Patrick_P3

Hi, I am moving to France in a couple of months and have been offered a LHD car at a very good price by a Frenchman who is settling in the UK. Unfortunately, he has already changed the plate to UK reg. I was just wondering how easy it is to transfer the car back to french reg...any experience/feedback?

Thanks

deliak

Hi Patrick

We are doing the same and are bringing the car over next month. I have been told that is cost approx £100 to change the plates over. You have to fill out a mountain of paperwork, and I believe you have to get it authorised at your local Marie before sending off (where I am not sure yet). Then your new plates arrive. But I have been told it is quite a long process. We have someone who is going to help us do all this, so when I can get some more definate details I will let you know. Thanks Dee

bourgogne

to change a UK plate ARRGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!! the 'form' is more like a catalogue. You have to import the car, or not if you care about DVLC otherwise in france the garage ..... i mean if its a ford, then the ford garage has to fill in a form with everything down to the db of the horn

after you have to fill in a wad of a form to send off to the prefactor of the dept you live in. after (french time) MONTHS of waiting you get issued a number.... while you wait you have to apply for a temp number, this has to be re-newed monthly, and costs. after all this you have to go off and buy a set of plates, then pay to get them fitted. The tax you pay for the plate will depend on the HP and the environmental impact it makes.... emissions. could be £100 could be £800. cost me about £150 just to change a plate on a french car from dept to dept.

PS french want the original reg form!!!! DVLC want the form too!!!

copy to DVLC orginal to france.

PPS dont bother at all and insure it in the UK or save some cash and use a french insurance. I have discovered a lot now dont care what plate the car carries. not sure how the police see this but no tax to pay

cinders1850

Hello,

The procedure is probably different depending on whether you’ll be living in a large town or a small village but I can tell you what happens Lyon. You have to get a document either from the car manufacturer (100€ plus) OR the local DRIRE - Direction Regionale de l'Industrie, de la Recherche et de l'Environnement (c 70€) to prove that the car complies with EU regulations BUT, if you can prove that your car came from France originally, this step may not be necessary. The document is entitled “Demande d’Identification d’un Vehicle Importe Conforme a un Type Nationale.”

The car must also have a valid Controle Technique (equivalent of an MOT) - 46€ - and we also needed a "Quitus Fiscale" or “Certificat d’Acquisition d’un Vehicule Terrestre a Moteur en Provenance de la CE par une Personne Non-Idenifee a la TVA” (Whew! The French like their long names!) which was free from our local tax office and is something to do with whether TVA tax is due to be paid on the car if it's new.

Once we had all that, we completed the application form (from the Prefecture) and took it all back to the Prefecture, waited about 25 mins and, hey presto, a new carte grise was supplied (the cost was about 160€ I think). As with just about everything in France, you’ll also have to give them a photocopy of your passport and show them the original and supply the same for a document to prove residency (eg, a receipt for rent, EDF bill or France Telecom bill etc).

They will also want to keep the original UK registration document but the DVLA will accept a letter from you confirming that you have registered the vehicle in France.

If you're planning to take out French insurance on the car, you'll be allowed six months to register it here but you may only be covered on a third party basis until it’s registered.

But, after all that, it's now possible to have UK insurance on a UK-registered car but be resident in France so that may be worth checking out. AXA insurance does this through the AA in Newcastle-U-Tyne. I’m sorry but I don’t have their phone number.

I’ve found UK insurance to be cheaper than French insurance and, if I’d known about UK policies for French residents back then, I wouldn’t have registered the car here.

I hope this helps.

mayrig

Hiya

I wonder if you could advise which insurance companies in the UK accept to cover a car for a French resident. I did ask Privilege, with whom I have been insured for several years, and their response was that it could not be done, except in the short term upto a maximum of three months.

As a result, I am in the process of trying to change the registration to a French one, and have come up against a mountain of red tape! Any advice you could give would be highly appreciated.

Thanks and regards
F. Butler

cinders1850

Hello,

If you're still interested in investigating being insured from the UK, I recently had a quote from a company called Stuart Collins & Co in Swansea. I filled in an online request for a quotation and got it back the following day. You'll find their website at www.stuartcollins.com

Hope this helps.

mayrig

Hi there

Thanks for your response. I have started the ball rolling. Am facing problems because the car is Japanese and therefore not EEC built.. therefore the manufacturer returned a Non Compliance certificate (and returned my cheque)! The MOT and the Quitus fiscale have been done. Documents as requested by the DRIRE have been forwarded to them. They say the vehicle will have to be taken to them in Beauvais for a physical check!

To import the car into the UK took me all of 2 weeks.... here, its been months already! :-( . I insured the car here with Axa. Wish I would have known about being able to insure it here through the UK, but I have already informed the DVLA of the export of the vehicle! C'est la vie.

Best regards
Fleur

mayrig

Months to re-register it in France.... tell me about it!!! So frustrating. I did go the temporary carte grise route but regret having done so. It was a waste of money. The Prefecture told me (too late) that it would only be renewed once! Since my car does not look like its going to be registered within the validity of the final renewal of this WW plate I have gone back to my English plates! What can I say... I have a bigger problem because the car is made in Japan and therefore does not comply to Type here since it is not manufactured here...

Fleur

basquen33

Hi Fleur,

Beware - you are about to open a can of worms!

Importing a vehicle built for the European market is a relatively straightforward process.
Grey import vehicles built solely for the Japanese market are a different story altogether. You will not be able to issue a certificate of conformity for the simple reason that there is no European conformity. These imports are almost always built for the Japanese domestic market and therefore not designed to match any of the EU standards that a manufacturer has to meet in order to sell in the EU. Unfortunately there is no agreement between UK and FR on SVA standards. Even if your car has UK plates, the French registration authorities will still treat it as if you have just bought it in direct from Tokyo!

I'll outline the general process for registering a grey import in France. Before embarking on this you need to be aware that it may simply be impossible to register in France. You need to weigh up the hassle, time and expense involved before taking the plunge.... The French system is simply not geared up for these kind of imports. The UK has I believe approx 50,000 imports from Japan per year (hence nationwide test stations, model reports etc). In France you could probably knock all the zeros off this figure and then take away 5! Japanese motorbikes sometimes find their way over here, but not cars.

In the case of a Japanese grey import you have already completed the first step - a certificate of non-conformité from the French head office. You will also need a zero fault controle technique. The other basic documents are standard (demande immatriculation, quitus fiscal, proof of purchase etc). There then follows a long, complicated and arduous application to be made to the DRIRE for a 'réception à titre isolée' (RTI). You may incur considerable costs in terms of time spent, tests and modifications to you vehicle, but there is a possibility (albeit slim) of getting the approval from the inspector at the DRIRE. The inspector is all powerful and it is his interpretation of the rules that will make or break your application.

Some Japanese imports have EU stamped parts (glass and electrical components). Others are 100% JN stamped and have no compliance with EU standards. If it means changing all of these parts then you must have a damn good reason to justify the expense and hassle of going through this process. Often these type of vehicles were built solely for the Japanese domestic market and simply don't have any euro spec or even LHD parts available. If certain parts are not available the inspector can apply to the ministry of transport for dispensation - however they don't automaticaly undertake this..... Similarly you need to establish parts availablity in France. French dealers may not be able to source even simple service parts (oil, air filters etc), exhausts, shocks etc. You will almost certainly find these available in the UK where the grey import market is well catered for but shipping them out to France for your routine servicing might turn out to be rather expensive.

The application form for the RTI involves completing a technical questionnaire for which many answers are virtually impossible to obtain. The French manufacturers HQ will almost certainly not be of any help. These details cover everything from gearbox ratios, braking capacity, weights, engine bore, dimensions and towing capacity, etc). Mitsubishi, Toyota, Nissan etc and other makes represented in France do not have access to the Japanese conformity data. UK HQs, familiar with the grey market sector, will probably be more helpful but are still unlikely to supply full data. Japanese HQ's in Japan do not usually respond to out of country requests for this kind of information. If you can source a UK model report this would be a great help to you.
If the DRIRE are feeling particularly enthusiastic and you are particularly unlucky they will also insist that you submit you car for UTAC testing. This is the equivalent of single type approval but involves a full inspection on the UTAC test site near Paris This is the only centre in France and if the DRIRE ask you for UTAC approval there is no other way round the matter. I'm not sure of current prices but a couple of years ago a days testing at UTAC came in at over 1400€.


If you are applying for a RTI then you are granted a 4 month period to obtain approval. Most reputable insurance companies align themselves with these regulations and so long as you have written proof that you are in the midst of applying to the DRIRE then they will cover you. During this period your UK reg n°, tax & MOT still needs to be in order. If your UK tax or MOT lapses you should no longer use the vehicle because your insurance cover could be declared null and void in the event of a claim.

To sum-up I would say that if you are very attached to your vehicle and have time, patience and some spare euros available then go ahead . You may be lucky and catch the DRIRE on a good day - grey imports have been registered here. On the other hand there are plenty of dead-end sagas on other ex-pat sites where re-registering has been impossible.


Hope this helps - intended to be objective and not pessimistic!

Regards

B

basquen33

....but remember that the rules are actually quite straigntforward.
For a UK registered car to be used in France it has to be road legal in the UK: valid tax, mot and insurance. This car can be used for a maximum period of 6 months abroad. You cannot declare a UK vehicle SORN and then use it abroad.
If you are resident in France you have 2 weeks to import the car (for a EU conform model) or 4 months if applying for single type approval (RTI).
There is no option to choose FR or GB plates - it's residency that dictates what you have to do. Failure to comply with registration rules can invalidate insurance because you insurer (French or English) could refuse a claim on the grounds of undisclosed information:
- by driving an imported vehicle after the authorised period has expired
-by driving a car which is not road legal in its country of origin

European legislation lays out the rules clearly (link to European legislation - middle of page) whereby, with certain exceptions, you are not entitled to drive a foreign registered car in you country of residency....

karunia

Basquen33 - fabulous info - it had taken me months/ years, to figure out only some fragments of the info you have just provided. I don't need it right now, but will copy it in case I come across someone who does, as you hear so many stories, and many people seem to have so much trouble registering their UK car here. Thank you!

basquen33

Pleasure to help !
Once people have the full picture they can then make their own decisions. I feel the rules and regulations are actually quite clear but the grey area that people often describe is actually (at best) a misunderstanding or (at worse) a conscious decision to break the rules to suit themselves....

bourgogne

can i throw a turd in your swimming pool?

Skoda/Seat/Audi in france is VW right? yes! the car i have here of my mothers is a Skoda...... VW will not, refuse, have no idea will fill out paperwork! Go to orginal importers of brand in france......... errr that would be VW then?

To top that the car has an english reg doc still in mums names (now dead) and nothing can be done to get that put in mine. no Uk address etc etc etc.

So grey imports are rare, very! Normal imports are not and still the car cannot be changed to french as VW are happy to sell them but refuse to fill in the spec forms, and then even if they had I cant own it on paper!


importing? hello !! no you dont have to, but you do have to inform DVLC you exported. The car here has french CT and insurance but GB plates. All you have to do is 'try' to make the car french inside 6 months or get another CT to ensure this is not older than 6 months. Insurance remains in grey area throughout.

Sister in spain had to have her car measured and all forms changed because the wheels where not original spec FFS! So even if the car is known in france or spain etc, the orginal importers (if there ever was one) has to fill the forms in! This is not that easy ...... even if one brand sells another they refuse!

basquen33

You local VW dealer will almost certainly not be able to help so here are three possibilities:
-If the car was built between 1990 &1998, download this form from the DRIRE, send off to local DRIRE with th V5C + cheque for 67,38 euros.
In return you well receive an attestation d'identité (together with your V5C)
-If the car is post 1998 then you will have to contact VW-AUDISEAT-SKODA Service d'homologation, France: 03 23 73 80 80. They will (send you a form which you need to complete and return with a photocopy of the UK registration document + a cheque for about 100 -150 euros (depends on manufacturer).
In return you will receive a european certificate of conformity
-If pre 1990 you will have to contact VW (same proceedure as above) but they will issue you with an attestation d'identité rather than euro conformity

Have you spoken to the DVLA direct about this? From my experience with questions regarding export, V5C inacuracies etc they are very helpful. They obviously will not register the vehicle with a non UK address, but could you not use another family member to have the logbook transferred into their name, then 'buy' the car from them with paperwork signed by them and yourself to document the change of ownership? You can then obtain the quitus fiscale from the French tax office on the strength of this. The prefecture will accept this paperwork.

Remember a French national can cross the channel to buy a secondhand car and then reregister it in France without having a UK V5C in his name!


NO ! The thread started off with a couple of requests on how to reregister. There are no grey areas! Depending on the vehicle the process can be drawn out and problematic (Fleur/grey import) but for european models there is no grey area:
If someone decides to break the law and drive a UK plated car in France that has no roadtax, no MOT (reading between the lines?) and has been declared officially exported to the DVLA then they are running a serious risk of having their insurance policy delaclared nullified in the event of a major claim for non-disclosure of a material fact (i.e I'm illegally running a car that is not fit for use on the road)

Yes you DO. Please refer to my earlier posting. If you are resident in France you are not allowed to drive a foreign registered vehicle (European legislation). There is a tolerance of 2 weeks (for normal import) or 4 months (single type approval) to complete the paperwork. If the process is not completed within these time limits then the vehicle should not be used on the road. There is no legal allowance made because 'I'm trying to get it through' beyond these limits. If you are non resident in France then you can drive ise you UK plated, road legal car in France for a period of up to 6 months in every 12. What you certainly cannot do is de-register in the UK, and never register in France!!

basquen33

Don't mean to pick holes in all your replies, but this is another innaccuracy.
- If you own a car and move departement then then the prefecture will issue a new carte grise free of charge.
- I assume you meant that you bought a secondhand French car and and had to pay just over 200 euros for the new carte grise. If the car was previously registered in another departement then you would have had to change the number plates (only 20-30 euros for the pair/fitted). This one off fee seems reasonable when you consider the current price of annual roadtax in the UK plus the annual MOT certificate as opposed to every 2 yrs for a CT in France....

The system is set to change in 2008 when cars will start to be issued with a permanent registration number.....