Cost of registering a UK used car in France

[Prawo Jazdy]

I'm looking for an idiot check from someone who has done this before.

I moved to France recently with work and brought my 2008 V70 D5 with me. I'd like to keep it, so have looked at registering it recently. I live in the Rhone (69) department, and used an online calculator to work out how much it would cost me for a first registration. It came back with an eye-watering figure of EUR8500. After a bit of experimentation, it appears that the problem area is a CO2 output of 203g/km, as 8,000EUR is assigned to that. If I put in a value of 120g/km, I pay no CO2 tax.

I'm wondering if I'm suffering from trying to do this with only basic French knowledge and have missed something. It seems a bit mental that a fairly ordinary family car is considered so vile that it warrants a bill of more than the value of the car just to change the number plate. Obviously if that tax is correct then it'll be on the ferry back home and I'll buy something here, but I'm living in hope that I've made a mistake somewhere.

I'll visit the prefecture tomorrow but thought I'd check on here while they're closed.

Cheers!

Edited by Prawo Jazdy on Sunday 29th May 12:38

[Prawo Jazdy]

Rappel de vos informations

Démarche : Immatriculation d’un véhicule d’occasion (changement de titulaire du certificat)
Genre national (J.1) : Voiture particulière (VP)
Date de mise en circulation (B) : 29/12/2008
Puissance administrative nationale (P.6) : 12 CV
Energie (P.3) : Gazole (GO)
Réception communautaire ? : Oui
Taux d'émission de CO2 (V.7) : 203 g/km
Département : Rhône

Coût du certificat d'immatriculation
Y1 - Taxe régionale : 516,00 €
Y2 - Taxe formation professionnelle : 0,00 €
Y3 - Taxes sur les véhicules polluants : 6,00 €
Y4 - Taxe de gestion : 4,00 €
Sous-total arrondi : 526,00 €
Y5 - Redevance d'acheminement : 2,76 €
Y6 - Taxes à payer : 528,76 €

That seems a lot more in line with what I was expecting! Trunnie, that was the site I was using, but despite comprehending the explanation under the (?), I still managed to select the wrong option as Magic919 expected.

The downside is I now have to retreat from my mind palace and stop mentally spending money on interesting LHD replacements. Also that I now have to enter a world of paperwork and associated extra expenditure in a language I don't really understand...

Thanks very much for the replies everyone.

[Prawo Jazdy]

Pah, headlights? Volvo were way ahead on that one. 10 minutes in a service station car park after getting off the ferry and I had pulled the headlights out (no tools required), flicked the little levers across (no tools required) and reinstalled the units. Hey presto - LHD xenon headlights. How great is that! If only the rest of the assimilation process was dreamed up by Swedish engineers.

No special category on my V5 I'm afraid, but thanks for the thought.

I have enquired already to Volvo about the CoC - I think I was quoted £94. As for the CT - I read somewhere that if the MOT was less than six months old I could use that, but that sounds too good to be true.

Depending on how much all of this adds up to, plus the likely extra insurance cost of driving RHD in Europe, it might still be more sensible to buy something here.

Thanks again.