When I bought my Peugeot 203 on the 22th of July 2017, fortunately it came with a small piece of the history. The most interesting piece of history is the “certificate d’immatriculation” which translates into “registration certificate”.
This piece of document shows two historical facts.
- The car was first registered on 29 January 1959
- It was registered on name of “Mme Veuve” (Mrs. Widow) Marie Louise on 3rd of April 1967
I can off course never tell for 100% sure, but I can imagine her husband owned the 203 before she became a widow and might potentially have been the first owner. In the mean time you will now understand why I named the car Marie Louise, to honour it’s last French owner.
Another interesting fact is that at the time the car was in department 15 (Cantal) which is in the region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and most likely in the small village of Ally and otherwise Chavergne.
Which lays 530km south of Paris and 310km east from Lyon to give an impression on where it is.
So you can imagine me wanting to travel towards that direction one of these days to see if I can find relatives of Marie Louise who can perhaps tell me more about her.
The second important piece of history is the international car insurance card (“Carte internationale d’assurance automobile”) valid from 12 June 1980 till 11 June 1981 which shows Mrs. Marie Louise was still the owner 14 years later.
I think it is feasible to say that she was the last French owner since on exactly 11th of June 1981 the car was presented to the Dutch inspector of the Department of Road Transport (RDW) for weighing. The name and address are showing on this document, so I know he lived in Uden in the Dutch province of Noord-Brabant. This paper shows the car came with tools and a jack and no spare tire was present
In the Netherlands at the time the car was in Uden, you had to pay road tax for your car. Since in wintertime classic car owners in the Netherlands in general do not drive (due to the fact salt is sprinkled on the roads when it starts freezing, which is asking for rapid corrosion) …..
people deregister in order to avoid paying road tax these months.
From 22-12-1997 till 05-01-2012 I have yearly proof of deregistration by the second Dutch owner, also living in Uden. I can only assume he bought it in 1996/1997. So this is a place I also need to visit one of these days , since it was driving in this village from 1982 till 2012 it must been or still is a known car.
I also have 3 of the re-registration certificates. While the first Dutch registration certificate (kentekenbewijs) still shows a build year of 1959 the one of august 2014 shows 30-06-1959 all off a sudden. This contradicts the 29th of January 1959 form the French documentation
On august 12th 2012 it was sold to the third Dutch owner. This was a collector and when I bought it from him possessed approximately 12 classic cars stored in a big shed. Since room was getting limited he needs to sell a car in order to replace it by a new one. So lucky me being able to buy the car in 2017
At the time of buying the mileage showed 35.598km. What is interesting to tell is that I retrieved a maintenance log by Peugeauto in Ravenstein who recognized the car when I visited the garage in Ravenstein the first time. The owner Edward told me about the maintenance he had performed on 5th of April 2013 and 5th of June of 2013. Mileage registered back then was 34258. So the car only drove little over 1300 kilometers the 4 years after.
Maintenance performed in 2013 (selection of most important)
• Replacement of: ignition, air filter, main break cylinder, sparkplugs and fuel pipe in tank
• Cleaning: Carburetor and brake cylinders.
• Adjusting: Valves, Carburetor, dynamo and regulator (giving 18volt) , wheel balancing, exhaust and muffler placement, bonnet closure
• Placing: New batteries, circuit breaker and new dashboard lighting,
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