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hello all

T

thatcherboy

wannabe...
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im new to site and technicaly shouldnt be on here without the car.. im very keen to get a renault 4 possibly a french one as soon as possible, due to the recent purchase of an old barn in mid france im going to explore the possibilities of buying french and using there and here? if anyone has any thoughts on this then i would be gratefull for any advice/ words of experience. also at the moment i am iving in folkestone kent, does anyone have a renault 4 that i could have a good nose around? i need to get up to speed on what to look for and maybe even get a ride in one? i grew up in both cyprus and spain, but it was in a tiny spanish village 20 or so years ago that i developed a "thing" for r4's that remained dormant until now! so there you have it, all i need now is the car...
 
Whereabout in mid France will you be? I looked on French ebay just now and there seems to be plenty of nice ones, you'll have to pick on the basis of where they live as France is a big place. I would definitely get a French registered one. No tax and CT only every two years. French insurance seems a lot cheaper too. We bought two lovely LHD ones in the UK but it's a hell of a job and an expense getting them reregistered over here.
 
hi, the barn is just outside a village called bessines sur gartampe, its about 30min drive north of the city of limoges. yeah i guess location is more important with france. will i need to provide any proof of address etc to buy/insure a french plated car? im hoping to use the car as a workhorse back here in the uk too. do you live in france full time or do you commute a fair bit?
 
It's a shame that we are about 250 miles away, isn't France big? We live here full time now so that's why we are having to get to grips with the French paperwork. For any official business we take along birth, marriage, utility bills, passports, driving licence, bank statements and anything else we can think of. However I can't see why you need any French documents at all to either buy or insure a car. Anyway, hasn't your barn got an address?
 
Hi,
Buying in france is not that difficult as long as you have all the right forms, hopefully the person your buying from will know all the stuff. You can get a proof of sale form from you local prefecture and also the seller should have a "certificat de situation administrive" signed by the prefecture within the last month. Make sure the car has more than 6 month CT as this is the minimum needed to get it re registered. Then take all you documentation along to the prefecture (including the CT) and fill in a "demande certificate d'immatriculation d'un véhicule" (make sure this is correct or you'll be sent away to do another one). Go to the counter and hand in all the documents you have for the vehicule, including the old carte grise, once paid your debt to them you'll be the proud owner of a new carte grise. (should not cost more than 150euro)
 
aah i see, right well i will have to make sure i have copies of everything with me then, the barn does have an address but i dont as yet have any utilitie bills etc in that address. and is there a maximum time in which the car can be used in the uk without leaving the country?
regards
ben
 
thanks guys, that has put me straighter on that. can you believe that i saw 3 different r4's today around hastings! one was foreign plated, and i was only driving for about 1 hour in total all day.. maybe i now have renault radar..
 
There is all sorts of useful info - not just on cars / the registration and use of / and whether you can legally use a french registered one in the UK if you are UK resident on www.angloinfo.com if you look out for posts by someone who goes under the name of 'Sunday Driver' he seems to be the fount of all knowledge on things motoring.
I think the form for registering cars can be downloaded from the french govt website, but the link escapes me.
The cost of registering a 1986 850 model recently was around 70 euros - it depends on the puissance fiscale and the age, over 10 years old I think its half the price.
 
We were very pleased to get the carte grise for the two cars this week. We found it a time consuming and at times stressful task (both our cars at one point or another looked like they would not be getting one at all!). And we forgot to go to the tax office for a session of form stamping first! The French do like their bits of paper!

I can give you an idea of the costs for importing an R4 from England.

Contrôle Technique - 75 euros (+25 euros retest)
Certificate of conformity from Renault - 135 euros
Carte grise - 79 euros
Number plates - 30 euros

By the way, does 247 euros seem an OK price to insure both the TL and fourgonette?
 
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Well done! Glad they've both been successfully repatriated to their homeland.

What there anything you found especially tricky or unexpected? - Was Claude the van any special trouble (for having never lived in France before)?
 
The trouble we had with Blanche was that she had been registered before in France. Her old carte grise hadn't been handed in when she was exported. So theoretically she was still French but of course I had the English documents. Claude's trouble, besides getting overexcited and boiling over during the CT, was that the date of first registration did not match the date on the Certificate of Conformity.

A good tip folks. Turn up at the préfecture just before lunch and they'll want to get rid of you.

We also handed in our driving licences to get new ones. That is the first free service I've come across in France. Don't get me started but do you know the banks sometimes charge you for putting money into your account! :eek:
 
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