Help! Car written off in France on first day of hols

[theAntsareMyFriends]

Having a holiday nightmare and any advice would be amazing.

Our car broke down on the way from the Eurotunnel. Black smoke and oil dripping out. We were on the motorway and got towed to the nearest town but the man told us the car was finished.

Lucky we are travelling with family who ferried us and all our stuff in their very small car to our holiday place so are in a safe place where we can stay for 2 weeks.

We now have to work out what to do to sort out or scrap our existing car, get a car we can use to enjoy the next 2 weeks (in a very rural location) and some way to get all 5 of us, plus luggage and bikes home at the end.

My DP is even considering getting a train to the UK, buying a car and coming back. If the current car is totally unfixable then this might be our only option.

We don't have European cover with my breakdown service (thought I did but turns out not) and we don't really want to spend lots of money towing my current car around to still find out it can't be fixed or it can be fixed but would take months.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I would hire a car and find a way to get that one home to be fixed, or find another garage in France for a second opinion. It’s worth checking since the car is only 6 years old and 50k miles.

Even if your husband does go back to the UK to buy a new car (not a bad idea since you need one anyway) I’d still try to get the old one home.

I can’t get my head around driving to France , especially with young children and not having European breakdown service in place

OP go on fb and type in the area you’re staying. There are often local groups set up by British people.
You will get a lot of local knowledge which may help with travel, garages etc.
eg I live in the Dordogne and am on 3 groups which cover the area where I live.

We had a very similar situation in France. Our car broke down in a major way, in France on day 2 of our holiday. We decided to get it fixed and the garage gave us an ancient courtesy car while it was fixed. It cost about the value of the car to repair and we had to extend our holiday and change the ferry back.

We said goodbye to our savings. 😭. Hope you get sorted.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing… but not necessarily helpful to OP now!

Out of interest @Velvian hiw come you went to France but didn’t get European break down cover?

One way car hire. It’s more expensive than normal car hire but would be a godsend for you. Usually you have to deliver it back to an airport or a large city in the UK.

So no one can ever say anything about what someone did or didn’t do because of “hindsight”?

What an absolute pain for you to deal with. I second getting your car looked at again while hiring a car for the holiday. Writing it off seems extreme.

one way car rental is likely more expensive than dh flying home and returning with a new car.

do you have the bikes on the trailer or a rack?
can family take them home?

tbh I would also look at train to calais and ferry crossing on foot.
also possibly sending the luggage so you can travel light. there are a few companies that do that.

Do you have breakdown cover in the U.K. OP? If you do, they might be able to give you a price and organise bringing your car back to the U.K., it won’t be cheap though.

The car can be fixed but of course depends if it economically viable, do the know what the fault is?

I didn’t say that. You can say what the fuck you like… But I’m pointing out that what you I said wasn’t helpful (and a bit shitty)

Thank you for permission

You’re welcome

Brill.

Still baffled though re my original post!

My car was written off in France and I hired a known name hire car (like Hertz or similar…can’t remember) and they let me return it UK side. This was well pre-Brexshit though (I think around 2002) so possibly times have changed.

^This

..the breakdown/recovery drivers tend to be a bit generic in their attitude and in any event "finished" can mean many things in Franglais, from catastrophic to just a bit stuffed.

Hopefully today the OP can get some more concrete info today from a garage, better still a main dealer of the brand involved.

Unfortunately things tend to move at a relatively glacial pace in many part of France at this time of year and it may take time to get the car fixed.

Hope you get better news today OP.

Get the car towed to a garage or truck if can't be towed, see if the owner of accommodation can help you with this and with language if required.

You need a mechanics opinion not the tow truck drivers one and a price for repair or a recon engine before you jump ahead with buying new cars one way hires (which our breakdown cover said was no longer possible)

Based on my experience, French garages are set up well to repair cars, we had a similar issue and the garage was cheaper than UK and did a very prompt repair (and it was a significant amount of work) despite the 2 hour lunch breaks!

Our Skoda was 7 years old and only had 47,000 on the clock. It blew up over a bridge and caught on fire. A piston had come loose and shot into the engine.

Newish cars can have serious problems too. We sold ours for £1000 as parts and scrap. It had always been serviced as recommended at a Skoda garage.

This sounds like a manufacturers defect

What did Skoda say?

It is impossible to get a car repaired in France in August. I used to work for an insurer and we had a firm that recovered accident damaged and broken down cars front all over Europe to the port of Dover for a fixed fee. It was honestly the only thing to do.

OP if you do hire a car in France, don't use one of the normal car hire companies, prices here have gone through the roof. The supermarkets offer much better value for money.

Also, could you say roughly which part of France you're in? Someone on MN might be localish, and know a good mechanic. Ours is fantastic and very cheap, but just to warn you that if you're away from the big centres, parts delivery can be slow, especially in August.

@tanstaafl

if DH comes back to uk to buy a used car, he needs to explain what he’s doing with it when he leaves the forecourt. If there’s anything slightly suss, give the dealer the opportunity to offer an alternative.

What's this now?

None of this makes sense, can you expand on that you are saying here?

I live in France. The garage in my village is completely shut for two weeks for their summer holidays. And the French equivalent to the MOT test centre next door is shut (just to give an idea of the typical situation outside of big tourist areas in August). See what the garage say today. Hopefully they will be able to give a better prognosis that the tow-away service.

I don't know if you have been able to rescue the bikes. You could try hiring a van from a local supermarket for a day or two to get the bikes (and possibly the bike rack) and be able to use them for your holiday.

It's super stressful, but do try and get some moments to relax and make the most of your holiday.

Just a heads up that to take a car abroad you need to have your name on the log book (v5) or a letter of permission from the owner. If your DH buys a new car it can take a while for the log book to be sent with new owner so he will need to get proof of permission from the previous owner just in case.