UKC

Planning to drive my old car to south of France/Spain and back for the 8th time after 185k miles. Should be OK, but the backup plan has always been: if it breaks beyond cheap repair I will leave it there at a wreckers and find another way home/continue holiday.

However, what is the correct legal procedure for this?

After searching the web, I THINK it involves sending the bit of the v5c form that says "Permanent Export" back to the DVLA, and ensuring that I get a proper proof of its disposal/dismantling from the authorized wrecker. That's it!?

Has anyone ever done this, or know if this is the correct procedure?

Cheers
Bruce

In reply to BruceM:

Yep, This happened to me on the way to the south of France fortunately i had taken out breakdown cover, it sounds like from reading your post that you don't have that, i would suggest that you get some, green flag did me a good deal for
£ 60.00 although that was maybe four years or so ago, anyway to cut a long story short the turbo went and the garage wanted 1500 euros to fix it and the car probably wasn't worth more than about £ 700 so green flag gave me the option of getting it back home, or a hire car for the duration of the holiday i went for the latter and scrapped the car, not sure now what paperwork i got from if any but I'm guessing i didn't need proof as such as green flag would back up any questions from the DVLA but i did send of the relevant part of the registration document off to them.

In reply to BruceM:

Get your breakdown cover on moneysavingexpert. Depending on how long you need it prices start from around £26. I sound like I'm on commission - I'm not!

In reply to riff156:

That's very unusual - most breakdown companies will offer recovery of the car upto the value of the car. For example, if the car is work £1000 but it would cost them more than that to recover it to the UK, they won't. I had this out at length with the AA and they confirmed. They suggested a typical recovery price from the alps would be in the order of £3-4k. It happened to a friend a few years ago when a cambelt failed. It wasn't recovered and he had to scrap it.

I got lucky on my last trip though - took out AA top of the range cover (only just bought the cheap car second hand so it was a bit of an unknown). Turned out it didn't break down after all. I got a letter through the post a few weeks after I got back saying that the AA apologised for not sending out a paper copy of Ts&Cs and saying I could cancel for free. The policy had already expired, but for the sake of a phone call I asked them. Hats off to them, full refund! I'll use the AA again.

In reply to BruceM:

In 2005 my Polo came down to SW France and never made it back. In that year I simply had to declare that it was offroad/scrapped and so my signature was enough.

In reply to LeeWood:

You can SORN your car online now, super handy

In reply to BruceM:

Thanks everyone. That’s all very reassuring.

I do have breakdown insurance, within Europe, because it is included free with every annual service (Ford Assist). Although the servicing prices probably compensate for that “free” service.

But that is interesting that the breakdown company may help out if my worst case situation happens. I guess I would definitely try them first. They probably would be involved initially anyway during a potential breakdown.

And then the SORN thing seems an easier option too. I’ll look into that a bit more, as a simple online declaration seems the easiest way out.

Thanks
Bruce