France has a dedicated registration for classic vehicles, the carte grise de collection. It is not required to ride an old bike, but it gives the vehicle an official status as collection heritage. If you are buying a bike that already has one, or thinking of getting one, these are the rules.
The three conditions
According to the FFVE, the national federation of historic vehicles, a vehicle can get a collection registration when it meets all three of these:
- it was built or first registered at least thirty years ago,
- its particular type is no longer produced,
- it is preserved in a historically correct way and maintained in its original state.
The documents
The application is made on the ANTS website, the French online service for vehicle registrations. The file contains:
- the previous registration certificate or proof of ownership,
- a dating attestation from the manufacturer or from the FFVE,
- proof of identity, proof of address that is less than six months old, and an insurance certificate.
The FFVE also lists proof of a technical inspection for vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes that were first registered after 1 January 1960. Ask the FFVE how this applies to a motorcycle before you rely on it. The dating attestation is the document that takes time, so start with it. Without it the application cannot go ahead.
The ANTS procedure
You create an account on the ANTS site, open the vehicle registration application, choose the section for the documents required for a collection vehicle and upload your files. The same procedure handles a change of owner, the conversion of a normal registration to a collection registration and a first collection registration.
What changes in daily use
A collection registration does not allow professional use, apart from one exception for chauffeur-driven passenger cars that does not matter for a motorcycle. The registration number moves to the SIV format. For vehicles that were originally approved in France, the change can be reversed, so you can return to a normal registration later.
Buying a bike in France
Ask whether the bike already has a collection registration or a normal one, and which dating attestation is on file. A collection registration is a good sign about the history, since someone has already had to prove the age and originality, but check the frame number against the papers yourself. If you plan to register the bike in another country, do not assume the French collection status carries over: read importing a motorcycle within the EU.
