Tracing ownership history of an old French Car.

[Electric Turnip]

I understand the French equivalent of the DVLA is "Service Des Cartes Grises".
Do they hold information about the ownership history of a vehicle? The car is 1952 Citroen and was last registered in the Cantal dept but from what I gather French cars had to be re-registered​ if they moved to a different region.
I'm a non French speaker but if I know some records are held further investigation would certainly be worth while.
Thanks in advance.

[TooMany2cvs]

Electric Turnip said:

I understand the French equivalent of the DVLA is "Service Des Cartes Grises".
Do they hold information about the ownership history of a vehicle? The car is 1952 Citroen and was last registered in the Cantal dept but from what I gather French cars had to be re-registered? if they moved to a different region.
I'm a non French speaker but if I know some records are held further investigation would certainly be worth while.
Thanks in advance.

"Carte gris" literally just means "grey card" - it's what the equivalent of the V5 is called.

Until very recently, all registrations were dealt with departmentally - county councils. So you'd need to start with Cantal (15), and follow the changes back. If you get a change of department, then you're going to need to deal with that department. Since 2009, it's all been national, with the newer-style AB123CD format plates. Anything that's changed dept or owner since 2009 has been re-registered.

You can get an indication of when it was registered in a department from the letters on the plate.
http://plaque.free.fr/f_1970s.html

So 1234HY15 would have only first arrived in the department in 2008, while 1234ET15 would have been registered there early in 1972. Maybe it left and came back previously, maybe it didn't - but you know that it's been there ever since then. If the reg was 123L15, then it would have been in the dept from new. If it changed keeper within a dept, it kept the plate. If it moved outside, it was re-registered.

I have no idea what archives the depts keep - and it almost certainly varies from dept to dept. At least Cantal is relatively low-volume.

http://archives.cantal.fr/ is the dept's archive website. These are definitely the people to speak to.

BTW, TA/2cv/H?

[Electric Turnip]

TooMany2cvs said:

"Carte gris" literally just means "grey card" - it's what the equivalent of the V5 is called.

Until very recently, all registrations were dealt with departmentally - county councils. So you'd need to start with Cantal (15), and follow the changes back. If you get a change of department, then you're going to need to deal with that department. Since 2009, it's all been national, with the newer-style AB123CD format plates. Anything that's changed dept or owner since 2009 has been re-registered.

You can get an indication of when it was registered in a department from the letters on the plate.
http://plaque.free.fr/f_1970s.html

So 1234HY15 would have only first arrived in the department in 2008, while 1234ET15 would have been registered there early in 1972. Maybe it left and came back previously, maybe it didn't - but you know that it's been there ever since then. If the reg was 123L15, then it would have been in the dept from new. If it changed keeper within a dept, it kept the plate. If it moved outside, it was re-registered.

I have no idea what archives the depts keep - and it almost certainly varies from dept to dept. At least Cantal is relatively low-volume.

http://archives.cantal.fr/ is the dept's archive website. These are definitely the people to speak to.

BTW, TA/2cv/H?

Thanks for that. With a registration of 162 L 15 it looks like it was originally registered in Cantal in 1952. Excellent.

[TooMany2cvs]

Electric Turnip said:

With a registration of 162 L 15 it looks like it was originally registered in Cantal in 1952. Excellent.

Definitely!

1952 was 723K15 to 833P15, so fairly early in the year.