French caravan registration

Help needed please! We’ve just bought a cheap French touring caravan from an English person. The carte grise is not in their name, they say it’s a previous seller - 2 or 3 sales removed - so does anyone know how I go about registering it? We got it to take the grandchildren away occasionally, they live with us, we’re in the process of doing it up. Our car is French reg. And thanks for the add! :slight_smile:

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@anon90504988 can you offer any advice on this please?

I found myself in a similar position many years ago when I bought a van from someone. The cession d’un vehicule form had a different buyer’s address on it. The seller simply crossed it out & wrote my details underneath. I duly completed all the other paperwork & sent it, via my mairie, to the prefecture. In due course the papers were returned, rejected, as their records showed a previous sale which had not been registered by the buyer.

There are three copies of the cession form. One copy is kept by the seller, one is given to the buyer & the third copy is sent to the seller’s prefecture (though occasionally this gets forgotten). When the buyer arrived to register the vehicle the two cession forms were matched. They were expecting the next owner as notified to them to register & pay the fee. In my case they did not & I had to find the original buyer (who never showed to collect the van) to get him to fill in another cession form but he had long since vanished. I had to scrap the van…

Of course since then the issue of new CGs has been centralised so the paper sent to the prefecture may be used for local admin as prefectures today are just satellite offices of the new system - it is possible to go to any French prefecture to register a vehicle regardless of your home address. On the other hand it could still be entered into the central system. Or maybe nobody sent the 3rd copy to the prefecture so you may be lucky.

One option would be to make out a cession form with the details on the CG & your details & see if the prefecture will accept that (signatures are not that closely examined). My advice would be to visit your prefecture & ask, explaining your position. In the meantime don’t spend any more time on the thing in case you need to return it to the seller for a refund!

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Thank you. I might be in with a chance as I was told that no one has registered it since the person named on the carte grise, who has apparently been notified that I’ll be ringing for him to make the sale direct from him to me. We shall see. Thanks again.

The important thing is to make sure that the cession form from the first seller has not been sent by that seller to the prefecture. If the first buyer did not bother to change the carte grise then the authorities, based on my ancient experience with a motor vehicle, will not “jump” to another buyer until the first buyer has duly completed the process. Ask the original seller if he sent off the prefecture’s copy of the cession form. If he did not it will be plain sailing. It might be anyway - is there a fee to pay for a caravan? I have never registered one!