Alcopa Auction
- Open to private buyers
Alcopa Auction bills itself as the leading operator of used-car auctions in France, and its structure is unusual for this market: eight physical salerooms — Beauvais, Rennes, Tours, Nancy, Lyon, Marseille, Paris Sud and Châtellerault — plus internet-only sales, with hundreds of vehicles running through them. The important detail for a private buyer is that Alcopa is one of the few large European vehicle operators that does not shut consumers out: registration explicitly offers a private or company account alongside a separate motor-trade account.
What you can buy
- Used passenger cars: the core stock, heavy on French volume brands — Renault, Peugeot, Citroën — alongside Audi and Volkswagen.
- Light commercial vehicles: vans and utilities from fleets and leasing returns.
- Non-running vehicles (hors-service): sold as such, for repair or dismantling.
- Equipment (matériel): machinery and plant offered alongside the vehicle sales.
- Classic cars: a separate collectors' stream.
How the bidding works
Three bidding routes run in parallel and the house documents each one: online during a sale, in the room at one of the salerooms, and by ceiling bid (enchère plafond), where you leave a maximum and the system bids for you up to it. Accounts come in two kinds — a private or company account, and a motor-trade professional account — and the site is published in a dozen languages including English, German, Polish, Romanian and Ukrainian, which tells you where its cross-border buyers come from.
What to check before you bid
Vehicles sell as they stand, and the hors-service category means exactly what it says: a non-runner is not a bargain runner. Plan the viewing, because the salerooms are spread from Beauvais to Marseille and the car you want may be five hundred kilometres from the sale you were watching. For a cross-border purchase, settle the registration paperwork question before bidding rather than after — a French vehicle leaving the country needs its certificate of transfer handled correctly, and that is easier to arrange in advance than to repair later.
