New plates for second-hand cars
Rhône – department 69 – proving most popular as car owners get to choose local code number for their plates
AS OF today, if you buy a second-hand car, move house, marry and change your name, you need a new-style registration document for your car and new-style number plates.
The new documentation – certificat d’immatriculation (informally called a carte grise) – and plates have been required on new cars since April 15.
The new number is needed on the occasion of any change to registration document details (owner, name etc) and it stays with the car for its lifetime, unlike the old ones which had to change if you moved to a different department due to the fact numbers ended with your department’s code.
The new plates still have a department code to one side of the main number, but it is for sentimental value only. You can put on the code of any department to which you feel an affinity.
Since the adoption of the new-style plates for new cars in April, the department of the Rhône (home to “gastronomy capital” Lyon) has been the most popular choice for the departmental code with more people choosing its number (69) than cars actually registered in that department.
Next most popular are Le Nord (59) and Bouches-du-Rhône (13).
On the other hand, people from Paris have been opting out of using its traditional 75 and instead choosing numbers showing regional links – birthplaces, places where they have a holiday home or just ones that appeal to them. New cars getting Paris number plates have dropped from 4.4% to 1.74% according to the country’s biggest plate maker Faab-Fabricauto.
If you buy a car with the old plates you need to apply to your prefecture for a registration document with a new number and then get a new plate installed by a garage.
The new plates are in the format two letters, three numbers, two letters. Costs are about €30 for two new plates, rising to about €50 including labour. Afterwards it will never be obligatory to change the plates, though renewals of cartes grises will still be needed, as before, when details change.
The habit of spotting where a car comes from by checking its plate will therefore no longer be so reliable.
