Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

@Dammit - Have you considered simply buying a new bike every time you get to Morzine? You could probably do this for a few years before buying a van is the cheaper option.

Could you Courier your bikes out there? Then you could take the Porsche.

A full suspension 29er is around £8k

Not with us leaving the customs union, no.

With the added bonus of a Top Gear style race accross the continent vs the courier van to see who gets there first :)

From January it would need to have a carnet and be accompanied, and a bond paid to provide assurance that it was coming back (otherwise I’d have to pay duty and VAT on it in France, and potentially again when it comes back to the UK). Lots of things like this are about to get much more complex.

Cheers and @pullingteth that's what I suspected. The bloke in the dealer looked so disappointed when I kept saying no to it.

Should be picking this up later today.

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So 5 trips? :-D

How much faffing around are you prepared for? If you could store it cheaply in France (what does a French equivalent of a Big Yellow cost?) then van hire there is so much cheaper than the UK, or you could do the main part at speed and plonk the bike on the roof for the last leg.

Not sure that’s true unless you’re a pro mountain biker there for work.

Edit: I’ve been away from import/export for a few years but I have a friend who has ‘smuggled’ 20+ suitcases of designer clothes/jewellery/etc to/from shoots when the carnet office at a port/airport is shut. There are no duties due on personal belongings (with some caveats).

That's if you accompany the goods, if it's going with a courier then it's on you to prove that it's coming back again and that you're not selling it in the country it's turning up at.

Bear in mind that in the old days the border guard used to for e.g. write the make and model of your camera in your passport to ensure that if you came back without it you could be charged import and VAT. We may not get back to that - but given how keen our government seems to be to destroy our relationships with the whole of Europe, I'd not count on it.

Plumbers torch and an impact wrench did the job. Engine code cleared and hasn’t come back on yet.

Seems like victory to me.

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Is it not possible to hire high end 29er MTBs in Morzine?

Like going skiing?

Surely driving your Porsche to the mountains is a desirable part of the trip?

A glimpse into Dammit's future once he has purchased this van, it becomes his next project and he spends vast amounts of cash on it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05B4J0-YMD4

It'll be fine as long as you keep it above 10mph like a very low rent Speed...

I did that last year, I think the rental was €700 and I went through two bikes, the first one breaking on the third day.

Neither of the bikes were setup beyond air pressure and brake lever side, I imagine they would have not been too happy with me fitting tokens to the suspension, but who knows?

The tyres were fucked and I had to walk back down the mountain on my last day when the rear blew.

Maybe you just need a couple of solid locks so you can leave the Pace safely at morzine station?!??

I’d love to be able to get the train there

I would suggest leaving the MTB at Cycliste's garage in Vaud, but she's about to fill it full of car.

Managed to make a complete mess of getting new new sensor in, but it’s in, and I’m happy that I’ll be selling something that doesn’t have the engine light coming straight on - for this at least.

Was this the astra? Did you try vauxcenter?

Look. Y'all need to try and stop poking holes in Dammit's logic around the bike transport thing. It ain't happening.

Less whataboutery, howaboutery, haveyouthoughtaboutery, and whynotery and more sick van youtube links.

Aye on the Astra. I’m up north anyway. If I wasn’t in a hurry to sell I would have ordered and waited for a thread chaser before I fitted the new sensor but I need it sold in the next couple of weeks so I don’t have to keep insuring and taxing it.

It won’t survive until it needs the sensor replaced again so the threads being a mess isn’t much of a problem. It’s ideal for someone to run for cheap for a year or two, so no point treating it like it’s going to live forever.

But all vans are awful. Apart from old Commer PBs with powerful engine swaps.

@Dammit have you considered an old Commer PB with an unlikely engine swap?