There is nobody better qualified to help you buy a car in France than somebody who has already sourced more than 100 vehicles on behalf of his clients and owns 18 cars and 7 motorbikes himself.
Meet Richard Hammond, founder of French Connections HCB, fully qualified car buff and our expert in tracking down a good buy.
Richard’s love of cars is what makes him so good at helping our clients. As a student, he was sponsored through university by Peugeot France and received his first company car at 18. After university, he was poached by Audi as the youngest finance manager in France. Within his first year, he was number 1 in finance sales country-wide. His love of cars stayed with him as he worked in different businesses around the world until he came home to France to set up French Connections HCB, a company dedicated to offering expert administrative help to people moving to France.
Richard’s passion and expertise, coupled with many requests for help from our clients, is the reason we set up our Car Purchasing Service. Not surprisingly, it’s extremely popular with people moving to France and wondering how to go about finding a reliable car.
There are quite a few things to consider.
For a start, there is a much lower turnover of second hand vehicles here than in the UK or USA. That’s partly because the French tend to hang onto their car longer, particularly in rural regions, often driving it into the ground rather than swapping it every few years for the latest model. Scarcity of used cars means that they can be more expensive than back home and you may need to travel further to find a good one, which is where Richard’s experience is invaluable. With a network of contacts across Europe, he has access to thousands of reliable sellers.
New cars in France are very competitively priced compared to the UK, particularly French brands which are very popular and heavily incentivised. But it’s good to have somebody on the inside to deal with all the administration, such as providing a residential address without which non-Europeans are not allowed to buy a vehicle in France. Once you’ve found a suitable car, you need to take out your own insurance policy to be able
to drive as legally the seller’s own insurance expires at midnight on the day that the sale is concluded. We help with that, too. Our insurance partner www.fabfrenchinsurance.com can provide you with a competitive quote online in just a few minutes.
And if you want to have the car delivered anywhere in France, our partners www.popvalet.com will drive it door to door, to wherever you are. So far, we’ve done everything from delivering a second hand car to an airport carpark as its new owners were disembarking, to purchasing a Porsche in Nice and carefully transporting it to the Waldorf Astoria in Versailles where happy clients were eagerly anticipating their first drive.
In the past two years, we have successfully found and purchased all sorts of vehicles on behalf our clients, ranging from a Peugeot 2008 run-around to a classic Jaguar XK150. If you’d like to talk to us about sourcing the perfect car for you, click here to book a free consultation with Richard at a time to suit you. Meanwhile, if you’re thinking about bringing your own car with you instead of buying one, our friendly admin team can handle the paperwork and registration from start to finish.
