Thanks Pepper....Below is what I have been alerted to!! As quoted to me from a contact I found in France. Any advice or other methods of proceeding would be very much appreciated! I remain determined to get one of these amazing cars!
"Be aware of this mess:-
Cars more than three years old, when the system changed had a registration document called the carte grise. This carries the details of the car with its key numbers -VIN, chassis etc and the name of the proprietor with the registration number that it controls, for the plates on the car. Each time the vehicle changed hands it had to have the carte grise changed and if it moved to another department in France, a new registration number issued. Now there is a nationwide registration scheme in place which creates a carte grise on first registration and it and the rego number stays for the life of the car.
I have just been helping someone in Melboune import an H van from here and we found that under the current rules you cannot export a car from the EU, if you are not an EU resident. Either you have to appoint a professional export agent in the EU to do it for you or get the vendor to export it. We chose the latter route. To clean up the paperwork here the vendor and purchaser have to sign and exchange a certificate of cession of which a copy goes with the carte grise to the prefecture with it signed as exported permanently. A local sale also needs a Controle Technique not more than six months old and a Certificat de Non Gage which confirms that no one has a lien over the vehicle
There have been a number of fiddles with these cartes grises on older cars. The rules here effectively ban performance modifications relative to the manufacturer's homologation spec. So cars like this one which were tuned for sporting events often have an invalid carte grise which makes sale difficult to impossible. I notice that he has modified his sales ad, now saying that he has a carte grise in his name, so probably someone else has asked for clarification. It matters for import to Australia. Before shipping you have to get permission to import from Canberra. They demand proof of ownership ie a receipt and a copy of the carte grise with confirmation that the vehicle has not been modified. If the vehicle is pre 1996 you will need a certificate of authenticity from the maker. If post 96, it has to have a European Certificate of Conformity and a VIN number which you have to get from the maker. If the vehicle is modified this is a very grey area.
Once you get approval for the import and approval for the export, it can go on the ship. Once in Aus and Quarantine and customs are happy, then you have the challenge of getting through the state rego, about which I know nothing.
Before worrying about the car itself I would want to know exactly what is on the carte grise"
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeelp...........
