French Porsche Independent Garages

Guest · Jul 6, 2004

I've been trying to find a list of French Porsche independents, the equivalent of the likes of Autofarm or Ray Northway. I take my 1981 911SC, LHD, a Swiss car that first came to the UK in 2000 when I bought it, to France and Italy 2-3 times a year and very recently (June 1) experienced the ignominy of wiper linkage failure on the Autoroute in Burgundy. This is a serious problem in heavy rain! I won't go into all of the details but basically AA 5 star told the garage that came out to us to take the car to a Porsche garage. Problem: nearest one was about 200km away, in Mulhouse - the next nearest about 200km again, in Lyon. (Garage owner did not want to do that, so in the end we limped the car back to the Chunnel in about 8 stages with rain breaks every half an hour). Finally fixed by Autofarm - but even that was far from simple as a part had to come from Germany.
I suspect that if we had actually gone to Mulhouse we would have had another problem: a lack of parts or even expertise for a 911SC. I cannot believe that within a 200km radius of central Burgundy there is no garage capable of fixing a 911. However it is true that France has never been as good a market for Porsche as the UK. In addition, French garage hourly rates are still much lower than in the UK, so perhaps there is less demand for independents - I just don't know.
After this setback, and in the hope of preparing for future problems, I have set myself the task of compiling a list of all the "independents" in France, to go with the OPC list. If anybody knows anywhere to find such a list (I've also asked the French Porsche Club, but so far no response); or knows the names/addressess, tel. nos etc, of good French independent garages, I'd be very grateful and would also publish the results on this Forum.

PS. This is not my 911, but Ickx in a 935-77 at Silverstone, taken when I used to cover the occasional race for Motoring News and Autosport

Mark_Bennett · Jul 6, 2004

If you pick up a hendfull of the French magazines on Porsche (there's about 4 different ones!) the next time you are over there, you should find a pile of adverts for independants throughout (similarly to Porsche Post and 911 & Porsche World do in the UK)

bones · Jul 6, 2004

Hi Peter, I think one thing to bear in mind with older cars like the SC is that many parts are no longer stocked by the main Porsche parts supplier for a particular country including France and the UK? Whilst recently doing a considerable amount of work on my SC engine , there were quite a few times when parts had to be ordered from Germany - usually arrived quickly though - and that is the case at the moment with my fried electronic speedo. In that case though an independent repairer of clocks refuses to sell the correct circuitboard to me despite my giving them custom on more than a few occassions in the past. Their turn over is two weeks if I'm lucky so it looks like I'll have to buy the resistors etc from Maplin and get the soldering iron out and in future I'll send any broken clocks elsewhere or figure out how to fix them myself.
Perhaps it would be prudent to make a 'kit' of essential spares to take on Continental hops
or perhaps find out what the stocking policy is of Porsche networks regarding older cars. If you tell Porsche GB your predicament and that you are a PCGB member I would have thought they could tell you what they try and keep on the shelves.

Guest · Jul 6, 2004

Hi Peter

There is a great list here which covers most of the French independents.

Personally I would recommend Almeras Freres in Montpellier, I would almost keep taking it back there for servicing just to be in France in the car, nothing could be finer IMO. Their website is here.

Cheers

John