Tbh you will be lucky. Dunno about backstreet firms but AA RAC etc cost your recovery charge against the vehicle value, like an insurance policy, and if it breaks down and isn't worth the hassle they'll not bother and compensate you instead. I drive abroad every year for holidays, often twice, but either take our modern family motor which is easy and cheap to cover and probably wont break down or more often, an old wreck that if it breaks, I'll just get out and walk away. I've been over to the continent more times in older cars than newer ones, I look after my cars but couldn't always afford the newest. Sometimes they had issues when I set off (clutch slipping in one, dual-mass pulley split on another, blown turbo using oil and smoking) but you have to do what you have to do. Once our turbo started going an hour away from beziers where we were going on holiday but we just kept going, drove round for two weeks smoking the place out and then drove it all the way home. No breakdown cover that year Cus they wanted £200 and the car was only worth about 800. My mrs was panicking but I assured her by reminding her that our bikes were on the back! Once split an alternator pulley just outside Calais aswell - just crossed my fingers that it would get on the boat then I didn't care. Got all the way home aswell but the belt was only 3/4 the thickness when we pulled up at home 4 hours from Dover with the almost none existent pulley burying itself in the housing of the alternator and swarf everywhere. Another time we hit a pot hole so bad in our vectra it bent the rear trailing arm and we had to keep swapping all the other tyres onto the N/S rear as they were going bold. Thank god them days are over. Anyway, enough about me, and sorry I couldn't be more useful.
