Hi Folks,
Local to me here in the UK, a garage is advertising a LHD car with French plates. Basically a cheap runabout. I may soon need a LHD vehicle in France and thought that driving one over might be a good idea, especially as this car is quite a bit cheaper than similar make/model/year/mileage advertised in France.
Are there any negatives about buying a LHD car in the UK to take to France? Is the fact that it already has French plates a help or a hindrance?
Anything else I should ask about if/when I go to see it? Are there specific documents that I need?
And if you have personally been through this process, I would be most grateful if you could tell me what steps I need to take and/or things I need to do to get it legal to take to France to leave it there for use it when I am there?
Thanks in advance
Unless you have the carte grise, signed by the last owner (plus the associated code de cession), you will not be able to register it in France.
As @_Brian says, if you’re not extremely careful then you could end up with a car that is impossible to register. Take everything the dealer says with a huge pinch of salt and ensure the documentation is perfect.
Out of absolutely nothing more than idle curiosity: Were the vehicle imported and registered in the UK (no idea how feasible/difficult/expensive that process would be) would it then be possible to re-export it to France?
In any case, given that the UK is no longer in the EU, would you not have to pay VAT to import it to France so even if you did have the documentation up to scratch would you actually save any money?
As I understand it you’d need to pay TVA and duty on a car bought in the UK then taken to France whatever its nationality…
Isn’t it that if you can demonstrate that you’ve owned the car over six months then there’s no vat to pay?
The fact it’s still carrying french registration plates suggests it’s not been exported from France into the UK. If it still has valid french registration, would that not mean that there would be no TVA and duty to pay - obviously subject to the correct french process of change of owner being carried out if it were purchased.
My understanding is that the purchase taking place in the UK would mean that it would be treated as a UK to EU export…
Completely endorse @_Brian 's view that the previous owner’s carte grise and certificat de cession (and code) are essential.
We bought a French plated 2nd hand car freshly imported into the UK for us by a UK specialist LHD dealer*. No duty/vat arose in either the UK or France, (when we moved to France with the car a few months later). I’m not sure I understand why that was the case, but I wasn’t complaining!
We were a bit startled when the car arrived in the UK, as we assumed, being unfamiliar with the system,that the dealer would have registered the carte grise in our names, rather than being given the previous owner’s. We were nervous that this meant we wouldn’t be able to register it in France. All was well when the dealer explained the sequence of events that would lead, a few weeks later, to our own carte grise arriving in France.
I personally would not have gone through with this purchase/import to UK/export to France process unless I was completely satisfied the dealer had the means/know how to register the car in our names in France/had access to ANTS/could demonstrate familiarity with the system.
*We used my-lhd.co.uk
I agree with @george1 and @_Brian in that a signed Carte Grise plus certificat de cession are what the dealer needs to supply. With those, you should be able to register yourself in France as the new owner.
I don’t know about whether you would have to pay TVA or not because I bought my LHD car in the UK before Brexit kicked in fully. However, the thing that I found trickiest was getting insurance cover for it. Not impossible by any means but you can’t insure a French-registered car with a UK insurer. As a Brit, you can get French insurance BUT you’ll need to jump through a few hoops to get your no claims discount translated into the (very different) French system. All do-able but the experts in doing this tend to charge more - at least in my experience they did!
That was before I came across @Fabien of course, so if you do decide this car is a go-er, he should be able to advice you on the insurance front.
Good luck!
In the bad old days… we needed to provide the Bill/Invoice from the Dealer who was selling the car to us… 
Certainly best to ensure that you do have such a fully-detailed document… 
as well as the other docs listed above.
Thanks everyone for your advice. Much appreciated 