The manufacturer will not issue a COC: what now?

Why do manufacturers refuse?

Many refusals are not refusals at all but routing problems. Brands often handle COC requests through a national importer or a specific department, and a request sent to a dealership or a general enquiry address is simply never processed.

Genuine refusals usually concern the vehicle rather than the requester: the car was built for a market outside the EU, predates harmonised approval, or was substantially modified so that it no longer matches the approved type.

• Request sent to a channel that does not handle COCs, such as a dealership
• Vehicle originally built and approved for a non-EU market
• Vehicle older than the harmonised type-approval system
• Substantial modification to engine, body or lighting after approval
• Records that are archived, incomplete or lost after a brand changed ownership

What can still be done?

If the obstacle is administrative, the fix is to file through the correct channel with the correct VIN. This is the single most common reason an owner concludes that no COC exists when one does.

Where records are archived, patience often works: some manufacturers retrieve older files on request, on a longer timescale. Where a brand has changed hands, the successor company usually inherits the obligation and can be approached instead.

If a modification is the blocker, reverting it to the approved configuration can restore eligibility, since a COC certifies the vehicle as approved rather than as currently built.

When individual approval is the only route

For a vehicle that never held EU whole-vehicle type approval, no amount of correspondence will produce a certificate. The route is national individual approval: Einzelabnahme in Germany, réception à titre isolé in France, homologación individual in Spain.

That process inspects the vehicle against national requirements and frequently requires changes to lighting, mirrors, the speedometer or emissions equipment. It costs more than a COC and takes longer, but it is the recognised path for grey imports and pre-approval classics.

Coceu checks the VIN against the manufacturer's records before you pay, so a vehicle in this category is identified before an order is placed rather than after weeks of waiting.