Expat Brits to cash in on French recession-busting initiatives

Esplanade minis
Originally uploaded by Tampen

Exporting a British car to France, administrative hassles aside, is not an idea that fills me with much excitement. If I told you that I have trodden this fairly expensive path, and ended up standing on the hard shoulder of an Italian motorway, with a fat leathery man in a boiler suit repeating 'kaputti, kaputti', as white smoke poured out of the exhaust of my ageing Ford Fiesta, then you're starting to understand where I'm coming from. Way back then, in 2004, I had to cough up about £250 to have the car taken to the 'demolizione'. The French call it 'la casse'.

In these times of economic hardship, the Europeans (championed by the Germans I believe) are catching on to the idea that charging someone to trash their car and then leaving them to catch the bus home is not a particularly effective way to get them spending again. OK, let's be absolutely accurate - get them borrowing again, which is, it seems, the only way out of the mire. Through debt. But wasn't that how we got into the mess in the first place? Anyway, that's another tale for a rainy day.

So welcome to the 'Prime à la casse' - where if your car is over 10 years old, you get a cool thousand euros off the purchase of a new one, providing the new one is ecologically sound. So if you have exported a British car, now have French plates, and fancy a new set of wheels, it would appear that the time is nigh for a bargain.

Then again, with the exchange rate being what it is, isn't it cheaper to use your euros to buy another British car? Has anyone dared to take the plunge à la casse? The conditions are worth a read if you do: http://www.service-public.fr/actualites/001093.html