Getting the Carte Gris in France

Taking your car with you to France when you make the move
may be the cheapest way of going and it's not as hard to do as
you'd think

If you're making a permanent move from the UK to France and want to take your car with you - even if it is right-hand-drive, it's not as difficult as you may have been led to believe it to be.

I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that it's a piece of cake, because it's not. There are hoops to jump through, but what you have to remember is that you're taking a foreign car to a foreign country and there are the inevitable rules to follow, as well as having to deal with France's seemingly favourite pastime - paperwork!

There are many people who have gone down the route of taking their UK registered cars with them to France to get their Carte Gris, and basically, what they're doing, is importing them.

It may seem daft to take a knackered old jalopy to France, but it can be a damned sight cheaper than buying a car there, as second-hand cars in France are a usually significantly more expensive than similar cars in the UK.

Ours is a '99 Volvo V70 2.5 diesel. It's done 218,000 miles and still purrs like a kitten, as fortunately for us, it was well looked after before we bought it, both inside and out. Also - touch wood - the VW engine seems virtually indestructible, has bags of poke and returns phenomenal mileage to the gallon. Its value in the UK would come nowhere near the value of pretty much anything else in France because of its mileage - even though it's barely been run in.

So despite being right-hand drive, we weighed up the options of getting rid of it and buying something else and came to the conclusion that it would have cost us an arm and a leg to begin with and would have left us owning a car that could possibly have been far less reliable. Besides, driving a right-hand-drive in France isn't so difficult.

What you will need in place before you go

There are five things you need in place before you can take your car with you to France.

• Valid car insurance
• At least three months of valid car tax (Road Fund Licence)
• At least three months of valid MoT
• Log book (V5)
• Invoice for the purchase of the vehicle

Insurance

Whether you drive in France or the UK, you need insurance - or 'assurance' as they call it here.

We discovered that UK insurance companies won't insure you if you don't have a UK address, so we needed to get French assurance set up to cover the few hours between leaving our rented UK house and getting to our French house.

Warnings about the cost of assurance for cars abounded, but we didn't have any choice. If we wanted to be able to drive in France - and being able to drive in rural France is more of a necessity than a luxury - we needed car insurance. Surprisingly, we discovered that whilst our no claims bonus wouldn't count in full to begin with, it didn't make that much difference cost-wise to what we were both paying in England for the two of us to go on the policy as drivers.

In addition, the cost of insurance is no different whether you have a right-hand drive or left-hand drive. What is more likely to make a difference is if the vehicle is classed as a commercial vehicle.

Anyway, get your insurance sorted out before you go so that there's no gap between one ending and the other beginning.

MoT and Tax

A valid MoT and tax are necessities, even if you're planning to import the car and get the Carte Gris. The insurance companies have got wise to Brits and probably other nationalities trying to continue with their cars on their original plates that we were warned by our broker that if we hadn't got the car re-registered within three months, our assurance would be cancelled..

Therefore, it's imperative that your MoT and tax will cover the potential three months you need to get the Carte Gris, possibly longer.

Having said that, if you do have time left on your car tax after the Carte Gris comes through, you can send your disc back with this form and you may be refunded for tax unused.

Log Book (V5C)

Saying that you'll need to take this may sound a bit like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs, but it's part of the set of paperwork you'll need, so it needed to be on the list.

Invoice for the purchase of the vehicle

If you've bought the vehicle from eBay, some other on-line auction site or through a private sale, it's probable that you didn't get an invoice.

In order to get the Carte Gris, you will be asked for this and not having it may well hamper you getting the Carte Gris if it doesn't stop you altogether.

Things to get once you're there

We were hoping we could at least get some things together before we left for France as far as paperwork is concerned, but we were told that that isn't always possible and would have to be done once in place.

Certificat de conformité (C of C)

Many if not most départements in France insist on the C of C being in French, although sometimes, you can get away with English versions. This is just as well as Certifauto charged us 200€ and sent us an English C of C and not a French one.

We weren't sure afterwards whether we had stipulated that the one we wanted should be in French, so couldn't argue the case, but even if we had been sure, we only realised the fact the day before we were due to put our car in for its test at the Goron Contrôle Technique and the people at Certifauto told us that if we wanted one in French, we would have to pay another 200€. No doubt they would have expected us to wait another three weeks too. We had to go with what we had.

Helpful Hint: Make sure you're specific when you order yours.

We were lucky here as the man at the Contrôle technique was okay with the English C of C, so the car went in to be tested for the French version of the UK's MoT, although we still weren't positive that the people that issue the C of C's in Alençon would accept it.

Contrôle technique

With the C of C, the next step was to get the car tested. 

In preparation for this we found some V70 European standard headlamps on eBay for £80, when other people were charging £250. We decided to have them changed at a local Volvo garage back in the UK, where they would also give it a once over. It was more expensive than we anticipated and we could possibly have saved money by taking the car somewhere else, but afterwards, we felt confident that our car was in tip-top shape.

The test was 60€ - more expensive than in the UK, but lasts two years, so I think that's cheaper. We needed to produce the V5 log book, proof of address in the form of a utility bill and I think a passport. It's always wise to keep the passport to hand in these cases whether you're asked for it or not.

The test took less than an hour and much to the technician's amusement, we were visibly overjoyed that the car passed - waving our arms in the air and cheering probably gave the game away. He dutifully stuck a little clear, self-adhesive pocket inside the windscreen and slipped the CT ticket inside. Yes, it, like the insurance is displayed on the windscreen.

Had the car needed work to bring it up to standard, we would have to have got that done before taking the car back to be retested.

Half way through what we needed to do to get our car accepted for importation into France, we were happy that things were moving in the right direction and since receiving the C of C, it had only been a week, or nearly four weeks since we arrived in France. 

Helpful Hint: Get the car up to MoT standard before you go in order to negate or at least reduce the amount of work needed at a French garage. If you can get the lights changed too, you will probably find you'll get them cheaper than you will when you're there, but be careful using headlamps (full and dipped beams) in the UK before you leave, as the beams will shine at the on-coming traffic and not the roadside as UK ones will. Also, make sure that the headlamps you buy are European Standard or you'll end up having to change them.

The Blue Form ...

You will need:

• Log book (V5)
• the current mileage in kilometres, but they may convert miles to kms as they did for us
• Proof of address in France (bank statement, utility bill)
• Contrôle technique certificate
• Registered owner's passport

This form is actually green - or was in our case and we got it completed in Domfront - the Orne sub-prefecture at their Centre des Impots. We thought we might have to go to Alençon, which is a good hour and a half from us and a bitch to park in, so that part was easy. Getting this will take about fifteen minutes providing you can provide the information they need.

Helpful Hint: When we were told we'd need to go and get this form, we didn't know that it was not a form for us to fill in, so do remember to take the documents listed above with you when you go to get it.

You are now ready for the prefecture

You will need to find out where the offices you need to go are, and of course, that's all down to where in France you live. Anyway, if it's anything like Alençon you'll need to get there as early as possible, which for Alençon was 08:30, otherwise it's a real pig finding a parking space.

Getting the Certificat Provisoire d'Immatriculation, which is issued on the spot, providing your car passes, allows you to get your new number plates and the official Certificat d'Immatriculation will arrive in the post a few days later.

All in all, this part took us less than an hour.

The new number plates

These are available at some of the hypermarkets and you'll need:

• Certificat provisoire d'Immatriculation that you got from the prefecture or the Certificat d'Immatriculation if you're prepared to wait
• Proof of address (utility bill)

They'll make them up while you wait and supply both plates and four or six white-headed pop rivets to fix them to the car.

Helpful Hint: If you're going to fit the plates yourself, you'll need a pop-rivet gun. If you haven't, do not use screws to fix the number plates to the car as this is illegal. I would advise taking the car to a garage as it's only going to cost you between 5€ and 10€, the plates will be fitted as they are supposed to and they'll probably do it while you wait.

Finally

You'll remember that you have French insurance or 'assurance', which is in a little clear wallet that's stuck to the inside of the windscreen. You'll also notice that it's specific to the car and will therefore have the registration number that you gave upon arrival - the UK number. 

You'll need to get this changed as soon as possible to reflect the new French plates and what we've done is to have left the old UK number plates in the car - just in case!

Oh, remember that you need to send back the part of the V5 (V5C) to Swansea to tell them that the car has been permanently exported.