Buying a Car in France
I wanted to tell my story of buying a car in France, sharing all my tips and secrets to yet more red tape in France, but alas, I didn’t get to the final stage to make my story complete.
My darling husband (DH) left a bunch of onions from grandpa’s farm in the backseat of our car and this morning after the 90+ degree temperatures, they had permeated the interior of our already shoddy “poubelle” car that we are trying to trade in. Add that to the fact that I am in my first trimester of pregnancy, so I have the ten times the sense of smell of a bloodhound dog and I vomit at the slightest repugnant odour. We were only 500 meters from our house and I jumped out of the car gagging and heaving, I tossed him the check book through the open passenger window (no air-conditioning) and said “get the silver one!”
I did get to do the beginning stages of car shopping, collecting each car’s brochures in my purse until it was laden, opening and slamming doors in a showroom for effect, testing out the backseat, pretending to steer (I don’t have my French license so I don’t have the right to drive here) and imagining how hard it will be to clean up ice cream spills in the back seat.
Our main objective was to get a diesel so that we can save on mileage and someday use bio-diesel when it becomes completely legal in France though already Jacques Chirac’s car runs on thirty percent bio-diesel. He should really take public transportation, living in Paris a car is more of a hindrance than a help. I remember getting dizzy circling the block 45 times at midnight looking for a place to park and when we did find one DH had to do a 34 point turn to get in. I explained this to one dealership as they inspected our trade-in that was scratched up, dented and missing a passenger side mirror as well as a stereo, “We lived in Paris for two years”. He nodded in understanding and then gasped in horror at our kilometres on the odometer, I offered, “We basically commuted from Toulouse;” He said he would give us 500 euros. The blue book was 2,000, but that we the best offer that we would get all week.
Now my poor husband, in the onion car, is going to buy our new car, which will not be available for ten days (standard waiting time) not like in America where I walked in, bargained for two hours and left driving off the lot in a brand new car. Yesterday, when I said the interior was “mouch” and could I get the other fabric with less GIANT grey dots she consulted her computer and said yes, in October. I succumbed and said, “Alrighty then, I’ll take the one with clown interior,” thinking about how the onion car might not make it home and the constant echo of the horrible screeching noise that it made when we went around the traffic circle before the dealership.
By the way, my husband is silent during all of this--just me in my bad French stumbling through car finagling. I tried to use my journalist privileges as well and she got out her handbook and promptly told me that this car is not on the list that I would have to buy the super expensive one to be able to use my 15 percent discount. In the end this one was a bargain on promotion for the Tour de France, and as long as I don’t have to physically do the Tour de France or ride in the onion car for much longer, I will be happy to wipe up juice spills, baby vomit and even dirt from grandpa’s vegetables off the clown interior of our new Skoda Fabia.
