I am no Sahara veteran, having only made one trip down the Atlantic Route in the summer of 2000. Knowing at work that Mauritania wasn't Mauritius, however, has got me the brief to write an article about Mauritania -- and I thought I would write about the overland traffic entering the country from the north, and specifically about the trade in second-hand cars coming from Europe.

So... what I am after at the moment is up-to-date information about the whole affair of selling motors in Mauritania (we kept hold of ours until Dakar), any funny tales of good/bad sales etc etc, you can imagine the score.

Is there a dedicated trade, or is it mostly people covering the costs of a holiday? What kind of money is involved? What are the practicalities?

Any help would be hugely appreciated.
Thanks all,
Tim

Check out

http://www.sahara-overland.com/Sfiles/desdel.htm

CS

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Morocco Overland 4 pre-order for Xmas • Trans Morocco Trail

Hi Tim,

Last december I went down to Senegal together with a friend to sell a Renault 21 Nevada. Was a great trip despite the fact that our radiator blew in the desert. We got towed for nearly 300 km, which at times was a horrific experience (especially being dragged 10 meters behind a Land Rover in the dark along the beach with the tide still too high for my taste is no fun at all!). The border crossings don’t get any better either, three years ago I took the Atlantic route with my Yam. Tenere and at that time I got away with paying very little at the Mori/Senegal border (the dam) this time it seemed that also at this border crossing you have to pay if you like it or not. We sold the car in St Louis (we got around 1400 euros for the 14 year old car) the selling in St Louis was surrounded with a lot of hassles. Don’t know if we just had the wrong buyer or that the business is supposed to go likes this. Despite these (minor) problems it was a great trip, two more cars are waiting to go the same direction hopefully September of this year we are going to make the next trip. We didn’t make an enormous profit on the car but it was enough to have a cheap and very interesting holiday.

Hope this info is of any use,
Vincent

You could write a book on all the trade and all the stories good and bad and all the lunatics who have ever tried it. If you want more help you can contact me at k207d@hotmail.com

Kevin

As Kevin said, many stories can be told, this trade has been going on for many years, when I flipped the many pages of the guest book at the camping in Dahkla there are thousands of travellers passing through.

I don't know what you consider is up-to-date info, I did the trip in -99 (when we also met Kevin with his 207D).

We brought a Peugeot 504 saloon - petrol, sold it in St Louis. For me the sale was fairly straight forward.

Read all knowledge I gathered in Chris Scott's Sahara book, where I contributed with one page.

You could also e-mail me with any specific questions. jansunds(a)yahoo.se