Bike Ownership
 

Has anyone had experience (particularly in Central and South America) in riding a bike that you don't actually own yourself, through borders? ie, the registration and ownership papers are still showing BMW as the owner of my bike, as it's technically just on loan to myself.
The same situation would arise if the bike was rented, I'd guess.
I've waded through the bulletin boards and not found a similar question, as I'm guessing that most people don't have borrowed bikes.

Expect big trouble. Even the Turks didn't want to let me in, cause my bike was registered in my cousin's name.

Get the rego changed and leave the ownership papers at home.

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Salut from Southern France, the bikers' paradise,

Peter.

Hmm, buggar. That's what I expected to hear, but was hoping not to. Thanks Peter!

Hey Big Red

We also had a loan bike from BMW for our Trans Americas Guinness World Record in 2003. We got BMW UK to transfer the vehicle document into our name personally to avoid a problem at borders. If you are to try it without being the owner, you would at least require some document showing that the bike was on loan to you from its official owner (preferably stamped in a hundered different places, translated into Spanish etc). No guarantees that would work . . .

Julia

A friend had similar problems to Peter at the Turkish border when leaving Syria.

Two bikes registered to one owner and the owner was present... They made the owner and rider go into the nearest town, find a justice of the peace, 'transfer the ownership' on a Turkish document then find a teacher to witness the whole ridiculous nonsense. It took a whole day and cost a lot too.

Thanks for the comments, which I appreciate. I'm baffled as to how international truck drivers get through borders....the drivers can't always own their own trucks? There must be some magic piece of paper somewhere.......

The other less problematic but still annoying thing is that Aussie bikes don't have a Certificate Of Title....just a registration certificate, which has the owner's name just handwritten anyway. I'm assuming that's not going to cause any grief.

Grant

I think truckers have some kind of official authorisation document. The rego should be sufficient (can they ask for a document that doesn't exist?).

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Salut from Southern France, the bikers' paradise,

Peter.

Thanks all, and transfer documents are now in hand.
And Julia, I believe that Simon Pavy may be riding with you guys sometime in January or February? Maybe we'll bump into you somewhere between Ushiaia and Santiago,

Grant