How to Ship Your Car Abroad for an International Road Trip

Let our most adventurous Detourist Ben Coombs be your guide to getting your car to the start of an epic adventure.

There’s a whole world out there. But when it comes to taking your car on a road trip, geography can make a lot of it seem off limits, because if you drive for long enough, sooner or later, you’re going to run out of land. Sure, for us in the UK, it’s no big challenge to hop across the Channel to mainland Europe. But what if you want to go further? A combination of oceans and politics may throw up a barrier to many destinations, but it’s certainly not an insurmountable one. If your road trip dreams are based in the Americas, Africa, Asia or Australasia, for instance, you can certainly make them happen. And you don’t have to settle for a hire car, either.

Shipping your car overseas is a real option for taking your road tripping to the next level, but it can seem like an intimidating option on first acquaintance, what with all the paperwork, routing options and customs procedures. But as with most things, the better you understand it, the easier it seems. So now, I’m going to run through the different options for shipping your car abroad, what you’ll need to consider when planning your trip, and how a typical shipping procedure will pan out.

Picking a port

The first questions you’ll need to answer are, where do I want to travel to, and what method best suits my needs?

If you’re considering shipping your car, then you probably already have a good idea of where you’d like to take your trip. And the good news is, there’s probably a reasonably convenient port somewhere vaguely nearby, which is used to receiving personal imports. For instance, if North America is your goal, either New York or Halifax will work for you. South America? Montevideo in Uruguay, or Cartagena in Colombia are your best bets. Sub-Saharan Africa is well covered by Cape Town and Mombasa in Kenya, while Australia and New Zealand also have plenty of options. In short, there’s likely to be a port which you can easily ship to from Europe – just bear in mind that not all options are equal. For instance, I recently shipped my classic Mini to South America for a road trip, via Montevideo. Shipping into Brazil, a few hours up the coast, would have been ill-advised due to the complexity of the customs procedures there, while shipping into Chile would have proved impossible, as right hand drive cars can’t arrive by sea there (though strangely, entering overland is fine). So, when planning your trip, it pays to stick to the more well-trodden shipping routes, to minimise any potential issues. However, this is something which a shipping service company will be able to advise you on – more on them later.

Picking a ship

Once you’ve decided where you’d like to ship your car (and thinking ahead, where you’ll be shipping it back from), you’ll need to decide whether to ship by container, or via a roll-on, roll-off (Ro-Ro) vessel. Each of these has its plusses and minuses. Containers are a secure, well protected way to move your car, and if you happen to be shipping two vehicles, a 40ft container can be ideal. However, they are generally more expensive than Ro-Ro shipping, and the procedures can be more complex. Ro-Ro’s chief advantage is its lower cost, and greater convenience – your car will be driven onto the vessel, and then driven off again at the destination. This simplicity is offset by the fact that generally, the car must be empty when shipped, meaning that things like tools and expedition equipment have to travel separately, due to the risk of them being stolen while the car is in transit. Additionally, there’s the small fact that you’ll have to entrust a dock worker to drive your car on and off the vessel, though in my experience, this is almost never a cause of problems.

Picking an agent

Once you’ve decided on which method of shipping will work best for you, you’ll be wanting to look at booking passage for your car. This should generally be done at least two to three months before you want to ship, to ensure space will still be available. And to do it, your best bet will be to contact a company specialising in providing shipping services.  There are various companies which fit this bill, but as a starter for ten, a UK-based one which I’ve used in the past is called International Vehicle Shipping Services Ltd.  A shipping company like this will be able to advise you of potential voyages which might work for you, along with their timetables (which is important – bear in mind that door to door, shipping from the UK to North America can take 12-14 days, and to South America, a month), and will look after all the dealings with the shipping line, and the shipping agents who will look after the vehicle at the departure and arrival ports. In short, their job is to use their contacts and experience to make your life as easy as possible.

Once the vehicle is booked on a passage to some far flung shore, your next job will be to deliver it to the port, a few days before the vessel arrives. You’ll then need to book a flight to the car’s ultimate destination, to meet it when it arrives there. 

I did it and so can you

I’ll now run through a few examples of when I’ve done this in the past, to give you an idea of what to expect.

Firstly, in 2017, I shipped my TVR Chimaera from the UK to North America, as part of a big overland trip. As the budget was tight, after looking at the options I elected for Ro-Ro shipping, which came in at around £1,200 all-in. I dropped the car off at the Port of Southampton, where it was inspected by the dock workers for any damage, in much the same way as is done with hire cars. It was then left locked in a compound with several hundred new Range Rovers, which were also awaiting shipping. A few days later, it was loaded onto the ship and two weeks later, I flew to New York and collected it, after it had taken a few days to clear customs. The car’s passage was booked about six weeks before departure, and the paperwork for it to enter the US on a temporary, 180 day permit, needed to be completed at least four weeks before arrival.

In 2023, I shipped a Range Rover and a Classic Mini to Montevideo, Uruguay. Again, I started speaking to a company providing shipping services a few months before my planned departure date, and this time decided to book a 40ft container, for both of the cars. Shortly before the container ship arrived in Felixstowe, I delivered the cars to the container terminal, where I witnessed them being loaded into the container, lashed down, and watched the container being sealed. Just over a month later, in Uruguay, the container was unsealed in my presence, and I collected them. On the Uruguayan side, I was aided in the process by a shipping agent who understood the local procedures, guiding me through the paperwork and assisting at the port. The total cost for shipping the two vehicles was just under £5,000, or £2,500 per car.

To briefly give a few more examples, in 2013 I shipped a Corvette home from Singapore, which took 35 days and cost £2,500, while in 2017, shipping the TVR around the Darien Gap from Panama to Colombia took two weeks in a container shared with another overlanding car, and a motorbike, and cost £800. 

The moral of all these case studies being, it’s not a cheap way to travel, and it’s not particularly quick either, but if driving your own car on Route 66 in America, or down through Patagonia to the end of the world is on your bucket list, then there’s no reason why you can’t make it happen. 

So, why not give some thought to going further afield for your next road trip?  Because thanks to the humble cargo ship, the world is your oyster.

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