UKC

I'm in font. My car is currently in a French garage with a possible dead gear box which will cost far more than the car is worth to fix. Has anyone experience of hiring a car in france and dropped off in the UK (ideally Sheffield)? There is 4 of us including 2 under 2s so we have a shed load of stuff with us too. 

Not very helpful, but I had a gearbox issue a few years ago here in Ariège. Garage wanted €1000 to investigate, so I drove it all the way to Sheffield in 3rd gear and had a recon gearbox fitted for £500.

Edit: I've since had gearbox failure on a French car and been quoted €4.5k to replace it, but when we pressed the garage about recon options it turned out they could do one for a little over €2k. Probably won't suggest it as an option unless you specifically ask. Recon box seems to be fine, by the way.

It may not be the gearbox, I'm no mechanic!. Its being towed to the Peugeot garage in Avon tomorrow morning so will find out more then. Just working out a plan for if its not economical to fix it.

This happened to me (gearbox) when I went over to pick my brother and all his worldly possessions up from Grenoble. On the way back, the gearbox packed in, got rescued off motorway, found a hotel, garage gave me the bad news next day, so I hired a car, drove it to UK (with all my brother's stuff), drove it back a few days later to pick up my car. Got back to the UK just in time to go to the Paris airshow with some friends (I didn't drive!).

So, I crossed the channel 6 times in about 7 days in 3 different cars. Right hand drive car in UK driving on left, then driving on right in France, then left hand drive hire car driving on right in France, then driving on left in UK, then back to France driving on right, pick up my left hand drive car, drive on right, then drive on left back in UK. Then sit in back seat whilst someone else drives me back to France.

Most awkward was driving French car in UK.

Amongst all that I spent about 60 hours in a row awake.

It wasn't really worth it, car was cr*p but I loved it and couldn't leave it out there.

Good times

Same happened to me and I had to leave my car in font and go home. The AA put me in touch with a company in Calais that gave me a new car that I delivered to Enterprise for them (the closest one to my house). It has 60 miles on the clock and was on british plates. They paid for it but the company I got it from a whole business model was delivering new cars into the UK this way. So check that out for sure. 

For anyone that was interested, it just needed a replacement battery and a new alternator in the end. All in all it has cost me 245euros to be towed twice (once out the highstreet then on Monday to the garage), 790euros to fix it plus the cost of a hire car for 3 days while they did it but I can't remember how much that was. I'm now en route south so I hope they've done a good job