Here’s a tip for driving in France. If you can afford it, sell your old car before you come here, buy a French car. It will save you hassle. Unfortunately French cars are not cheap and second-hand prices are positively silly.
So if you are bringing your existing vehicle and re-registering it in France, be prepared for some fun. That’s fun if you like shuffling endless paperwork and going backwards and forwards several times…
There are several websites that claim to give you advice. Do a search and you’ll find plenty – English and French. I see no point in repeating that information – especially as it will probably have changed by the time you read this. What they try to give you is facts, not what’s likely to actually happen in real life 
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Trouble is, the majority of these sites don’t seem to be kept up to date and you’ll read some info about registering your foreign car in France which is, despite people’s best intentions, garbage. I’m not saying they’re all wrong, but how do you know?
The answer? You need to go to your local council offices (préfecture or sous-préfecture) and ask. If you can’t speak French yet you can either be brave and give it a go, or find someone who speaks French (and English, of course) to take with you. This way you’ll be told the correct paperwork to get rather than trusting some website, turning up at the Prefecture to get your new car registration (immatriculation) and finding you are missing form 1234b, part C, in triplicate, signed by your mother and a member of the Greek Orthodox Church who has lived in Corsica for two years and is left handed.
OK, I exaggerate a bit, but not a lot…
Some people come to France with their car and run it for months and months without re-registering. Dodgy. Legally I believe you have three months (although some sites say any six months in any 12 month period – however that’s supposed to work). It took us nearly five to sort all the paperwork so we had a good excuse, but pushing your luck could land you with a fine – and motoring fines in France can be heavy.
Don’t forget there are fees to pay. There will probably be costs of between £50 and £150 to get the relevant paperwork from your car manufacturer. Added to that at the time we re-registered our car were French inspection fees (around 60 Euros) and then a fee for getting the new number plates (plaques d’immatriculation – usually just plaques) which depended on the horsepower of the vehicle. In our case another couple of hundred Euros.
So if your old vehicle is only worth around £500 or £600 I would seriously consider getting rid of it before coming to France because over here – with people driving on the right – it has absolutely no second-hand value at all.
To be fair, it’s a bit of a hassle but not actually difficult to re-register your foreign car in France. If you’re coming here to live you’ll have to learn to be patient with French bureaucracy anyway!
You will certainly need the French version of an MOT – which you can get before your new plates. The place to go is called a Control Techniques and it’s something you only need get done once every two years.
Finally you’ll get your new paperwork – Carte Grise. Then you can trundle off into the sunset… unless you are us. A month after finally getting it sorted out the damn car blew its engine – that’ll be an extra 1500 Euros then. Aaaarrrgggghh!
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