In case anyone is interested, I have a UK registered 1998 BMW 3 series Tourer, 100,000 miles, good condition that I have on UK plates, on UK insurance, with MOT up to May 10 that I am looking to dispose of. I can't really be bothered to drive it back to the UK to sell it, so I'd accept a reasonable offer.

Been there, done that. Even brought a European Parliament petition against the UK (DVLA) and lost. But I beat the DVLA fine (they changed their Web site to reflect one of the issues).

My daughter drove her UK-registered VW Golf through France and Italy and left it in my garage in Valais. When the tax disc expired I filed a SORN online and it was accepted. I later learned that's illegal: one mustn't file a SORN but an export notification. The next year I sent an email, had a long exchange of emails, and then my daughter was fined for nonpayment of tax, etc.

In the course of resolving the issues I researched the law and ran it through the DVLA help line more than once:

-- Under EU law an untaxed vehicle cannot be driven in any EU state. Switzerland is not in the EU (you didn't need me to tell you that) but France is, so theoretically to get a new MOT you have to put the car on a flatbed or else have a licensed transit driver bring it to Calais. (In the UK, dealer plates can't be legally put on a car the dealer has no financial interest in, but as far as I know that is not the rule in France where, as in many cases, a "transporter" can move any car, relying on his own insurance.)

-- Once the car is in Dover, so long as you have a pre-arranged MOT -- even if that's in Scotland -- you can drive there and if the car passes you take the MOT certificate, the insurance certificate, and the logbook or renewal sheet to the Post Office and get a new tax disc. Then you reclaim your car.

-- In France an untaxed car cannot legally be scrapped. Anyway, I had a blowout on a French motorway in 1992 and the car was totalled and my insurance company had to ship it to the UK for disposal. Only to find out that since it was diplomatic, it wasn't taxed. They told me not to worry, so I haven't worried.

-- In Switzerland an untaxed car may be scrapped. I was (illegally, since while insured it wasn't taxed) drove the Golf to a French supermarket. On the way back to St-Gingolph the clutch gave out. Fortunately Customs didn't stop me, neither did two traffic lights. I managed to get the car to the VW dealer in Vouvry and after thinking about it for a couple of weeks they told me that in Switzerland it would cost several times its value to fix. So I gave it to them. (In the UK it might have been worth fixing.)

-- The proper way to handle the car would have been to get Customs plates in France or Switzerland, and then drive it to England. There it might be driven with foreign customs plates or one could get "Q" plates (you buy them from the AA in Dover). Whether a car can be driven legally, and for how long, depends on your residence status in the UK, France or Switzerland. Apparently a nonresident (someone who has, say, a vacation place) can keep an untaxed, foreign car there (on private property) almost indefinitely if used only a limited amount of time each year.

The above is from memory, from having researched the UK and Swiss official Web sites and from long discussions with DVLA. It was my having saved all the emails that got the fine waived; now their Web site clearly says no emails are valid for SORN or Export notification. The next time I disposed of a car I sent a fax, and that worked perfectly well. (A SORN can be made online, but not via email, you have to use their fill-in Web page.)

Hope that's of use to someone.