The Crittenden Automotive Library

Blue and White Van Man 2 - French Motoring Bureaucracy.

Blue and White Van Man 2 - French Motoring Bureaucracy.

Stan Potter
DriveWrite
November 7, 2013

Stan Potter writes: A 3500kg van is ideal for conveying goods in bulk over long distances, but it is not very good for going to a restaurant or the local supermarket. My wife and I are both partially disabled and have Blue Badges, so arriving in a large van raises many French eyebrows. In our supermarket unusual vehicles are not that rare. Tractors, very old 2CV vans and Sans Permis cars are often seen. The Sans Permis is a peculiar French idea. If you have no licence or have your licence taken away you can still drive one. This is because most of France is very rural and a car is a necessity. If you lose your licence through drink driving you can remain mobile. If you are caught driving a Sans Permis under the influence the police confiscate your car and at around €8000 they are not cheap.

So we decided to buy a car. We looked around our area in France for an older motor, one with a distributor and carburettor, to make home maintenance easier. In our local garage we saw a Renault 4. Its rear door did not lock; there was a hole in the passenger foot well about the size of a foot. To try to start it (unsuccessfully) a battery was borrowed from another car. This pile of rust held together with green (I think) paint was priced at €750 which was about £700. We declined the offer. We saw other cars, some better, but all overpriced. When we got back to England we looked around for left hand drive cars. I found one on Ebay (my happy hunting ground) - a 1986 VW Golf Mk2 (the red one in the image below) with 107,000kms (68,000mls) on the clock for £300. This was ideal as it had all the requisites. It had an interesting history.

It was purchased new by a British soldier in Germany and brought to England on his return. It had been registered in Germany on German plates and then transferred to English plates. It had a distributor and carburettor and even considering its age it was in very good condition. I happily paid the asking price. On our return to France I faced up to the bureaucracy to transfer the car to French registration. This is where France and England differ. In France NO official documents are translated into any other language. If you do not understand French, TOUGH! So utilising Google Translate to the full I navigated the minefield of French officialdom. The first thing was to get a Certificate de Conformity. This is the official VW declaration that the car complies with French specification and is only available from Volkswagen France. After a long telephone conversation in Franglais this was forthcoming.

Next was the Control Technique (French MOT). These are done by a government department called Le Bureau de Mines. They only do the test, no repairs. If your car fails the test they give you one month’s certificate to let you get the car repaired. Retests within the month are free. I do not know what happens if it fails a second time. I think this is unusual because DIY mechanics are very rare. Ninety per cent of people take cars to main dealers or local garages for repair. In fact British expats do the majority of all DIY in France. Getting spares can be a problem because even breakers yards are only set up for trade. I am lucky to have an extremely rusty Golf (white - given to me by a British expat) as a source of spares.

French no claims bonus is not as generous as English. To get maximum (50%) bonus you have to have 13 years claim free but all vehicles owned by you receive the same discount. Explain this to your UK insurer and they can supply you with a certificate of how much discount you are entitled to and this will be applied to your French insurance. I pay €237 for Third Party, Fire, Theft, glass replacement and roadside recovery to a garage. I pay for it with a UK credit card over the phone. It is easy to find a broker who speaks English if you try. At my last Controle Technique the Golf failed due to a handbrake cable breaking during the test. It took all my linguistic abilities to convince them I would fetch it back the following day for a retest as we returned to England the following weekend. Eventually I convinced them and (courtesy of the other Golf) it passed with flying colours for another two years.