Well I'm happy to say that Dennis and I are the proud owners of a 1999, 78 horsepower, Citron Saxo. With a top speed of 120km/hr, its a far cry from the BMW back at home. Dennis was only home for four days so we were under the wire to find a car within the short time frame. We spent one day looking and 3 days of paper work. I'm sure I'm not the first to say that buying a car in France is no easy feet. Once we had decided on our chosen machine, the car then had to go through a “control technique” which is basically a series of tests run on the car to make sure everythign is functioning properly. The day we bought the car we had to make sure we had the 5 million pieces of paper work needed from us and our landlord – his passport and a bunch of other documents verifying that we are living in France. We spent the next day getting all the necessary papers for the insurance. The following day the car was ready to be picked up and guess what, more paperwork to be filled out, mostly by the Renault dealership we bought it from. We finally got out of there on the last day with our very own car at around 1:30pm – we had gotten there at 10:30am, just to give you an idea. When I asked the salesman why there was so much administrative paperwork to be done, he just shrugged his shoulders and smiled and said “C'est la France”. I guess making everything complicated is just how things are done here in this lovely country.
We probably could have found a bit better car for the same price if we would have bought privately, however, the advantages of buying from a dealership seemed to outweigh the other options. To begin with, there are lots of problems with fraud and stolen cars here in France, and secondly there is a boatload of paperwork that needs to accompany the car and be in exact order. If you were to get stopped by the police at one of there many road checks and something was missing or suspicious you would have a real and not so much fun problem on you hands. The dealership we bought from guaranteed the car for 3 months and the clutch for 6 months, so if anything should go wrong within that time frame the dealership will pay for the repairs. Also, they make sure that you have all the correct paperwork for the car – a good incentive nonetheless. Paying a litlle extra to avoid potential headachs from buying privately is definitely worth it. Regardless, this thing only has to last us for 8 more months. Fingers crossed.
