Keeping a car in France

Yes, an iffy outfit & the c of c they supply is only a copy of the details available for free from the real DVLA. They call the paper an “independent” certificate of conformity & offer to help if it is not accepted by french authorities.
Below I have an example of their certificate & one from a manufacturer. At the end of the day, if you need a c of c you can choose who you wish - it’s your money!

Worth noting! The CT becomes more like the current UK MOT in May this year. In general it is not partucularly different from today’s CT but goes in to more detail. Biggest changes include warning lights such as ABS, air bag & engine fault lights resulting in a failure, as will rust affecting the structure rather than the cosmetic appearance. Oil leaks will also become a failure.
Of interest to those thinking of importing from the UK stickers on headlights (which are not allowed at the moment regardless of what others might say) will be permitted under the new rules! The stickers must only flatten the beam & not cut off a whole section of the lamp so placement will have to be exact.
I am a garagiste & have a copy of the new regs.

Hi Mark, why would you not change the headlights though as they are essential and can be sourced quite cheaply?

Some headlights are cheaper than others. Audi R8 lights are 3800 euros each!

If only I could afford an R8, would buy in Germany and save the 3800 :sunglasses:

If you can afford an R8 I don’t think paying nearly 4k each for headlights is going to be a problem.:wink:

If @anon90504988 actually has an R8 and it was not a joke - I have no reason to suggest that he doesn’t have an R8 - but certainly if I had an R8 then I would be broke and therefore spending a further 3800 euros on replacement lights certainly would be a very big issue.

Unfortunately I do not have an R8!
Some older UK cars (and therefore cheap) have quite complicated & expensive lights which can turn a bargain car into one which can end up costing the same as its french equivalent whereas headlights for others can be quite cheap. A pair of new lights for a Peugeot Boxer van for example can be bought for as little as 100 euros a pair.
I do tend to agree with Tim as I would prefer to have the best possible lights rather than just adequate ones & I am surprised by the forthcoming change in the CT regs & do not fully understand the change of stance. Mind you, after Brexit all bets are off!

UK cars may be cheaper to buy compared to french ones but a french car will hold a decent value for far longer so that when the time comes to change it the car will still fetch a good amount & there are far more potential buyers for LHD than for a RHD. Unfortunately a RHD car does not dramatically increase in value just because it has crossed the Channel…

I’ve a high spec Superb estate (ex Skoda management) which I’m registering in France. Its 3 yrs old and its been impossible to find an identical car in France without spending ridiculous amounts. It’s RHD but I’ve driven LHD and RHD cars competitively most of my life, so that’s not an issue, nor do I forsee any problems in registering it in France.
However - and apologises for going off piste slightly - I’m not sure if I will have issues with bringing a trailer over.
It’s a large (max allowed for my car) Ifor Williams France single axle braked trailer.
Its about 4-5 years old, and was seemingly sold new to a French landscape gardener, who later decided to go for a double axle and sold it to a Brit.
Said Brit had a holiday home, so UK domiciled and used it on his UK registered car so didn’t bother registering the trailer in France.
He then became ill, sold the French home and moved the contents of his holiday home back to GB in the trailer.

I’ve since bought it - it’s as new - but I seem to recall that braked trailers have to be registered in France. What do I need to register it in France since there’s no paperwork covering its original French registration.

Any trailer over 500kg gross needs it’s own registration. Normally, for a UK trailer you should get a CoC from Ifor Williams which would make registration straightforward. I hope that the fact that the trailer has been registered in France before but you don’t have the CG or a Certificate of a Cessation doesn’t turn out to be a problem when they enter the chassis number into the computer.

That was what I was wondering …

@Highlander

Hi George…

Are you sure the trailer was ever actually registered in France?.. (it would have had its own specific number plate and Carte Grise…)

Yes it was.
It seemingly had French plates on it when bought by the Brit which he simply replaced with a uk one for his car. He says he didn’t get a carte Grise or documentation.

George Topp.

Well… mmm… if you have a bill-of-sale from the Englishman… and he gives you the bill-of-sale he would have received from the Frenchman… that will give you the start of a paper-trail… :unamused:

Unfortunately that doesn’t exist.
He seemingly paid for the trailer by cheque and if he got any paperwork he’d not got it by the time I bought. And I’ve no bill of sale from him

He did however give me the original French plate - from 85 I think. I still have it somewhere

George Topp.

“The French system does not allow foreign garages to hold secondhand French registered vehicles”.

That can’t be right.

I did just that - I bought a french registered (french number plate) from a dealer (‘The LHD Place’) in the UK and then re-registered the car here in France 6 weeks later.

How would France know you’d bought it from a UK garage? Presumably the paperwork was as if you’d bought it direct from the previous French owner?

There’s a difference between not allowing, and actively preventing. France can’t prevent UK garages from acting as middleman even though French law says that they shouldn’t. But if any issues arise as a result of buying a French reg car from a UK garage, you can’t expect the authorities to help,

There’s quite a lot of things that the French system does not allow, that go on anyway :wink:

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You are correct Graham. You have to buy it from country of origin, those you mentioned.They are quite expensive in my opinion, but we have kiwi friends (we are kiwis too) who do this every year here in France.

It is perfectly acceptable to buy a french registered car from a UK car dealer. It is necessary, however, to make sure that the paper chain is maintained. When a car dealer buys a car to sell on he has to fill in the cession form with the garage details & when he sells it he has to supply a garage version of the certificat de vente (Cerfa 13751-02). This is because a garage does not need to change a carte gris into his name & then make the buyer get another one.
This works for UK garages who buy & sell LHD cars too. Cars can be sold a number of times garage to garage in this way but the final buyer needs to check that they have copies of all the cerfa forms from all the traders in the chain. The end user is the one who has to re register the car in France & this is done in the usual way.
I would not yet know how this works if you tried to do this on line but my local garage recently registered a french car bought from a UK garage for a customer of mine without problems.

Are you sure about the U.K. garages being able to hold onto secondhand French cars? The problems I’ve read about is where there is no direct transfer of paperwork between the previous registered owner and the buyer hoping to reregister it in France. I have no first hand experience of this but after having read quite a few horror stories in the past it’s something that I’d avoid.