Shipping a car from Dubai to Europe?
 

Hi all,

I am looking to ship a car from Dubai to Europe. Does EK have an agreement with any of the shipping in Dubai for preferential rates?

Alterativley is there a company anyone would reccomand?

Thanks

Going rate by air is around 10-15K USD, one-way.

It's a ~4,000 mile drive, which might be a cheaper alternative...

True PDR but in addition to the visa hassles etc for transiting KSA there are a few other tricky countries en route to negotiate. Syria/Iraq for example.

KSA to Alexandria then car ferry to, say Venice?

Seems legit, save on the mileage clock as much as you can !

Ship it in a container. Use the 13,000usd you save from air freight and rent a car for 2 months.

Try these folks:ICB - International Car Bridge :: Home

Sell it for as much as you can. And buy a new in your new country.
Loads of crap dealing with customs etc.etc.....

Get the car ferry to Bandar Abbas, Iran and drive through. You'll be surprised at how friendly the Iranians are. Avoid KSA like the plague

Sea Container to Marseilles is around 2000 Euros inclusive of customs etc, get a reliable company to do it.
Driving back used to be a nice option, you have to drive through KSA in under 24hrs as they won't give you a visa for longer whilst driving through Iran is stunning and the Iranians are very hospitable, your problems start after getting out of Iran...

Why avoid KSA? Is it dangerous
 

My husband wants to buy a car in Dubai and the easiest way is, or at least seems to be to drive from Saudi to Jordan then into Israel and then a ferry to Greece. What do you think?

put it a container and wait for it at the other end..

Kilrathi - I'm sure you'll have thought of this, but just in case.....

A few years ago I looked at shipping a car from DXB to Europe, and it turned out that the car in its GCC spec did not meet European requirements. The cost of making it compliant was large enough to make the plan a non-starter. If your vehicle is an Audi or BMW, I know you can get good advice on this topic from the manufacturers - not sure about other brands.

7B

Kilrathi, best advice out of the forgoing was to sell it in DBX. Strange how we get attached to vehicles but you must ask yourself , is it really worth it ? I tried to get my beloved Jeep Wrangler into Cyprus from Bahrain. It turned into a 7 year battle going as far as European courts. I lost. It cost thousands and the vehicle was confiscated. If you MUST, shared container is best way but Lordy,Lordy ; get ready for being fleeced once you pick it up.

Examples for country specific items in germany that I gleaned from a german VW forum:
- particle filters are required
- automatic emergency call required (in the future)
- front assist required
- The anti theft alert has to stop any sound after one minute

At one time, even the quality/thickness of steel differed for GCC spec versus many other regions. Take care..... and drive safely.

Sometimes they don't even differ, but the necessary evidence of compliance differs. The only thing different might be the all important compliance plate that confirms the vehicle meets the rules in a certain jurisdiction. Without that, and particularly if the manufacturer won't provide documentation confirming what elements of the destination jurisdiction's requirements that the vehicle meets or doesn't meet, you're faced with the nightmare of demonstrating compliance.

And then, when you come to sell the car, who wants to buy a grey import??

Good luck trying to enter Israel after passing through KSA...

mazel tov.

As a Turk id like emphasize on this. Eastern Turkey would be a risky journey. However you can avoid the rough eastern parts of Turkey by driving from Iran to Armenia to Georgia, and from Batumi Georgia following the black sea coastline entering north eastern Turkey would be your best option. Black Sea coast is a beautiful scenic drive.

ahhhh yes L eaves U Cold A nd S tranded....

Hmmm... not as "mission impossible" as many have indicated.

Over the two decades my family were resident in GCC countries, various members shipped 4 cars and 3 motorcycles back to Europe. The last one went in 2016. Do your homework and its certainly plausible. The shipping is the least of your worries - a vehicle can either go by container or on a Ro-Ro. Neither is terribly expensive.

The biggest headache / question mark is around registering it locally in the EU. You will need at very least a CoC from the manufacturer. Make sure you know the process and understand the requirements before you put your car on the boat...

Personally I would only do it if the car is in some way special or you are very emotionally attached to it. From a purely economic perspective it doesn't make much sense.

I think you can get approvals to temporary import into some EU Countries

Googling "import car into EU" brings up lots of options and info but it's clear it's a painful , and possibly very expensive, process

I understand from some people who brought cars back from the USA that the hassle and time cost was enormous ................

Try this. Highly recommended. Used by a Ferrari owner.
Seabrook Cargo Services LLC

Asmawi Warehouse Complex,

26B Street, Ras Al Khor 1, Dubai- UAE

Tel : +971 4 – 346 7655

Mob: +971- 54 792 4637

Web: www.seabrookfandh.com

how much does it cost?
could you tell me an average price?

It would help if we knew what kind of car it is and why it has to be this one. For example, sometimes it can be cheaper to source a decent condition already road compliant grey import in the UK. (Someone else went through the whole hassle at either end and suffered the stresses in between, and lost money on the whole deal anyway. Spoken with personal experience.)

The problem is that you won't know what the car has been through

Not true, at least not in my case. I imported my BMW from the US to Spain five years ago. A fair bit of paper work, yes, insurmountable, no. Worth it? Definitely as I knew my car had been well kept and it could have ended up being much more costly buying an unknown car with all kinds of hidden issues. Just make sure to use a reputable freight forwarder and verify that it conforms with the local laws, which will be determined by an inspector (at least in Spain) who checks the car. In my case I had to install headlight washers as by law any car in Europe with Xenon bulbs must have it.

As I had owned the car for more than six months before the import the taxes were not bad at all, and had work not interfered with getting it registered within two months of it reaching Spanish shore they would have been basically zero. I used RORO for shipping as in my case a separate container wasn’t worth the cost, it only cost me $1400 including insurance from Houston to Barcelona. Shipping was supposed to take four weeks, but it actually showed up in two weeks.

FlyTCI......I think it does depend where the car comes from. I assume US car safety standards are equally as high as EU ones. The difficulty lies where certain car markets do not comply with EU standards.

You can do it all yourself. I have several times, at either end, the whole bang shoot, from purchase to transporting to shipping to paperwork to landing to paying taxes to collecting to road legalization and V5.

But I would still advise you to find the right people in the UK to help you once it's landed. Easier.
The wrong garage will say, "You'll need to get the original factory parts of this, this and this (brakes, coilovers, bulbs etc.) This will have to come off, so will that. Forget it mate. You're stuffed."
The right garage will say ,"No problem. Leave it to us."
And there are all kinds in between.

And hence my advice to prior to shipping it ensure that it will conform with the laws of the country of destination, if not fully, at least with only some minor modifications like mine. It can be something as simple as adding a rear fog light, which in addition to the headlight washers, is not mandatory in the US but it is in Europe.

My car has coilovers and the chief inspector at the facility doing my initial annual inspection had to certify that they met the standards. Unfortunately he never entered that into the system so twice in following inspections that became an issue, which was eventually sorted when they made a permanent record in the car’s file that it was legal.

There are essentially two sets of vehicle standards in the "first world"; the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and almost identical Canadian equivalent (FMVSS & CMVSS), and the European standards which are generally equivalent to Japan, Australia, etc. Australia tends to adopt European standards, but often with a time lag.

The traps with American vehicles into Europe vary from potentially unfixable but usually not an issue such as crash test performance, to seemingly trivial but still a hassle such as headlight standards. Seek advice before committing!