Sunday 8 March 2015

Renovation project - We have our french number plates


Renovation project - We have our french number plates

This is one of those posts that I have been looking forward to, we finally have our car all fully registered with French number plates, it was such an exciting moment putting the plates on the car.

We are fully French!!!!!

We had got our CT (MOT) and with this we had to take the documents to the prefecture too register the car. We did take a friend with us to make sure that we did everything correctly.

We had been warned many times that the woman at the prefecture was not overly friendly to the Brits, so it was a little nerve wracking, but this could not have been further from the truth. Everybody in the office joined in with our registration, including all of the other customers.

We handed over all of the relevant documents and had to say what colour the car was, this is simple, it is a champagne coloured Volvo, one of the easiest words in French you, would think, but no, that is not an option!

There are only so many colours available, ad champagne is not one of them!

We are given the list of colours to choose from and some of the French words for colours were unknown to us, and the English versions were unknown to the prefecture ad the other French customers, so we all join in and come up with all sorts of descriptions from French through Franglais and ending up with English!

Eventually we all agree on beige!

I can't believe we have a beige car, it doesn't sound anywhere near as nice as champagne, but hey it gets us where we need to be!

We hand over the cheque and are told the new registration number will be with us in the next 2 weeks.

Once we receive our Carte Gris (new registration documents) we take it to an auto shop and collect our new number plates, John fits them and the car is French, it really is exciting (or maybe I'm just a little bit sad?)

But now we know we can drive without other road users assuming we are tourists and won't know how to drive, it does actually make a difference with French drivers, we now will have it the other way around when we go back to visit the UK, it will be interesting to see if UK drivers treat us differently!

6 comments:

  1. Jenny,

    The carte gris is not the MOT, it's the equivalent of a V5 registration document so you probably don't have it yet. The MoT equivalent is the CT (Controle Techique) which is what you got recently and that with the green slip for insurance gets the registration done.

    When you get the Carte Gris, you can get the license plates made up and you can choose what you want displayed on the plate (Bretonne flag, UK flag, department number etc). The plates are for life now, not the old ones that changed when the car changed hands

    Cheers

    David

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    1. Thanks David, I'll change the post, this is me getting all my names mixed up, oops :)

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  2. Just gone through the same process with our formerly Swedish car and I agree - it is exciting! We're in the Languedoc in a lively community of French villagers and expats from every corner of the world and we all proudly feel a little more French once the new number plates do not give our true origin away;)

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  3. Just gone through the same process with our formerly Swedish car and I agree - it is exciting! We're in the Languedoc in a lively community of French villagers and expats from every corner of the world and we all proudly feel a little more French once the new number plates do not give our true origin away;)

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    1. Hi great to hear from you and sorry for the delay in replying, we have been a bit hectic. Your village sounds great and similar to ours, it is so exciting getting your new number plates :)

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