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Hello to all,
Delighted to have found this site!
We have a house in Le Barcares for the past 13 years and enjoy Summers there every Year as soon as kids finish School. We are hoping to bring our Irish car to France and re-register it. However, I hear it's very time consuming and difficult and I don't know where to start. Any suggestions? Or is it recommend to just buy a French car?

Bon journee!
Jane [/quote]

Hi Jane. Exciting times ahead! Here are a couple of articles which may give you some tips although one
is the middle of being updated.Some bits of it might still be useful to you though. Very best of luck.
https://anglophone-direct.com/ registering-british-car-in-france/

We did this last year and it did require some perseverance! You no longer need to go to the préfecture to re-register, if you go to your local mairie they will give you a form which lists all the different pieces of paper required. You then gather all of these and take them back to the mairie and they will calculate the charge to register the car in France. Once you have paid that to them they send the whole package off to Perpignan and the carte grise will be posted to you. Nb you will need to get the French equivalent of an MOT, called a Controle technique, which only needs to be done every 2 years.

Hi Kate & Sue,
Thank you both so much for the information. I didn't know where to start!
I can now get going on it, hope to be driving French reg car soon, well French soon!

Just to be contrary, it might be worth thinking about selling your RHD Irish car in Ireland, and buying a roughly equivalent LHD French-registered car here. Subject to anyone else’s experience, you will not find it easy to shift an RHD French-registered car either here or in Ireland when you eventually want to part company, and it is marginally preferable to have an LHD car here sooner rather than later. But since I don’t know anything about the car or your plans, this may all be nonsense.

Hi Martyn,
Thank you for your post. Yes, we had thought of that too but Irish car has very little mileage and it's a seven seater. Having looked at French car prices it's probably better for us to use this car in France until it dies! We would not get a great price for it in Ireland anyway.
Good to look at all options though and great to have other ideas to weigh up.
Thanks again!

Research in the UK, where the percentage of LHD vehicles is greater than you might think, shows that they have a better safety record than the "normal" RHD, This is because drivers tend to be more cautious. Another plus is that, when driving on your own, when you park you step straight on to the kerb. Which is why the US postal service uses RHD vans. RHD cars can be a bit of a pain when driven solo on the autoroutes. Because, unlike Japan, the French don't have lanes specifically dedicated to vehicles with the steering wheel on the "wrong" side. A telepeage card solves this problem. At a price.

Gus

[quote="Gusâ€￾] At a price.

Gus[/quote]

But quite a moderate one. There is usually one or other of the autoroute concessionaires which is giving the gizmos away, and they generally have a tariff which charges €1.50 a month or so (on top of the tolls), but only in the months you use it. In a truly competitive market, they would be paying you.

I agree with Martyn, the cost of Telepeage is trivial compared to the advantages. It always amazes me that so many people are prepared to queue up and faff around with coins or credit cards just to save a very small sum.

It is just a pity that there are so few car parks that accept them for payment, I believe there is only one in Perpignan.

As well as autoroutes, car parks are the other big nuisance with right hand drive cars.

Just wondering : did you manage it yet ? The re registering business ?

If you managed it I would be v interested to learn what steps you went through , in stages.

It's something I tried to do about ten years ago and, to cut a very long story short, ended up giving up on, after many hours and days traipsing hither and yon.

Does anyone even offer to do this for you, at a price ?

It does make me wonder : what exactly is the EU and its famous harmonization all about, if a car which has gone through all those hoops, safety and whatever, wise, in a member country, and which can be driven legally for up to six months of a year, cannot be re registered 'just like that' as Tommy Cooper would have said ?