Since I don’t have anybody to drive my car back to Europe and because it is virtually impossible to sell an older car in Mongolia (there is an import tax of around 8000 USD to prevent old junk flooding the country), I decided to buy a cheap car which wouldn’t be a big loss even if I had to scrap it.

What could be more appropriate for that purpose than a Budapest-Bamako veteran, moreover a right hand drive car not worth much in continental Europe? I remembered that one of the medical teams of the 2022 rally was driving a Mitsubishi Delica Space Gear, a 4WD van with plenty of space built on the drivetrain of the Pajero. You can see the car on this picture which I took at the Mauritanian border a year ago:

Luckily I found the owner who turned out to have prepared it for another Africa trip already, but then decided to take a different car. So what I found was a car with brand new tires, refurbished suspension, freshly changed oils, and an extra tank doubling the original capacity to 150 liters. Such a car, with British license plates, expired MOT, unpaid taxes, and no insurance, is almost unsellable in Europe after Brexit, you would have to do the customs clearance, pay VAT and registration tax, swap the headlights to left hand drive versions, and get an individual approval before registering in Europe.

But who needs all that in Mongolia? We quickly agreed on the price and now I am the proud owner of a rare 1996 Delica which has never been sold outside of Japan (my car was imported as a used car to the UK in 2007).