Transferring your car from Saudi to Bahrain

Yes, I have imported my car by driving my self, but was a very hectic task, because I started late in the evening from Saudi.
Following Needs to be followed.
Drive Through the Truck Lane & park your Car at left side &near to the customs office. Contact your Clearing Agent.
1. Get a Customs Clearing Agent( Saudi & Bahrain side) before you start driving.- You need to Pay 280 SAR for clearing.
2. Start early in the morning, because the customs department works efficiently from morning 9 am-5 pm for export clearing/documentation exclusively. If you go after 5 pm it becomes slow. In my case, it took 3.5 hours since I started late.
3. Get the document for exporting from Agent with gate pass & start driving to Custom Window. Keep your document ready like Passport, IQama, Export document + gate pass ready- Do not lose the gate pass.
4. Then proceed to passport Window of Saudi.
5. Then you need to proceed ahead & park the car on any one of the lanes & get out of the car & approach the Room on the left side / follow the other people. Provide your document to them & they may ask for Insurance(Show your Saudi Insurance)
6.  Once Done the person will ask you to proceed to X-Ray Scanning Shed.
7. In the X-Ray, shed park your car & provide the document to the person in the Shed. Follow him in the cabin.
8. After X-Ray is passed, he will ask you to come on another side of the building.
9. Start your car & park your car near the Vehicle Inspection Office i.e.right side building in the open parking area, which is a safe location. This is the location where your car will be inspected.
10. Then Go to the other side of the building, where customs will prepare the papers & follow their instruction i.e. may ask to go to Room no. 6 to collect paper.
I would like to emphasize on the procedure after this is that you should reach this point before 9:30 AM & your clearing agent in Bahrain should be here by this time.
11. From here on the Agent will take care in clearing your car & be ready with Money. Agent Fees 25 BD.  Also, you need min. 3rd party Insurance, but Agent will help to get 3rd party/full insurance without going to the city for insurance companies. This will save your time. I did not know about this so got my own insurance from SNIC insurance company.
12. You should have CPR, else clearing your car will be a big mess. It happened to me.
13. It may happen that you may get you Car the next day, because of the Inspection by traffic + payment + documentation. So be ready to visit the next day in customs & may arrangement to have alternate option to travel to the city. Inspection office works only between 9am-5pm Sun-Thu. so make travel accordingly.
14. If you have CPR, then Agent will proceed to make temporary no. plate(Red) & need to go immediately to the traffic department to get permanent no. plate on the same day, else the traffic department will charge you 1.5 BD/day till you get a permanent plate. The temporary (red) number plate can be given with RP stamp sticker on the passport, but CPR is must when you go to the traffic department.
If you do not have CPR then you need to pay 1.5 BD/day till you get CPR & got to the traffic department.

So it is always good to have CPR ready + having Bahrain Driving license( This will be added advantage for getting comprehensive insurance). You do this first, then go to KSA to get your car. Getting driving license is easy as per one of the thread related to KSA to Bahrain license.

I will be getting my car tomorrow from customs & will proceed for registration.
Please send me to separate message & will provide the Agents contact details at Bahrain (The person is very professional & have very good attitude) &  Saudi customs clearance.

Following is the way the Customs + other fees are calculated till you get your car with temporary no. plate.

1. Customs estimated Car value.= "A" BD
2.  5 % Duty on "A".= "B" DB
3.  5 % VAT on "A+B"="C"
4.  Total Tax = "B+C"= D
5.  D+Processing Fees(10+5 BD)= E
6. Temporary No. Plate = 27.5 + 1.5 BD- Here 1.5 BD for the day on which they fix the temporary plate & 1.5 BD per day. The actual registration charges are approx 45 BD, so you have to pay 45-27.5 = 17.5 BD approx. at registration by producing the 30 DB receipt.

Will update procedure once I have cleared my car & have no. plate.

Thank you Mahesh for the update.

Thanks a lot Mahesh!
I'm taking my car on Feb 10th from Saudi. Please check your in box and give me the contact details of the agent.

Can anyone provide me contact details of clearing agents in the Causeway. I'm based in Makkah and am exporting my car on 10th.

I tried contacting a lot of people but nothing worthwhile so far.

Finally I got my car exported to Bahrain!!! The entire process was more like an adventure. The journey was hectic....all the way from Makkah to Bahrain. I'll outline the entire procedure that I went through.

1. Go to the Muroor and get your export plates. For this you'll need to pay SAR.100 through the Absher system for 'exporting the vehicle', get the vehicle inspection report, have a valid insurance for the vehicle and your istimara. They'll remove your number plates and give you export plates. The entire process took less than an hour at the muroor office. I took along a Saudi friend just to cut across the language barrier and for filling some forms all of which were in Arabic. The point to note here is that once they issue the export plates, you have 10 days to get the vehicle out of Saudi.

2. Drive to the Causeway bridge. Plan to reach here at least by 8 a.m. in the morning. You have to pay SAR. 25 as the toll fee here and drive for approximately 10 kms through the bridge to the 'Jamaarak' i.e. the customs. Follow the line of the trucks here and park you car and proceed to the building where custom clearance agents are there. There are plenty of them and you needn't arrange any clearing agents before hand. They'll do all your paper works for the Saudi side and charge you SAR.280 for it. Once the paper work there is over you proceed to the Saudi immigration and get your passport stamped (exit). Go right ahead and there is the Bahrain immigration where you'll be stamped entry.

3. After the immigration you have to proceed for X-raying of your vehicle. The cost for this is SAR.100. Once X-rayed they'll ask you to go for customs clearance and vehicle inspection. Again there is a building with customs clearance agents on the Bahraini side. Just go in there and pick any agent. They charge you BD.20 for the vehicle clearance alone and BD. 40 if you have other household stuff as well in your vehicle (I had my vehicle full of household stuff).

4. There is a 5% customs duty and 5% VAT (on the price of your vehicle after the depreciation). They put a low value for the vehicle and I had to pay only SAR.3600 in all for my 2015 model RAV-4 (full option). 

5. After customs clearance you have to proceed for vehicle inspection. Here they take off your export plates and give you temporary plates. You have to pay SAR. 300 there and they refund that amount when you finally register your vehicle with the Traffic directorate.

6. Once the temporary plates are fixed you are done with the formalities at the causeway. Now you are free to drive your vehicle into Bahrain.
I started at 8 a.m. in the morning and was finished with all these procedures by 12.30 p.m.

7. Once in Bahrain you have to visit the General Traffic directorate at Isa town and get permanent plates for your vehicle. Prior to that they inspect your vehicle again (get a car wash done prior to going for the inspection). Again there are plenty of agents here to help you. Within 2 hours you are done with registering your vehicle in Bahrain and getting permanent plates for your vehicle.

The entire process is very much simplified now and you needn't worry to get clearing agents prior. Just go over with your papers from Muroor to the Causeway and you can manage the rest with a bit of basic Arabic. I wouldn't say the process was hectic. But there is a lot of running around and if you manage to reach the Causeway by 8 a.m. you'll be able to finish off the same day.

I would say the entire exercise was worth it since you needn't sell your car and incur a loss and then buy another one again in Bahrain. Hope this helps!

DR_AA thanks for the detailed post.