My husband and I would like to share our recent experiences while trying, but not succeeding as yet, to re-register a British motorhome here in Limousin.
Still ongoing Iâm afraid but some hint of progress last week. Last Thursday, six weeks and six days from the date of our second application, we received a message from the ANTS service asking for a copy of the original carte grise (UK V( document) , a copy of a valid proof of ID and a statement of our request. The latter seeming a bit odd as we were obviously asking for re-registration of our campervan! We responded immediately with the required details and documents and our actions were acknowledged so we await their response. Fingers (and everything else) crossed we may have a Christmas present of new number plates! :crossed_fingers
Did you have a particular Christmas in mind? 2025 looks promisingâŠ
Based on my experience, when ANTS goes wrong, it goes very wrong. I ended up having to sell a vehicle back in the uk as ANTS refused to accept that my vehicle existed. It transpired they had mistyped two digits when they registered the type approval for my vehicle and henceforth âIl nâexiste pasâ.
But letâs hope that your situation is resolved very quickly - fingers crossed!
I went through the registration process for my 2009 Autotrail back in 2019. It took about seven months from start to finish. Fiat initially provided a part C of C for the cab but it was found that the Maxi chassis type number wasnât on the Euro-approved list, so further docs were required (at more expense!) from Fiat to confirm it met the Euro-approved spec.
C of Cs for motorhomes were not issued back in 2009, so I had to obtain an RTI from DREAL, an onerous but not unachievable process. That involved a gas installation inspection, weighbridge and submission of plans and calculations of weights etc, with a final inspection by DREAL.
The one pleasant surprise was that the Carte Grise cost was a mere âŹ94 - a bargain!
It took about a month after submission of the application papers, from mid-Oct to mid-Nov for the CG to be sent to me, so if theyâve calculated your charge, you can hopefully expect some progress.
Good luck!
Thanks Peter. Itâs good to know that someone else out there has overcome this. We were beginning to think we would have to take the campervan back to the UK and sell it.
Our situation is slightly different from yours in that ANTS told us we needed an RTI from DREAL but DREAL replied to us within days to say that they couldnât deal with it and that the people who did the van conversion (Auto-Sleepers) had to contact UTAC directly. They wouldnât tell us what they needed us to ask UTAC for though! Luckily, the wonderful homologation engineer at Auto-Sleepers had dealt with UTAC (or MINES), as he knew them) and he managed to get the magic CNIT number for the vehicle. Hopefully, all will now end well and we can keep the van here and use it as we hoped.
Weâll keep you informed.
We got it! Our new registration number was issued today only four and a half months from our original application.
It cost us âŹ293 though but at this stage we were not going to argue and cause further delay.
All we have to do now is make an appointment to get the new number plates made and attached, a trip to the insurance office to upgrade from basic to fully comprehensive insurance and wait for the Covid-19 restrictions to be lifted and weâre off!
Would we do it again? Definitely not!
We are having pretty much the exact same problem at the moment with our 2017 Adria Matrix. Itâs proving very frustrating indeed as it now appears we need 2 COC documents, one from Renault for the chassis (which we have finally obtained after months of chasing) and one from Adria for the motorhome element. One of our reasons for buying the Adria was the French built chassis and the fact that the exact same model was sold here too, we thought it should be straightforward.
ANTS arenât much help - all they keep saying is the manufacturer must âdo the necessary via UTACâ, which is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Whatâs âthe necessaryâ ?!! Iâm only at the stage of realising the need for something from Adria because Iâve researched and read about other peoplesâ problems. Adria, however, unfortunately donât make it easy to contact them for anything.
Not heard or read before your post about the CNIT, that could be very helpful.
Itâs all particularly frustrating when I got my 2007 Volvo registered here quickly and easily, youâd have thought a newer vehicle would be simpler!
Your situation is, as you say, pretty much the same as ours was and weâre happy to help if we can. Make yourselves a brew and settle down for a lengthy reply.
Luckily, our friendly homologation engineer had already had dealings with UTAC in the past and he told us he would contact them on our behalf to get what we needed - a CNIT (Code National dâIdentification de Type). After a few days, he emailed us copies of a covering letter from UTAC and a document detailing the âbuild specificationâ of our motorhome and the CNIT for that specification. If you look up CNIT number youâll see itâs a 12 character code which defies the vehicle characteristics and it eventually appears on the Carte Grise when itâs issued. Thatâs all they want! But they donât make any of that clear!
We were almost at the point of driving our motorhome back to the UK and selling it to be honest because the French authorities made it all so difficult and without the amazing help of the wonderful guy at AutoSleeper, we would have had to concede.
We were more confident (but not much) when we made our 2nd application to ANTS armed with our CNIT code. After another 7 weeks, they asked us for more information to prove identity etc and finally issued the Carte Grise a mere FOUR AND A HALF MONTHS after our initial application!
Just for balance, our French friends and neighbours also despair of anything to do with vehicle immatriculation and this was our first bad experience with French authorities.
If we can be of any help, just yell. And please let us know how you get on.
Superb reply, thank you very much. I feel more confident knowing what it is Iâm likely to be looking for, and what to ask Adria for in detail. They must have their own homologation engineer/department, being a bigger firm than AutoSleepers .
As you say, the whole business would be a lot simpler if only ANTS would actually communicate properly and/or the websites with information from the government departments actually gave all the details! Hopefully with the benefit of your information DREAL will be irrelevant, and UTAC not a problem via Adria.
We certainly donât want to give up on this van - weâd have to take it back to the UK to sell and probably make a huge loss on it. Besides, it suits us just beautifully.
I agree with what you say about experience with the authorities in general - my neighbours also all just roll their eyes and sigh. My only real gripe is with the lack of communication, so you never know where you are in any process. Did have good news a week or so back though, and as a result Iâm off to the prefecture in Tours on Tuesday for my photos and fingerprints for my Carte de Sejour, thatâs only taken 4 monthsâŠnow we only need them to hurry up and finish OHâs Assurance Maladie application thatâs been going on since June!
All this incredible fandango for professionally coachbuilt campers. What is their problem? The âauthoritiesâ, I mean. All the above makes it a cast-iron, copper-bottomed, yard-wide certainty that one should not even dream of trying to register a self-build. I have had to give up on mine.
When lockdown is lifted in UK and people can come and look at it, itâll be for sale, sadly.
The answer to why this should be is a comment by my pal French Franck. âChris: France is very highly regulated society.â
If only the mechanisms and processes of this high level of regulation worked in a timely and transparent way.
Armed with your information, we obtained a copy of the COC from Adria via our dealer in the UK. Luckily for us, they sold the vehicle when it was new to another couple before us, and had the document on file. Otherwise we no doubt would have had to pay Adria several hundred pounds for one.
More in hope than expectation, on Friday I uploaded the Adria doc to ANTS. By now my glass was well and truly half empty, I expected them to say non monsieur.
To my complete amazement, today I had an email saying please pay for it and itâs all completed! 411 euros later and we now have a carte grise on the way! And a text a few minutes later with our new reg no.
As itâs a 3.8t van, I now have to get speed stickers for the rear end, a weights label, and the latest nonsense blind spot stickers. All of which is crazy for a vehicle of exactly the same dimensions as one plated to 3.5t. The only difference on ours is semi-air suspension meaning it gets the weight upgrade so we can carry more than just a packet of crisps as payload. But I am so pleased and relieved I donât care!
Now to get it insured hereâŠ
Canât thank you enough for your information here, it made all the difference just knowing what I was looking for.
Great news! Thanks for letting us know. We are so happy that we have helped a little too. Maybe weâll meet you in an aire somewhere on our travels. Bon voyages, bon vacances et bon courage!
