advice please - trade in french car against uk car

[Frank]

Hi all, sorry if this has been covered, but I have done quick search and not found the answer.  We moved back to the uk temporarily and as we no longer have a valid french addess to register the car to, we have to sell it.  It is a very old french reg lhd car which will cost far to much to import to the uk, so I am going to trade it in against a rhd in the uk. My question is, I know what papers are required for a straight forward sale in France ( as I have done this before), but what papers do I need for the prefecture to show the car has been traded in/sold to a garage in the uk please.  Many thanks in advance for any advice /links etc,

cheers

[EuroTrash]

The problem is that if you officially 'sell' the car to a UK garage that brings car's existence in France to a dead end because if its next owner wants to bring it back to France they won't have a certificat de cession signed by the previous registered owner (you), they won't be able to prove they bought it from you and they will hit a wall when they try to register it.

The public spirited thing to do is to trade it in to the garage if you want but not sign off the paperwork for the préfecture until the car is sold, at which point you can fill in a certificat de cession for the new owner if they're planning on bringing it to France.

[Frank]

Many thanks for your reply EuroTrash.  The car is very old (1997!) so I doubt they will sell it on, but then again you never know lol! 

Thanks again

 

[NickP]

[quote user="Frank"]

Many thanks for your reply EuroTrash.  The car is very old (1997!) so I doubt they will sell it on, but then again you never know lol! 

Thanks again

 

[/quote]

1997? in that case I would sell it in France; it would be viewed as positively modern and probably seem to the locals to have very low mileage.[:D]

[AnOther]

Notwithstanding the problems a potential buyer might face in reply to your actual question if you sell the car in the UK then you do not have to tell the prefecture diddly squat. Your only issue is in cancelling the insurance and you can do that simply by writing to them to say that you no longer live in France.

The advice to sell it in France is good, in UK it's worth effectively nothing and any trade in sum a dealer offers you for it you could probably get knocked off the sticker price of a new car anyway but depending on what it is and it's condition in France it could fetch thousands !

Frankly though I'd be surprised if you found a dealer willing to touch a 16

year old French registered car, outside Jack the Lad under the railway

arches that is.

[EuroTrash]

1997 isn't very old is it? My car used to be 'H' registered before it went onto French plates, what year's that? And it's still going strong(ish).

[PaulT]

Ernie said:

'Frankly though I'd be surprised if you found a dealer willing to touch a 16 year old French registered car, outside Jack the Lad under the railway arches that is.'

A normal dealer will probably take it as it has scrap value. He will offer above that value off of the screen price. But you will probably get a bigger discount without a trade in.

[AnOther]

H means August 1990 to July 1991 but it's not about a car 'still going strong' !

Probably the only attraction of the car in UK will be the fact of it being LHD but even then it's still a 17 years old car so interest is likely to be fairly muted.

Without knowing what car we are talking about and it's mileage and condition it's difficult to quantify it's possible value but it could be as little as a few hundred quid.

[Chancer]

[quote user="AnOther"]H means August 1990 to July 1991 but it's not about a car 'still going strong' !

Probably the only attraction of the car in UK will be the fact of it being LHD but even then it's still a 17 years old car so interest is likely to be fairly muted.

Without knowing what car we are talking about and it's mileage and condition it's difficult to quantify it's possible value but it could be as little as a few hundred quid.
[/quote]

But earlier you said:

 in UK it's worth effectively nothing

OK a couple of hundred quid is closer to nothing than the price of a say 5 year old car but I think you are right about the attraction of it being LHD, I have found that the values of LHD vehicles sold on UK Ebay (not the asking price but actual sales/auctions won) is nearly always higher than for an equivalent RHD, certainly because of the much higher values in France (not sure of other countries) and hence the advice to sell in France, however I think it will sell well in the UK for someone either moving to France or someone in France looking for a cheap car.

Friends that were buying their children their first car ended up buying a small LHD hatchback in the UK, it was a typical old banger first vehicle but a fraction of the price in France but more than it was worth in the UK.