EuroTrash

To be honest I've forgotten how all this started. But basically, France needs to be sure that if the car you're registering in France, isn't already your property that you're bring to France from abroad, that you have bought it not stolen it and that the person you bought it from was the legal owner and therefore entitled to sell it. If the export certificate actually confirms that you are the legal owner of the vehicle then fine. That's what I'm asking - I don't know, I've never seen an export certificate. But if not I doubt it would be acceptable.

Have you ever registered or scrapped a car in France? When you scrap a car in France you have to prove it is yours to scrap; before they will take it off you they need a copy of your passport and a copy of your carte grise, and you have to sign a form. You can't scrap a car that belongs to your wife, your dad, or some random guy that you nicked it off. The vehicle recycler would be in trouble if they disposed of a vehicle without the paperwork.

It sounds as if Germany is quite a lot more lax than France which is a bit surprising. In France, when you buy a used car the paperwork is almost more important than the car itself. If the car is broke you can usually get it fixed and use it. If the paper trail is broke you can't register it and if you can't register it you won't be able to insure it, hence you can't use it. There are loads of perfectly good cars sitting rusting because nobody can get them registered and back on the road. May seem daft to you, but, this is the France forum not the Germany forum...

Chatter Static

I somehow doubt it

Pulaski

And that is the crux of the problem. I have no doubt that it is quite easy to buy a car, or take one you already own, and take it to another country and register it. But is a whole other matter to take car you own, to another country and try to sell it without registering in the country you are trying to sell it.

This question crops up from time to time in various of BE'S European forums, and always relates to someone who can't, or doesn't want to register the vehicle locally, often because the process to modify it and get it inspected is more than the car is worth. Sometimes they parked it behind their house and left it to rust for a few years, and now discover that they can't legally scrap it! Other times they have run it illegally (without registering it), taking it back to the UK annually for an MOT, until it is no longer fit to drive, or they are too old to drive it, but the problem is the same - it is unsalable, and unscrappable, unless it is already registered locally. .... And even if it is in decent nick a local buying isn't going to want to faff around with foreign registration paperwork unless it is a collectible classic.

BritInParis

To the OP: if the car hasn't been marked by the DVLA as exported then get it back to the UK and sell it on webuyanycar.com and use the money to put towards purchasing a LHD French registered replacement. Unless the car you are taking with is particularly valuable it simply isn't worth the hassle.

Chatter Static

I wonder how much it costs to put a car on a transporter and return it to the UK..

InVinoVeritas

Just to inject a tiny note of optimism into this thread, I once traded in a UK registered car when I bought a new car in France. The garage registered the old car in France and then sold it.

I should add that the UK car was a fairly new LHD BMW and I was trading it in against a new Porsche so the incentive was certainly there for the garage to do this but it just shows that it can, theoretically, be done.