Car registration

I am about to buy a two year old car from a dealer in Toulouse, it has Spanish plates and registration.


I have re-registered an English car before, and needed, tax certificate, Control technique, certificate of conformity etc. The dealer says I only need ID plus proof of residency to get a carte grise. Has anyone got any advise to the contrary?

Thanks Hayley, I pick it up Friday. (oh no another thing to worry about!) I will ask him.

Thanks for all your help, evidently I had a choice I could sort it out or they could, they have the all the paperwork needed or so he says, they can do it online. So I have opted for them to sort it.

I will see what transpires next Friday.

In my experience, car dealers are like MPs and Lawyers, you can tell when they are lying because you can see their lips move!

yes you still have to pay for the carte grise but dealers have the same logiciel as the préfectures now and do it direct seeing as all carte grises are issued from a central office in... sedan or charleville-mezières if I remember correctly. when I bought, the dealer did all the necessary paperwork himself, i just paid for the carte grise. It's a bit odd making you pay 450€, that's the carte grise and a charge for all the paperwork, 210€ sounds spot on just for the carte grise with the dealer doing all the paperwork - after all, they should do it all, otherwise you'd just buy privately more cheaply and do the paperwork yourself...

I'm going to see him tomorrow, he has already told me it will cost €210, a dealer in Tarbes quoted €450 on top of the price of the car with french plates.

Any car imported and sold into France need the paperwork you stated above. Normally the car dealer would provide you with the carte grise, which implies that he did all the paperwork you describe above. You need to provide him with the ID and proof of residency so he can put the car on your name and get the license plates.

If the car dealer wants you to go to the prefecture to get the carte grise then check if he did all the rest of the paperwork. Otherwise you would have to pay for the certificat de conformite and the costs for the prefecture....

Cheers Andrew I am already looking for an English handbook, I did think it was probably easier to import cars across mainland Europe than from the UK. A friend has just bought an Italian C4 from a main dealer, they sorted out the re-registration (at a cost of course) for her in a very short time. Looking around for cars over the last week or so I have seen hundreds of Spanish cars in dealers yards so it must be a fairly common occurance.

not sure you have to Andy, as i said it made no difference that the car had just been imported from italy, the handbook is in italian etc (my third language so no problem there!) it was exactly the same process as when I bought my last but one car 2nd hand at a dealers. there is a huge, really huge market for imported cars, loads from spain and italy, I know others (French) who have bought imported cars too, there's a dealer in Albi who does loads of them apparently, after all that's the idea of the eu - no hassle from one country to another (except the uk with cars as everything's wrong for europe!). ;-)

I will have to check with him again, my French is far from wonderful but I was certain when I left his office that I was expected to sort it out.

Yes he is right, I bought an import from Italy from a dealer in Rodez and as dealers now handle the carte grise and plates etc all he needed was my ID and justificatif de domicile. bonne route ;-)

Not too sure he's right there. Take a look at this link, which I found by searching Google. http://www.howtobooks.co.uk/abroad/france/vehicle-import.asp