driftingaway

Hi all,

I live in Abu Dhabi, and I'm currently renting a car.

I want to buy a car, and if I go used there's a much bigger choice in Dubai.

But I can't work out the exact logistics of buying one from Dubai if I want to take it to Abu Dhabi.

If I see a car I like that's being privately sold and decide I want it, would I have to get the seller to drive me all the way to Abu Dhabi in order to transfer it to me in AD?

Any help appreciated!

JD

flood2

Basically..

Meet seller at RTA with money. Hand him the money. He de-registers it. You get paperwork. You put it on a low loader and pay a driver around 400-500AED to take it to AD. Unload at AD test centre. You go to AD traffic dept, test, register and drive away.

Will take almost a full day if you start at RTA Al Barsha at 8:30AM

You cannot drive car you have bought from Dubai to AD unless on a trailer

driftingaway

Thanks. Shame about the low loader...

I presume I can get RTA to test before I pay the money?

Brains1983

But the other way round is a piece of piss, you can de-register the AD plate at Al Barsha and stick it on Dubai plates at the same place. Sold one a couple of months ago like that, and transferring the wifes motor from AD plates to Dubai ones tomorrow!

Brains1983

yes

driftingaway

Great. Is the test particularly thorough? ie. can I trust it as much as I would the AA guy I'd hire to check over a car in the UK? And if not, is it worth taking the car to a main dealer to check over?

norsk

No, you cannot trust the RTA test as proof that the car is sound. The car could be completely *****ed and they would still pass it as long as the colour is as per registration, the brakes kind of work, the exhaust gases are within the approved parameters and there are no obvious modifications to the car.

Take the car to a proper garage (not a dealer necessarily) for a check.

driftingaway

Nice one, thanks.

I presume checking for a look of panic on the face of the seller when I suggest a trip to a garage might be enough...!

norsk

I would seriously recommend just taking it for a check. It should cost you max 500 dirhams and can potentially save you thousands. The owner may not know that the car is 5 minutes away from a major gearbox failure. Of course if you are spending 20K it can be discussed but if you are parting with let's say 100K it's a given. Also if the car is cheap due to being old I would be very careful..

driftingaway

Yeah, I will heed your advice. I'm looking at Wranglers 2012+ (with the new engine) so ideally still under warranty etc, but you're right, a garage would hopefully see if they've spent 2-3 years jumping off 100m dunes and then given it a wax and polish.

Millhouse

A 2012+ wrangler will almost certainly spent the last 2 years on the dunes.

If you are getting the balance of the warranty, make sure you buy a Western Motors one and not an Al Futtaim one. Western are much more flexible on fixing stuff under warranty when it is debatable if it is off-roading damage.

Good luck.

driftingaway

Thanks - great info on the warranty. I dropped by WM yesterday and had a chat about what would count as warranty mods and so on, but they don't have any approved used Wranglers in at the moment. Their factory mod packages are also kind of pricey compared to taking to somewhere like Ramy4x4.

I might still end up buying new, if I can't find anything good that's only a year or two old. Don't mind if it's been 'sensibly' duned... if such a thing exists! I'm hoping someone is selling one they bought because they thought it'd be a cool on-road car and now their a**e hurts...

Millhouse

If you are new to offroading the stock 2012 will see you fine for quite a while. No need to rush doing the mods - apart from getting rid of that God damn ugly front bumper.

busybee2

check the colour of the sand underneath then it will show if its been off road proper or just off road parking!

archie159

According to this post from August this year, you can do it without the low-loader as follows:

Just wanted to update everyone on how I went about this process as it is much more simple and straightforward than RTA will say (with the exception of the call centre lady to whom I am most grateful).

Apparently export plates from Dubai to Abu Dhabi are not available. This is the only Emirate for which it is the case, which is, coupled with the RTA call centre lady that alerted me to the procedure being as follows. This, however, will only work if your car is still registered and has a valid insurance. Otherwise you cannot drive it on the road (legally!).

Drive your car to Abu Dhabi traffic department on Al Muroor road. Process your documents (passport/ Emirates ID/ driving license and visa, registration card and old number plates).
They issue an export transfer certificate at the cost of 10 aed. At this point you need to sumbit the technical test certificate with same date (or within 3 days), new insurance policy and buyer's documents (same as above, plus according to their website an Employment certificate, but nobody asked us to see it), return the old number plates and they will issue new registration card and new number plates.
Total cost under 400 aed if you test your car in Abu Dhabi.

We only hit 2 snags. We did the test in the same complex and had to queue in the sun for over 1 hour waiting for our turn. It might be more expensive in Dubai, but well worth the extra cost. There is a special Ladies' section in Abu Dhabi where you can do everything but it was closed with no explanation, so you need to just queue with everyone else and there is no fast track. It wasn't fun. It took us over 1 hour just to do this.

The other thing was, since we didnt know there was a special station in the complex to remove the old number plates before the procedure starts, and we didnt have a screwdriver, this created a small glitch, but we got it sorted in the end.

Three hours later and with a single trip to Abu Dhabi, without any trucks or export plates or anything being involved, we successfully transferred ownership and registration in a different Emirate.

You need to get lucky that you get a nice helpful customer service agent too. We had a lovely lady who initiated the processing. Unfortunately by the time we'd got the car tested she had left for the day so we had to queue again and re explain everything to the new lady. It took a bit of insisting, and time, but we managed to get her to complete all the paperwork.
Just don;t take no for an answer. The Abu Dhabi website clearly explains this process and it is straightforward.


Et voila! Hopefully this info will help people save both time and money.

Selling a Dubai registered car to an Abu Dhabi resident??