Morris Minor Owners Club

Hi

Found a lovely 1965 MM in France but the owner said it's SORNED & with an expired MOT (Nov. 2010). Keen to buy /drive it back to the UK for a new MOT in a few days? Have not owned a UK car for over 20 years!

What is the procedure to UNSORN the car?

Would anyone know a UK insurance company that would provide temporary insurance to get me from France back to a UK garage? (Dover)

Does anyone know of a MOT garage in Dover? (name + tel. no / email)

Many thanks

julian67@mail.com

From the French side of the channel this is a difficult question to answer - from what I understand if the present owner is permanently resident in France then the car should have been registered in France within a maximum of three months following its arrival over here.

Being a full-time resident over here this is what I had to do.

However many people, Brits and French alike, bring cars(of all ages) over to France and run around with them for years with UK plates on them. There are several examples of UK registered vehicles abandoned on car parks at French ferry ports - no doubt no tax disc and no MOT to enable them to get back.

Get in touch with the Amicale Morris Minor France - morrisminorfrance@neuf.fr -to see what they think.

Make a vehicle enquiry on the DVLA site - if on "export marker" a "Y" is indicated it means it's been registered as an export. How you get it re-registered in the UK I've no idea !!!!!

Good luck

Hmm to unsorn you need to get a tax disc and to do that these days you need to have an MOT and insurance in place. The insurance won't be a problem but the MOT would if you're in France.

Is there any chance you can get the Minor registered on French plates and French legals to get it out then MOT in UK? You'd need to weigh up cost of that versus trailering it from the ferry terminal.

You could trailer it from France to the UK. The sticky point would be the owner should have renewed the SORN every year. On presentation of the change of ownership of the V5, the current owner would get fined for not doing so. Therefore the owner may not be too keen to let you have it.

Personally I would try and register the change of ownership first, then look at getting it put on French plates by registering it as exported. Make it French legal, if this is where you intend to drive it.

get owner to do the owner change and wait for the documents(You need to have the reg doc and insurance with the car to drive in france) the mot regs in england don't stipulate any distance to take the car to a prebooked mot ,so you don't need to have one in dover you can take it anywhere any distance as long as its insured,you don;t need tax since the journey to a prebooked mot covers that.The only point I don't know if whether the same driving to a prebooked mot rule applies in france,I suspect it does because the same situation would arrise over there.Having driven through france more times than I can remember,my son and family have lived over there for 15 years,I have never been stopped by the frence police in an english reg car,helps if you have gb sticker and loads of luggage so you look like a tourist.I do know via my son that the frence police are clamping down on gb reg cars which are permanently in france,but they would need to see it in the area several times and note the number before they would show an interest in it.They could'nt possibly check every english car there are thousands of them in the summer, Since you would not have a frence address,I don't think that they would bother with the car,if they stopped you.Just make sure you don't fall foul of any traffic regs.Don't know where you could find out about the frence side and I suppose a safer bet would be to have the car trailored to the ferry,then drive it on from there.but then the extra cost would probably make it more viable to wait for a similar car in england.I don't think I would be botherd to buy a car over there it would have to be exceptional or very rare before I would show an interest in it.Good luck

Having read the postings that have been made after mine I would do the following :

Get the present owner to register it in France - regardless of what people say, this is not difficult.

- that way it will become legal for at present it is in an "illegal" situation as far as I can see over here. I won't like to have an accident over here under the present situation - French police/gendarmes would be on to you like a tonne of bricks especially as it does not have a current MOT. As said Kennet "les flics" as we call them here are clamping down vehicules from abroad.

Yes have it trailered to a channel port if you feel it is worth it.

Good luck.

Greetings friends!

Thank you all for your advice.

I may just have it imported into France + insured there, take a trip and then drive it back to re-import. Can't cost too much as it's 47 years old?

Sure I could take a chance and risk driving it to the ferry but hey, I don't think it's worth the worry.

I did ask a Duch friend who owns a garage if he could give me temporary insurance but is unable to.

Maybe if I had a UK garage friend he could rent me his garage plates for a day or so!! I'm 61 and an experienced driver with a clean UK licence!

If anyone has any other suggestions ( UK insurance cover or ?) to get cover for a day or two in order to drive it 204 miles to Calais, please email me. julian67@mail.com.

Thanks again to all.

Keep well.

julian67 wrote: If anyone has any other suggestions ( UK insurance cover or ?) to get cover for a day or two in order to drive it 204 miles to Calais, please email me. julian67@mail.com.

.

Perhaps your UK insurance allows you to drive other people's cars third party? Or you know someone with such insurance who would drive the car to Calais on their insurance?

The rule about driving 'other cars' only applies if the other car is insured in it's own right for it's owner - just not for other drivers. You CANNOT rely on it to drive an uninsured car! If you must get it back to the UK - then it will need to be trailered at least to the ferry. In theory - if you have insurance it can then be driven to a pre-booked MOT in UK. But if you intend to keep/drive the car in France anyway - you may as well legalise it there. Your local cops will soon realise the car is not 'touring'.......

Why not get it trailered to the port then drive onto ferry and to MOT/home in UK!
As long as the current owner has an up to date sorn,alls well.
When you take legal title to it,ie the V5c then you need to apply to resorn it in your name,there is allowable time to do this,so you wont get done if taking it for an MOT the day/week you buy it.

As the car hasn't been on the road since November 2010 I'd be very wary of driving it anywhere without it being throughly inspected first. Trailering it all the way home seems the most sensible option - you can then give it a thorough inspection to ensure that it is safe before attempting to drive it to the MOT.

you can drive an uninsured car on your insurance if covered even though there is no other insurance on the vehicle,but the instant you step out of it,it is now uninsured ,its only covered when you are actually driving it.soif you leave it on a road then now uninsured and both you and the owner would face prosecution.But in france the system is that the CAR is insured not the driver.If the vehicle is insured over there with the sticker in the windscreen anyone with a licence can drive it.that is as far as I know there may well be age and driving expirence restrictions.

Driving an unsafe car is a bad idea, regardless of the legal implications. You would be best advised to make sure it is properly safe before driving.

the mot regs in england don't stipulate any distance to take the car to a prebooked mot

The UK MOT regulations used to allow driving to an MOT station - however it's no longer possible to find that in writing (as far as I know!) therefore I wouldn't bank on it (any risk is up to you).
Driving away from an MOT station with a fail is likely to bring risk of prosecution for unsafe car as well as the other problems.

There's many options and laws that can apply and different interpretation's.
SORN is no problem whatsoever. If the previous owner has broken SORN rules, that is not your concern.

After passing MOT the car still can't be driven until it is taxed.
You should be able to tax the car at post office provided you have the green slip (new keeper part) from a valid V5C (4 page document, printed on multicolour A3 folded to A4). You will also need appropriate insurance and the MOT certificate.
An older V5 is no longer valid (double sided A4 document).

UK police have NPR systems in vehicles and at the side of roads - these read the reg automatically and check Tax, MOT and insurance database, with the intention to prosecute drivers who break the rules. I've known people get done when they drove to the Past Office to get a tax disc... I've also known of people getting pulled the same day they got a tax disc (here in Leamington town centre) as the police system was a few hours out of date.

Some of the transport options:

1) The fully legal way is to trailer it to UK (e.g. to get home and then get it up to standard) and also trailer it to and from MOT station.
Ferry company will charge for trailer, and a 2 way journey with trailer only one way may make ferry company ask why. One ferry company tried to charge me a few hundred quid extra as bringing a car to UK for repair was 'commercial' in their eyes and they tried commercial ferry rates on me instead of tourist rates.
[I declined their offer and just upgraded to add £60 trailer cost at the French ferry port]

2) Using an A-frame.
You can use an A-frame for vehicle recovery in UK - however the towed vehicle is then classed as an un-braked trailer and has to be within the allowed weight for your tow vehicle. You would need a trailer board a rear of towed vehicle for lights and reg plate from tow vehicle. It will also need a fog light (trailers more than 4 feet wide need a fog light).
Because this is allowed in UK law, it is allowed across Europe provided you have UK license and tow vehicle (as far as I have found out - EU law allows member state vehicle law to apply in most cases).
Unfortunately in UK, if the towed vehicle is untaxed, you can be prosecuted for 'failure to display' valid road tax. This is fairly unlikely and would need an officious person with good knowledge of the rules who could say that your trailer is actually a working car. If the towed vehicle has no id tags or reg plates and you were unaware of the vehicle ID or foreign registered, prosecution would be harder to pursue, but again don't bank on it. If the car is UK registered, they have a reasonable case for 'failure to display' for an untaxed car towed by an A-frame on UK roads.

3) Register in France.
Seems a lot of effort if you don't intend to keep the car in France, and you would also need to have a legitimate French residence and the time to get the car up to standard, inspected and paperwork done.

4) Drive From France to UK MOT station.
You're untaxed, no MOT and possibly unsafe. Your insurance company would be looking for ways to void you (if possible) in the event of a claim.

5) Trailer in France, drive to UK MOT station.
Same as #4 but should be legal for the French side.
e.g. get a vehicle transport company to deliver it to Ferry terminal.
If the vehicle is without driver, don't expect the Ferry/dock workers to take special care of it - they have been known to drag cars around as quick as they can. I'd be tempted to drive on/off the ferry in person, but only if the car is safe.

Many other options exist and also variations / combinations of options.

For the less scrupulous people, the AA will no longer recover an untaxed vehicle due to people using this as a away to deliver their newly purchased wreck back home!

Pilkie wrote:<snip>
When you take legal title to it,ie the V5c then ...

There are an awful lot of dubious information / opinions floating around this thread, most of which will never matter to either the OP (whose intentions behind this whole odd business aren't at all clear to me), or to anyone else, but I do think it's important to stress that the V5C is emphatically NOT a document of title. It even says so on it (under S5): "This document is not proof of ownership".

So, when you buy a car, the V5C helps you to establish that the person who has the car is or was the registered keeper, but if it's not his to sell, you will not, under normal circumstances become the owner if you "buy" it off him (Nemo dat quod non habet, as proper lawyers would put it). Hence the need for diligence, HPI checks, and, above all a bit of nous.

Kevin

The UK MOT regulations used to allow driving to an MOT station - however it's no longer possible to find that in writing (as far as I know!) therefore I wouldn't bank on it (any risk is up to you).

Don't quite follow you there ray,how else are you going to get it to the test without driving it. Its not the mot regs its the road traffic act that cover it,It clerly lists,unless the act has been revised since my former life in the police,that the only time you can drive ,an insured car ,on the road without tax or mot is going to a PREBOOKED mot,no mention of nearest,returning from a test centre with a fail certificate, or a pass without tax,If the tester has stated that the vehicle is unsafe to drive then it must be left at the centre to be repaired or trailored away,driving to a place where the vehicle is to be repaired after a failure ,or to a place where the vehicle is to be broken up.It alway amazed me that when the RTA was written that they did'nt stipulate a maximum distance to a test,suppose they just assumed that you would take it to a local centre,which 99.99% of people do.They certainly could'nt expect people to go to the nearest centre and I suppose setting a max would cause problems,since your usual garage may be outside of this distance if you moved house.So prebooked test just about covers it.

There's a mention of the rules about driving an unlicensed vehicles here where the DirectGov site says:

Driving an untaxed vehicle to an MOT test

You can drive your vehicle to and from a pre-arranged test at an MOT test station as long as you have adequate insurance cover.

This also applies to vehicles being driven to and from a pre-arranged test at:

a Vehicle Inspection Check (VIC) test station
an approved weight testing station and reduced pollution test station

As for distance - as I think kennatt would agree from his previous life, appearing to be taking the mickey out of a policeman who may be at the end of a long and horrible shift isn't always the cleverest thing to do: there are more ways of spoiling the rest of your day than reporting you for what may or may not be regarded by a court as legal.

Kevin

what!! a VINDICTIVE TRAFFIC COP,normally known in the force as black rats,never heard of such a beast