It is always puzzling to hear about an abandoned car dealership with brand new cars left for decades. There are several reasons it happens, but you have to wonder why they don’t sell the cars at some point. In the case of the Toyotas you see here, they were left behind for political reasons. The dealership, along with luxury hotels and an airport are sealed off from the world. Before Turkey invaded the island of Cyprus in 1974, Varosha was a thriving city and a one of the world’s most glamorous tourist destinations. Everyone fled when fighting broke out and people had to leave everything behind. The area was closed to the Greek Cypriot residents after the war. The Varosha neighborhood still remains sealed off, heavily guarded and rotting away after forty years. It was the prime tourist area, with the best beaches, tourist hotels, shops, restaurants and mansions. Everything is still as it was left all those years ago, albeit in worst condition.

This Toyota dealership was sealed off with all the rest of Varosha. It has sat untouched for all these years full of new cars from the 1970s. Photographers risked their freedom sneaking in to take these pictures. There has a lot of debate as to whether these cars are still here as there are accounts of vandalism and looting throughout the city. There aren’t many recent accounts of the dealership, but those that have been inside claim the cars are still there and in the same condition they were in in 1974 when everyone fled the city. There are many articles out there on the abandoned city of Varosha (find more info here on Urban Ghosts), with a wide range of opinions on what happened in this city and why. We won’t go into the politics of this situation, but we do hope that one day the city will be opened back up so that these cars can possibly be saved! Whether it will ever happen or if these cars will still even exist by that time, we don’t know, but it would be amazing to see this collection!

The Nicosia International Airport, once the major airport in Cyprus, also sits abandoned. There are even a couple airliners, a 727 and a 747 still parked at the airport.

Photos Courtesy of Motor-Talk.de