Lease car documents to drive in France

[Sammy2618]

Hi
Has anyone had any experience of obtaining the documents to take a lease car to Europe. This is our first trip to France and I now realize we need a certificate of Hire as we don't have the V5 document. We go on the 6th August.
I have tried phoning the lease company over the weekend but they only open Monday to Friday. Will be on the phone tomorrow morning at 8:30 to hopefully see if they can provide these this week. I should have given them more notice! Does anyone know if they would be able to sort in time for us to go? I can't tell the children we're not going.

I know this doesn't really help you, but I've taken a car to France about 3 times a year for the last 20 years, and I have never had to produce any documentation for it.
(Probably will have to now!)

Gendarmes doing stops (rare, happens, random) are usually mostly interested in drivers and licences/IDs/ possibly car contents but are entitled to check ownership, but of course there’s a practical limit to how deep they can dig when dealing with a car on foreign plates.

They tend to be (or are where we are) fairly pragmatic so I think (and this is just a IMHO) you’d probably be OK if you have at least some documentation of some sort on you that ties you to the car, even if it isn’t a V5 or even a specific certificate.

I certainly wouldn’t cancel simply because you don’t have the documents you mention.

Hi I work for a leasing company and we usually send out within 24/48hrs, it's a standard request so just call on Monday and I'm sure they can sort it out easily for you.

Ps as PP's suggest, in the 25 years I've been driving to and from France to visit family regularly, I have never had to produce any documents.

Frequent driver to France never been checked for car documents. I remember I had to buy a breathalyser kit in case stopped. Never used must be well out of date now.

But you should get hi-vis jackets, and they should be accessible from inside the car. i.e. not in the boot.
It is a requirement but makes sense, for safety, if you do breakdown.

Hi viz, triangle etc yep..FWIW the breathalyzer requirement lasted about 5 minutes and no longer applies