With a few friends, we got a totally informal car club. We work on classic cars, MGB’s so far but we just bought Marcel, a 1951 Traction Avant. We have no intention to bring cars back to original spec (our MGB’s all way faster than they used to be), we just feel they should be on the road. We normally meet two times a week to work on the cars, drink coffee and eat Jaffa cakes. We got a fine collection of tools, a shite load of knowledge about older generations of cars.
The ‘club’ is as said very informal. No meetings, no club rules. We share costs. Our workshop is located between Bergerac and Perigueux where we have room for your project. It does not have to be an old car, but it has to be an interesting car.
So if you are working on an interesting car and are looking for a workshop and some car buddies, drop me a mail at Mathijs.Kok@gmail.com. Even if you just want to come for some coffee.
To give you some idea… here is us getting the Traction from the barn it had been for 65 years. It seemed very happy to see sunlight.
No problem there. With these old cars you are more or less free to do what you want as long as you get your Control Technique. And getting that was very easy as long as the guy could drive it around the block a few times. We got friends, lol.
The main problem is not getting killed while driving it. My daily driver is a Tesla S, rather a different car. It has over 5 billion (!) transistors. The MGB has one, for the blinker lights because I could not stand the 1960s Lucas relay that always seems to fail.
Really? So how does this fit with the DREAL requirement to have any change of engine size, power output & other major components inspected & approved as laid down in article 13 de l’arrete du 19 juillet 1954?
This would also be a concern for newer conversions when it comes to obtaining an FFVE attestation.
How does your insurance company view these?
As you say,
but what about the innocent driver you might take with you?
We have been doing this for many many years and simply never had any problems. There are many insurance companies that specialize in this kind of thing.
Just because you have been “doing” this for many years does not mean that these requirements do not apply to you.
So which insurance company will insure a non homologated, modified self built with a carte grise indicating an engine size of 1800cc & 95 bhp but in reality is 4000cc & with 300 bhp? Surely they would have grounds to nullify the cover if they knew?
And I am sure that you are aware of the FFVE declaration form that includes this - “3) Ne pas avoir connaissance d’une transformation antérieure par un tiers, et à titre personnel, n’avoir jamais transformé, fait transformer ou ne fera transformer les caractéristiques du véhicule, tant sur le plan châssis/cadre, carrosserie, intérieur, moteur, transmission, trains roulants, système de freinage.”
I know that you can legally modify cars & register them but it is not a cheap exercise & getting a UTAC check can be very time consuming as there are, I think, only 2 places in France that do this.
Mmm, well, first off all, my carte grise reflects what is in the car rather perfectly (MGB’s were made with V8 after all) and that is why we mostly import cars. If it is not a ‘standard’ car you basically get to fill in the form yourself. My MGB was imported with the engine it now has, I only changed the cams, ignition and the carburettor. If you feel like that warrants a new care grise, my car is in good company as there are tens of thousands of cars on the road that have engines that produce more power than they originally did.
I am not sure how we came into this discussion, We are looking for some new friends and you seem hell-bent on proving I violate laws for some reason. I’m out.
Fair enough.
I would have thought that if you knew that you had done things correctly you would have just answered the questions but instead you seem to have just ignored the issue, choosing to consider a fair question as inappropriate.
A genuine V8 MGB (quite a rare car) would have MG cast into the rocker covers, not Rover, & had twin SUs which leads me to think that this car did not leave the factory with this engine & given the rarity & climbing value of the genuine article I would guess that your car may be a conversion.
It would have been nice to talk to someone who has taken a conversion, kit car or custom build through the system correctly though.
A question, possibly a dumb one.
Since the initial immatriculation fee is based on the puissance fiscale among other things, what happens if you uprate the engine and increase the PF? Is an additional fee calculated when the carte grise is updated? If so does it tend to wind up less expensive or more expensive if you total up the initial fee plus the additional fee, versus the immatriculation fee you would have paid if you had bought the car already converted? (If that makes sense!)
@Mathijs - I’d like to personally apologise for the tone of some of the responses you received.
Unpleasant, negative old womany type responses are NOT in the spirit of this site and I’d be grateful if posters could think how their comments might come across before posting.
It sounds like a great idea and if we lived closer, we (well @james!) would be there like a shot.
With so many variations of just one model an engine upgrade is certainly possible. A 2010 BMW 3 series is available as a 316i (7cv) up to a 420 M3 (33cv) all in one bodyshell.
So if there was no legal requirement to have changes checked by DREAL a carte grise (shown to an insurance company) could read 1.6 & be insured as such but have a 4 litre under the hood. Would that not be fraud?
