This time it passed

Posted by Rosie

Once every two years, cars in France need a CT, a Contrôle Technique, (the equivalent of a British MOT) to check, on that day at least, that your car is roadworthy. The Renault passed a few weeks ago and then it was the turn of the Ranger. I was a little worried as I had been told that it could fail if you change the wheels and Simon had recently changed them. Would it pass? Would it fail?

It failed!!

However, it was not the wheels but the lights. The man at the CT garage told me that the front left light was an English one suitable for driving on the left-hand side of the road, not a French one.

"But it can't be," I said "we changed both lights when we brought the vehicle over here and it passed the last CT."
"It is definitely British - has the car been in an accident?" he asked.

Slowly it dawned on me what had happened. After Simon's visit to the ditch in the snow, the front light in question had needed replacing. I phoned up the garage where the work had been done and explained this. At first he couldn't understand what had happened either but after a phone call to his supplier the penny (cent?) dropped with him too. He had ordered the new light using the Ranger's VIN number which of course is English so the supplier had sent an English light. He was very embarrassed and ordered the new light straight away and swapped it last week free of charge. It still cost us 12€ for the Contre CT but at least we know that if work needs doing again on the Ranger lights again we must make sure French ones are ordered!