems to be able to grasp
Undoubtedly - but you do seem to have been specific instructions on how to bypass the system.
I think it’s also a frame of mind Billy. A northern vs a southern European attitude to rules and regulations. In the north the general view is comply, in the south to circumvent. I’m happy to comply generally, but I don’t want be the only idiot that actaully does 
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It’s the sort of thing someone says jokingly or tongue in cheek… “come back in 5 months”…
but the Rules say Re-register within 1 month (if I recall correctly) and unless one takes the car back out of France… that means at least starting the process within the 1 month… and being able to show where/why/if hiccups are occurring…
If one is pulled-up by the Gendarmes doing their general sweeps… and one is NOT doing one’s best to be within the Law… things can turn out badly (fines ??)… maybe, maybe not… but I’d prefer not to be at risk…
Cars can be a pain or a pleasure… depending…
We all have our personal views and it’s nice to discuss and chat… 
Still no idea what documents you actually need to register a car in your name these days?Have looked as far as i can on the ANTS web pages but they are not very informitive,as far as i can see all they need is -1 form of id-1 proof of address- vehicle documents for car.That is all they state,so why are people being asked for a CDS ,a social security nomber and a fiscal number,are there a different set of requirements for" immigrants" or are we being misinformed?
I agree, and I was about to head off and consider my position. Park it abroad for five months (we had another car here we could use) or pay the TVA and go through the rigmarole of reclaiming. Then my lovely lady gave me the nudge, nudge, wink, wink alternative. It wasn’t whispered either, the two ladies had a chat and came up with this solution. The insurance company, MAAF, were happy to keep the car on UK plates for six months and I don’t think the police would have cared one way or the other once I was street legal. When I breezed in to get my QF five months later not a hair was turned
It does make me wonder though have I on other occasions followed the rules too meekly and would a local take a different approach 
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Hiya, we bought a car here before we were residents. A Touran with 100k on the clock which everyone drives and dings don’t matter. The carte grise is the like the UK logbook and only the owner is on that. We did insurance through our bank which was a doddle. Good luck!
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I think you need a fiscal number to open an ANTS account.
Glad you had a Happy Ending !!
I was asked by my Insurance Agent… to help with a Brit trying to import his car…
The Insurance were happy to insure, provided he was on track…
I’d never met the chap before but felt honour bound to help a fellow Brit/foreigner… especially as he narrated a believable tale of one delay/hiccup after another.
Huh… nearly 2 years down the line… still more sob stories, but by this time I and the Insurance Agent were just a little less sure that everything he said was kosher…
possibly they were also being chased by Head Office… who knows…
anyway I was asked to inform him that they were cancelling his Insurance… unless… !!!
(They wrote a letter but wanted to make sure he understood.)
'Nuff said… he and his car vanished off the face of the earth… and we all breathed a sigh of relief…
People like him give Brits a bad name… the Insurance company was doing its level best to help and was taken for a ride… 
(and me too…)
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