The Three-Year Journey of a Triumph Bonneville

Introduction

Our client Nick Allan is finally able to ride his Triumph Bonneville around the Luberon, after an administrative saga that took three years to resolve. His story is worth reading for anyone bringing a vehicle to France, because it shows how a registration file can stall, and that a refusal from ANTS (the Agence Nationale des Titres Sécurisés, the national agency that issues registration documents) is not necessarily the end of the road.

“I first got in touch with Richard at French Connections HCB in 2022 over this motorbike that I’d bought. It was a Triumph Bonneville. I bought it when I was visiting the UK in 2019 and a Polish couple drove it over to France for me in the back of their van. That was obviously before Brexit, so there was no problem with that.”

A bike on British plates

Nick could not have foreseen the frustration that lay ahead.

“I wasn’t too hung up about getting it registered in France because you could get insurance quite easily and you could drive around on British plates quite easily too. Then Brexit happened and everything changed. The UK insurance company said, ‘OK we’ll insure you for a little bit longer, but you’re going to have to get this bike registered and insured in France.’”

Once the UK left the EU in 2020, Nick set about registering the bike himself, and spent about a year getting nowhere.

“I started the registration process. I really didn’t think it was going to be difficult because I’d been living in France for years and had pretty good French, but I spent about a year trying to get the bike registered and I was getting nowhere, absolutely nowhere. I was tearing my hair out; I just needed some help…”

Finding someone who had done it before

“I googled and I found Richard at French Connections HCB. I got in touch with them and they said, yep, we’ve done this before. It turned out that Richard is really into cars; he knows all about them and has his own collection. He said, Oh yes, I’ve got a Triumph Bonneville as well.”

Reassured, Nick handed the file over.

“Usually in France you upload the documentation and generally it happens relatively easily, but in my case the British conformity certificate kept on being rejected by ANTS. I sent Richard all the documents, including a British conformity certificate from Triumph, thinking ‘this is easy!’, but Richard came back to me and said no, I had to have a French conformity certificate. That was the bit that was missing.”

Why the certificate mattered

A certificate of conformity is the manufacturer’s statement that a specific vehicle matches a type approved for the European market. It is the document that lets ANTS register an imported vehicle without inspecting it: ANTS accepts the European certificate itself, or an identification attestation issued by the manufacturer’s French representative. When neither can be produced, the fallback is individual approval by the regional DREAL, known as a réception à titre isolé, which is slower and costs more. In Nick’s case the certificate issued in Britain was not accepted, and the answer was to obtain one through Triumph’s French network, which meant a physical inspection of the bike. That led to another problem.

“By then the bike wasn’t insured so although there was a Triumph dealership not too far away in Avignon, I couldn’t ride the bike there with no insurance. I rented a van from Super U, wheeled the bike into the back, strapped it down and tootled off. Triumph gave the bike the once over while I sat there for a couple of hours drinking coffee in Avignon, but then things really slowed down.”

Weeks of chasing

With no news from Triumph and still no French certificate, Nick was glad to have someone else doing the chasing.

“French Connections were brilliant. They were in constant touch with Triumph in Avignon and it just took weeks and weeks and weeks but they didn’t give up. I was ringing Triumph and getting palmed off, but French Connections just held their feet to the fire and kept chasing them until finally, in April 2022, they got the French conformity certificate we needed to resubmit to ANTS.”

At that point Nick breathed a sigh of relief, but his joy was short-lived.

“At first I was delighted. I thought, we’re there now, absolutely there, but still we heard nothing. Then in September 2022, ANTS rejected the French conformity certificate.”

The refusal, and the lesson

“They said it wasn’t correct because the bike was originally fabricated in Thailand so it wasn’t properly British and wasn’t properly French. I was really fed up, so I rang Richard who said, ‘We will contest their refusal.’ I never knew that you could contest. I had always thought that once they refused, that was it. In true French fashion there was nobody at ANTS you could ring up and talk to or explain. But Richard went back to them and contested it. For me, that was the missing bit of information, that you could actually go back and contest these things.”

This is the part of Nick’s story we most want people to take away. An ANTS refusal is a decision on the file as submitted, not a final verdict on the vehicle. It can be contested, with the supporting evidence set out properly, and that is what turned this one around.

“Once Richard told me we could contest and took it over from there, it took another three or four months but I finally got the provisional carte grise in February 2023. Once I had that, I could get my little French number plate, I could get French insurance, and then finally I could ride the bike. It felt fantastic!”

Back on the road in the Luberon

With the bike legally registered and insured, Nick is making up for lost time.

“I just love pootling around the Luberon where we live, going to little cafes on my old English motorbike. At one stage I thought I was going to have to put it in the garage and forget about it, maybe use it one day if we ever ended up back in the UK. If it wasn’t for Richard, that would have been the result. Nobody else other than French Connections HCB had a solution and knew how to work the system.”

Nick appreciated the service he received from the whole team.

“What I liked about them was they were very, very communicative. My emails didn’t just disappear into a black hole, they always responded, and we were in touch often and over a long period. Every month or so I would send a little message saying, ‘Any news?’ and they would chase again. Even though it was frustrating and slow, I got the feeling that a grown-up had gripped the problem and was doing their utmost to resolve it.”

What has changed since

Since 15 April 2024, motorbikes, scooters and other two- and three-wheelers have needed a contrôle technique (France’s periodic roadworthiness inspection): first five years after registration, then every three years, with older machines phased in by year of registration through 2026, so a bike like Nick’s is now inspected like a car. UK-registered vehicles brought to France since 1 January 2021 also go through the full non-EU import route, with customs clearance and the 846A certificate before ANTS will register them. Our guide to importing your car to France sets out the current process.

Get help with your own vehicle

French Connections HCB has handled vehicle registrations from all over the world, including vintage and awkward cases like this one, as part of our administrative support. If a vehicle is part of your move, or a file is already stuck, book a consultation and we will look at what is missing and how to get it moving. And if you live in the Luberon, keep an eye out for Nick and his fully French-registered Triumph Bonneville.