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The Vital Checklist You Need To Complete Before Buying Any Secondhand Cars from Japan
by
Tomi Christa
If you are reading this article, then you must be interested in importing used cars from Japan. After all, these cars with their lower KM, high levels of quality and great pricing make them an enticing option. But, as I wrote above, there are several steps you need to make sure you carry out first:
Before you take one more step, you have to be sure that you can actually bring in vehicles from Japan. There are not many countries that proscribe imports of used cars completely, but there are often regulatory hurdles you have to jump.
There are sometimes restrictions on the age of the used car. Examples of countries that do this would be Kuwait and Saudi Arabia that both restrict imports to used vehicles that are not older than 5 years. Then there are some countries like New Zealand which require vehicles to comply with specific tail pipe emissions requirements. In essence, this rule has a very similar outcome to a pure age restriction, since the exhaust emission rules are usually imposed on a particular date.
Other nations, such as Australia, permit imports of used cars on a list of permitted cars. Actually, in the case of Australia the import regulations are more in-depth than that, since older vehicles can be brought in much more freely, but newer models must be on the list.
The absolute safest method to insure you can import the cars you want is to check for yourself with the relevant government departments in your country. You may discover that vehicle exporters from Japan hand out lots of free advice about this, but when it comes down to it you are the importer and you are on the ground and able to get the most accurate information.
Now, the next thing you should do is to be sure that you can buy the cars you want at best prices. The easiest way to do this is to find an export company who has access to car auctions in Japan and get a free trial. Have a look at just how many cars of the model, mileage and level of quality (grade) you would be interested in are coming under the gavel each day. The more there are, the better the chance that you will be able to get the used cars you want at a nice price.
Obviously, if you want to be able to buy used cars from Japan, you will need to get a supplier who can get them and ship them for you. This is the last aspect of preparation you need to do.
So what do you need to be after in a potential partner? Well, first of all, you ought to insure that they can give you online access to all the used vehicle auctions in Japan. These auctions are the ideal places to look for cars, and it is not acceptable if your car exporter partner does not have the right access to them.
Secondly you ought to do is to send every one of these prospects an email. One question to ask is what the predicted FOB price should be for the car model, age, KM and condition (grade) that you are looking atbuying.
There are two things that you are testing by asking this question: Speed and accuracy. What I mean is, you are wanting a quick response which then gives you a clear, in-depth answer. What is disappointing is that with many export companies in Japan, you will discover that your email will either not be answered for days, or you will received a response back which is not at all clear. It is obvious that if your potential supplier cannot answer this first email both expeditiously and clearly, you can just imagine how frustrating things will be trying to deal with them remotely.
By now you ought to have have whittled down your group of potential car exporter partners quite a bit. Now is the time to compare these companies’ contract terms. Something else that will quickly narrow down the numbers is to simply see if they have any kind of genuine contract terms at all. However much you detest legal documents, you can be sure that the company with just a few sentences on a web page is not going to be as professional or careful as the one who has a proper contract document.
By this time, you will be down to just two or three potential car exporters at most. You now really need to dig into their terms of business and consider carefully which of them is best for you. And here is my last nugget of wisdom for you as you ponder this: You get what you pay for. Sure, that seems like it should be pretty clear, but a few thousand Yen saved here or there is going to nowhere near make up for poor service and poor vehicles.
To conclude, however attractive used cars from Japan can seem, you really ought to be sure you look into import rules, pricing and availability, as well as checking out suppliers before you launch out and actually get any cars.
Stephen Munday jointly owns Integrity Exports, a
Japanese car exporter
that obtains cars from
car auctions in Japan
for car importers internationally. He has twelve years of experience of residing and working in Japan, in addition to fluency in the Japanese language.
The above article is Copyright Stephen Munday, 2011. Permission is only given to reproduce this article in full with the URLs correctly hyperlinked and with the authorship and copyright correctly attributed.
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The Vital Checklist You Need To Complete Before Buying Any Secondhand Cars from Japan
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