Leaving a car behind in Armenia or Georgia for good.

[mate]

I'm soon going on a trip and I'm planning to leave my car in Armenia.
The plan is to enter from Georgia and exit to Iran (by bus).
Is this even possible?
I know the passport stamp shows I entered with a car, but does it say I'm the owner/driver?

Any help is welcome.

[steven]

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5126

[Sven Nilson]

Dear all,

I am planning a road trip from Amsterdam to Yerevan or Tbilisi, planning on driving an old car and leaving it behind there. I came across a couple posts that said that a car will be stamped into your pasport in Turkey, Georgia and Armenia. I see two problems:

1- What if the car breaks down? Nothing unusual for an old car of course. Can I then get a paper of proof of the car being declared broken and fly out of these 3 countries?

2- What if the car brings be towards the caucasus? How can I then fly out? Can I bring it to a junkyard and get a proof on paper that lets me free to fly out of the coutry?
How do some of those barrel challenge or rally's do this?

Does anyone here have experience with this? And how does the car stamp in your pasport work? I read something of someone leaving the car in no mans land between the Georgian-Armenian border, but I hope there is a better way to do this.



Thanks a lot in advance!

Kind regards,
Sven

[steven]

It's a difficult topic, and definitely those rallies that you speak of have had issues with governments in the past that did not want them to ditch hundreds of junk cars into their countries anymore (notably the Mongol Rally).

Many people asked before, with few answers, and so far none for Georgia or Armenia. Have a look at the topic mentioned in the previous post above yours, and see if you can gather any info there. Otherwise, you will have to figure it out for yourself and take a chance.

Please do tell us what happened! At least a dozen people have asked a similar question, but I only remember one person telling here on the forum that they dumped their car in Tajikistan without problem. So more info is needed.

[Lovetheworld]

Well, how high is the import tax for those countries?
What you can do is buy a car that is liked over there, so that they can use it. There are many old cars over there because of the export from EU. You can be part of that trade. Rather than bringing them a shitty car nobody wants to have.
And it does not have to be a very valuable car, just something they can use.

I am not sure for this area, but if it would be the Stans, I would just buy an old RAV4 and sell it there. Even though you will probably not make any profit because of the import tax.

[Sven Nilson]

@Lovetheworld; well... we bought a baby blue Volvo 460 build in 1996, so I guess that wouldn't be such a popular option unfortunately;)
Import taxes are difficult to find, but for Georgia I found 4050GEL for our car (which is 2-3x as much as we paid for the car initially).

I contacted one of the organizations of one of such rallies to Armenia. He told me that most people drive their car back to their home country, but some leave it there and those havent had problems exiting the country. (Only one shouldn't exit the country again with a car, but we're not planning on that).

Point now is that we have found a couple of stories of people that couldn't exit the country by eg. plane because of entering by car, one leaving the vehicle in no mans land (https://globalgaz.com/threw-away-car-mans-land/)

We are now in doubt whether to go from Amsterdam-Istanbul-Ukraine-Amsterdam or continue with this adventure... I'll keep you guys posted! If anyone has more information, please let me know!!

[Lovetheworld]

Yeah I know that story. That is not how I would like to travel.
But then also stuff like the Mongol Rally can't leave their cars in Mongol anymore, because they don't want these old wrecks. So they end the Mongol Rally in Russia now, and put them back on the train to Europe.

I don't know Georgia and Armenia to well, if they can use such a car.

Perhaps best would be to bring it to a wrecker and have it registered as wrecked.

But since there is quite some export from Europe to that area, I would think you could ship it back on the empty trucks or trains. But I am afraid it will still be costly.