French Car Modification laws

RichyX

I seem to remember hearing something about it being illeagal for the French to make any engine modifications to their cars.

Can anyone confirm this?
I've been looking around for the last few days but Google isn't giving me any useful info.

astraboy

I believe it is true. I remember reading this in a car modification mag a few years back. You can modify the body all you want but tuning mods are illegal. That is why some French modders go crazy on the styling front. I believe the Swiss are the same, no engine mods allowed. Seems a bit silly really, restricting people to the factory output of their engine. If you want to fit an air-filter or throttle bodies it's your own business once its done right.

Henry Ford III

It's also your insurers business. Yawn.

ambro25

Nothing to do with insurance.

Everything to do with the "Service des Mines", which homologates every vehicle for use in France by type/model per manufacturer performance specs (understand: cylinders, displacement, air pressure, fuel/air ratio etc, etc. - to about forensic levels of anal-retentiveness), and Civil Law which forbids any modification that would result in distortion relative to that Service's metrics.

Whereby changing the manufacturer part (or exact-same-identical replacement part made to OEM specs) for a 'performance part' (e.g. K&N filter instead of Citroen/Renaul/Pug filter) which would result in some distortion of the metrics = big no-no.

In the same vein, external mods are fine so long as light characteristics as measured for the type/model remain unchanged ("as homologated"). So, stupid-big boot spoiler = good, but xenon aftermarket instead of std bulb OEM = bad. And so on...

layke

I was over there 5 months ago, there were loads of modded cars.

Crawling along under the speed cams but there were loads.

ambro25

layke wrote:

I was over there 5 months ago, there were loads of modded cars.

Of course there's loads. Doesn't mean there's anything modded under the bonnet or that the performance mods have been homologated per legal obligation to do so.

Situation is somewhat different than IE: no obligation to declare mods that I know of in IE, other than contractual to your insurance.

In FR, obliged by law to declare the mods to the State first (and passing the car through the regional Service des Mines, known as "DRIRE" - which is vastly different from an MOT/NCT affair) and then, if they are deemed legal, you're issued with a new Vehicle Reg Cert based on new vehicle metrics/stats. Anything to do with insurance and whatever else follows from there on.

So - undeclared performance mod/not legally tested (and removed if deemed illegal) and the cops can seize car on the spot, even if duly insured/mint/spotless/etc.

mick.fr

Yep that's basically it.
Thing to know about Swiss is that mods such as Nitro is legal. In France, no way. Even a sticker on your Window stating that you have Nitro is illegal. Cause in case of an accident, firemen won't touch your car.

Wossack

blanket 100hp limit on motorbikes too

Max_Damage

Wossack wrote: »

blanket 100hp limit on motorbikes too

Are you sure it is not kilowatts? After all, they are French...

E92

Well as there is such a thing as metric horsepower, I'd say hp is used. You will see on French car sits no mention of kW and (nerd cap on here:D)its a capital W and small k, because the Watt is the surname of someone, and all units named after someone have capital letters, and the prefix, like kilo, milli etc and units not named after people(metre, litre etc) have small letters, its always ch(hp for us, bhp(non metric horsepower aka brake horsepower) and hp(metric horsepower) are not exactly the same thing but the difference is so small that you can use either or andd it doesn't make a difference because they usually have the same or a very similar value) that is used.

After all some France car mags use kg m for torque rather than the more usual N m(Newton metres) for metric measurements in torque.

And when I was there last year, they still had prices in shops in French Francs:eek:!

bushy...

I'm sure they use horsepower , i've seen stuff like say 120ch.

zilog_jones

I thought they use CV?

ambro25

Metric hp is the norm for engine power (e.g. "110 chevaux" = 110 hp), and as rightly posted by E92, the difference between bhp and hp is inconsequential so use either/or interchangeably.

CV is an administrative horsepower rating (yes, throwing yet another one into the mix ), which was determined by the Service des Mines in tandem with the Ministère des Finances (=Revenue Comm./Tax Office) for road tax purposes: essentially, the more hp, the higher CV, the more road tax.

The Citroën 2CV was so called, not because it only developed 2 hp (it did more), but because its engine power was administratively rated as '2CV'. Same with the Renault 4CV.