Buying Your Own JDM Car Part 3.5: Where Do We Get All These Wonderful Toys?
Let’s go off on a tangent for a bit
and talk about the interesting Japanese used car market so you know
where most of these cars come from and why we have this opportunity
to own some real rice-burning goodness from the land of the rising
sun.
Japan doesn’t have a large used car
market like we have here in the US because of several factors. The
biggest one is the strict inspection requirement they have. In Japan,
unlike in most of the US, you have to get a road safety inspection or
“shaken” (pronounced with “sha’ as in sharp
not “sha” as in how James Bond likes his martinis) for
your vehicle every 2-3 years and this can cost in the thousands of
dollars because it bundles together the mechanical and safety
inspections as well as other fees and mandatory insurance. Without
passing the shaken you can’t legally drive your car.
Add in the higher costs of maintaining
an older car together with high depreciation and after just a few
years used cars are worth relatively little in the holy land of
Nippon. The Japanese also view used car ownership as less desirable
than here in the US where it’s more of the norm.
When a car is no longer drivable Japan
also has strict rules about disposal so it can be costly to get rid
of an old car. Going Thelma and Louise is frowned upon for some
reason over there.
Take all that in total and it results
in little demand and low prices for used cars, a lot of which are in
fairly good nick given the strict road-worthiness standards and the
general Japanese penchant for keeping things in good order.
The upside of this is that there’s a
HUGE market for exporting these cars to other countries. Many auction
houses do big business selling these cars to people who then export
them to countries like Australia, the UK, Russia, and so on where
they get to live happy lives until they die in a blaze of
vodka-fueled glory caught on random dash cam footage.
Some cars brought to the States are
from private sales done by individuals or the odd tuner shop but the
vast majority come from these auctions. They’re usually very
impressive setups with computerized bidding rooms that look like they
could double as mission control for the next International Space
Station resupply flight. It’s not done in a random parking lot with
some guy yodeling at the top of his lungs about it going once or
twice or screw it you just drunkenly bought a Peugeot station wagon.
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| Another round of budget cuts meant NASA decided to work on more terrestrial forms of transportation |
Unfortunately for us here in the US, we
have to deal with the archaic and idiotic 25 year restriction so it’s
harder to find good cars to bring in. Add to that the fact that other
countries like Australia and the UK have been buying these cars
for decades already and we’re basically picking up the dregs. Even
Canada has a more enlightened 15 year restriction so they get to
enjoy R34 Skylines already while I slowly weep.
The crazy thing about the US JDM market
is that because of the 25 year rule the United States is the biggest
untapped market for these cars at this point. With pent-up demand and
lower availability because of all the time that’s passed, prices
for JDM tin in the US are much higher than other countries. To
exporters it’s like the California gold rush - minus the brothels
and random gunfights.
So if some uninformed individual tells
you how you’ve “overpaid” for your precious JDM car, just
politely nod and say “Yeah, you’re probably right”. Then ask
him where his awesome car is that he didn’t overpay for and just
enjoy the brief moment of smug satisfaction as he walks away to
return to driving his mom’s rusted-out Chevy Cavalier. Make sure to
be nice and wave when he departs the parking lot in a cloud of blue
smoke.
If you want more insight into the
Japanese used car export market or just have 20 minutes or so that
you could use some entertainment for, check out this Youtube video
from Mighty Car Mods:
If I haven't driven you off with all
this droning on (I need to work harder then!), next time we'll go
back to actually discussing the importation process and talk about
what you'll face on the federal side with bringing in a JDM car.
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