JDM Export Blog - Exporting, Auction, Car Shows, Car Life

Sorry for the lack of updates but some changes to the export business were, and still are, underway. Despite this, I will try to make time for updates to the blog when I have time.

I have a bunch of things to report on Japan but will post it up in the coming days and months.

For now, I thought I would report on this while it is still new... For the last two to three months, I have been spying more and more of the new Nissan Leaf. I saw one last night while I was driving.

Okay, so it's not a sports car and many people who share the same hobby with me despise the eco-creep that is happening here. HOwever, I really love new technology and this interests me. Here is one I saw today while out for a walk.

I don't think I would ever buy one, but I think this car is cool. For the time being, they are a rare sight in all parts of the world. In the coming years they will be very bread and butter and I may change my mind about them.

I'm glad that the quirky looks are not so bad in person. They could be mistaken for any car on the highways here in Japan.

Okay, so maybe this one is closer to my tastes - http://www.7tune.com/news-the-nissan-leaf-gets-racy/

-Derek

Japan Vehicle Exporter

2010 has come to an end now and the start of a brand new year is upon us. 2010 has been an interesting year for Japanese vehicle importing and exporting.

2010 was a year to remember and a very valuable one for Pacific Coast Auto. We saw very steady growth through the whole year and had the ability to work with some fantastic people both in the industry and not. In a year when the Japanese yen hit it's highest in 15 years and long term exporters were closing their doors and scaling back, we were seeign a nice increase in sales and support from our customers.

Pacific Coast Auto relies on word of mouth advertising as a primary means of spreading the word and we are happy to report that the investment in our customers is paying off. Thank you everyone who has helped us along the way and an especially big thank you to our customers- whether a first time buyer or a dealer. We couldn't have done it without you.

The next year is exciting to look forward to and I promise the Japanese vehicle export market good things from Pacific Coast Auto. Thank you everyone and happy buying from Japan.

So recently I had an interview with an anchor on the radio about the perception of RHD vehicles on the road in Canada. It was played by a small local station in Kelowna but every bit helps.

I am wondering if anyone heard it.

Due to other interviews straying off topic and missing some key points, I went into the interview prepared and made my points strongly, if not shockingly strong.

Here is a re-cap of the points I made.

Are RHD vehicle more dangerous?
For this, I broke it down into two sections. Are the vehicles themselves dangerous? And are they more dangerous due to the position of the driver causing lower visibility and therefore creating danger?

Are the vehicles themselves more dangerous?
Basically Japan has very similar safety standards to NA vehicles right from off the assembly line. The introduction of secondary safety devices such as air bags, ABS, and traction control were congruent with the rest of the world. However, these vehicles are all 15 years old so it is unfair to compare. I went on to explain that RHD vehicles from Japan have to go through "shaken" registration checks which require any broken or worn part to be replaced in order to pass. Because Canada doesn't have these checks, many vehicles go 5 - 10 years with debilitating problems which cause accidents. Particularly the brakes, suspension, and steering components which all can lead to accidents. I argued that all these things need to be upgraded in order to register in Canada.

Are they more dangerous due to the position?
When driving a RHD vehicle you have different visibility. Not reduced per say but different. Many people assume that this will cause accidents but if you think about it, why? I highlighted the two areas that are commonly considered dangerous - turning left at an intersection, and passing on a highway. In these two circumstances, I explained that the rules of the road state that you may not do either of these things without having clear visibility. I said it clearly - If you can't see, you don't drive there. This rule is clear and anyone driving a RHD vehicle will be specifically watching for differences like these.

The interviewer asked if I thought that this would lead to increased congestion in the roads and I said that these are isolated cases which don't cause trouble or delay in most cases, and that left turn advances are common in high density intersections.

Next I spoke about the street racing accident that was in the news recently and stated that it was my perception that people who are going to street race will do so whether they are in a JDM car or not. Take their Skyline away and they will be back in the street with a Mustang.

He asked if I thought that it was irresponsible for exporters like myself to sell high powered vehicles to young people who likely will be racing.

I can't choose who I sell to and there is no way for me to know who will street race and who won't. I think that Canada doesn't have enough tracks for people to drive the cars the way they were made to and I mentioned that there is no reason for 450hp in a street car (sorry but true, keep that your track toy... IMO).

Next I brought up the point that I wanted to make. That these vehicles are being bullied off the road by large corporations and organizations with lots of money and interest in seeing them off the road. I was accusing, relentless, and straight to the point.

First I talked about Insurance companies. I first stated that this is mostly a problem in Ontario and other provinces where insurance is privatized. I explained that these bodies are out to make money and that these JDM cars impose a perceived risk. Insurance companies are risk adverse and don't have data to set prices for these policies. They don't know crash rates or costs to fix them so they are playing it safe. I let them off easy but offered a solution, anyone should be able to insure any vehicle they want and driver's should be able to put an appraised value on their RHD and insure it as a specialty car much the same as you would your kit car.

Next I turned to the CADA and exposed them as the reason why these vehicles are being targeted. I brought up the press release that the CADA wrote that called these vehicles dirty, unsafe, cause accidents, and cause street racing which kills people who have small children... If you haven't read the press release then please do, it is awful and equated the importation of our vehicles to a loophole which was never closed (lie). I explained that the CADA is a lobby group with a sole intention of supporting the member dealers who sell cars that compete with these. I brought it up that the CADA states nowhere on their site that they have any interest in supporting public safety and rhetorically asked why they would base a press release on safety. I stated that the members pay dues and the CADA is responsible to only act in the interest of the dealers paying dues. I said very clearly that the CADA is using information that they know is incorrect in order to try to ban RHD vehicles from competing with NADM vehicles. I brought up the ICBC 40% study and explained why it was wrong and dropped the names and positions of the statistics team at UBC which debunked the study along with the official quote written by them (can be found on IVOAC). I mentioned that the CADA had been notified of UBC discrediting the study two weeks before the press release was submitted so there was no reason to use it in the press release unless they were acting unethically.

In my closing comment I made a plea to anyone listening. I told people to second guess their perception on the dangers of RHD vehicles. I said that people in Canada hate when big business has control over the government , yet this is exactly what is going on. If you blindly believe that RHD vehicles are dangerous based on what you hear, you are giving more power to the companies an organizations that control your regulations. You are not helping yourself.

I did not comment on how ICBC was run by the former president of the CADA since I did not have enough information on that.

The interview was for 103.9 The Juice in Kelowna BC Canada

A special thanks to Calle from Four function Autosports for helping me set up the interview.

I remember watching Akira for the first time and like you I was in awe watching the beginning bike scene where Kaneda's band of delinquent 15 year olds took on the opposing bike gang- the clowns. I remember hearing Tetsuo go on about the specs of Kaneda's bike and not understanding the technical terms like redline, RPM, or hubless wheels. One thing was for certain, Kaneda had a sweet bike. 

While the rest of the world came to the conclusion that sweet bikes like these were not really practical in the real world, Japan proved eveyone wrong. Here are some examples of bikes I have seen around where I live. All pictures are taken by my iphone.

Let's start off mildly.

This one is about a 2 minute walk from my house. It has upgraded brakes, exhaust, front facia, and has been lowered. Not yet Kaneda style.

Colour changing paint, extremely vented brakes with two piston calipers, lowered, and an amazing custom dual exhaust with what must be 30 custom hand welded seams. I met the owner of this one... Kaneda is getting interested.

Yet it gets weirder still.

Check out that extended rear axel! And that height... How can you drive that? I think we have found a bike for our hero. Now to find some clowns to take out.

I stopped by the Nissan world headquarters in Yokohama for a quick look at what was there and saw a display of 2011 GTRs.

I took some pictures with the only camera I had on me at the time... My trusty iphone. Sorry for the low quality pics. The light sensor in the lens is not so great.

For 2011 Nissan has decided to diversify the range and offer three levels of trim- The Egoist was the model that stood out the most since it is the model which addressed the only problem that anyone could think of for the GTR... The interior.

Though the standar GTR never struck me as a car with a bad interior, I like old cars and I am okay with hard plastics. The seats of the original were excellent too but when reading online, all I heard was, "The GTR will never compete with the 911 with that interior."

So how much for the Egoist? 15,000,000 yen (about 50% more expensive). I don't know enough to say what else was upgraded besides the interior and the audio but it seems a touch steep compared to the base at about 10,000,000 yen.  

So, take a look at the new details. Obvious... LED running lights. Gotta have those these days. 

...Vents in the back of the bumper

New wheels

And cool diagonally quilted interior. Sweet!

Kids and parents were allowed to come in and climb all over this $150,000 jungle gym. It was hard to see kid-feet standing on such nice seats. The nice information ladies smiled and allowed for such sinister behaviour.

So, here in Japan, we get this car this week. The rest of the world has to wait until February of 2011 as a 2012 model year.

I have added a testimony page for you to read. Please see it here - www.pacificcoastjdm.com/testimony. This will be a listing of what my customers have said about my company after I export a vehcile to them. I hope you find it interesting.

I will be looking for more pics and testimonies from happy customers. After importing your vehcle from Japan, please send me a testimony and I would be happy to put it up.

This is the e-mail response I got from a customer after asking him how he likes his new car. It's nice to see his reaction to his new vehicle and it is a good example of the type of vehicle you can import from Japan.

"I may have had it out on some rural roads, and let me tell you, I have never had the pleasure of driving such an amazing machine. This level of vehicle simply does not exist in north america, and that is a shame. being in the business I am in I have had the opportunity to drive many vehicle from stock to fully done, and this car is simply the best vehicle I have ever been in. I owned a G35 (skyline 350 GT) before this car,and it in no way compares to the R33. I have driven corvettes, porsches m series BMW's and AMG benz's, and to be honest with you, this car if far superior in every way, even in basically stock form. My only worry is finding more cars like this one. I'm sure we can make it happen, we do have the formula, but I truly feel that this particular skyline is very special. Oh well, I guess we'll find out after the next lucky owner purchases this car from me. Its gonna be hard to let this one go- but I'm sure we can surpass what we did this time with a little hard work and elbow grease. Keep in touch, let me know if you see anything special."

Another great export from Japan, another pinch of happiness from exporting vehicles.

Vehicle exported from Japan to Ontatio Canada

This past August the 6^th was a special day for me. It was the eighth month and the sixth day so it was 86 day, as in AE86. Why is this day special for me? Well, like many other motorists, the boxy little RWD sportscar from the 80s is my favorite car of all time.

I head over to Daikoku Futo whenever I have a chance to. There are many very nice vehicles there and the people are fun to hang out with.

On this particulay evening I found a very cool vehicle. It is a Z33 Fairlady (350Z to you North Americans).

This one has been tuned with air bag suspension and sits on 21 inch rims. The bags give about 5 inches of height adjustment. the owner was pretty excited to be showing it off.

The tires have been stretched so much, it is hard to see them. I forgot to check to see the profile on the tires but it was pretty impressive.

Being a vehicle exporter is hard work... I would love to be the exporter of something like this. I get a chance to see some VIP Celsiors and Cedrics off sometimes but this one is off the wall.

If you visit me in Yokohama, I'll show you this place. It is pretty amazing. Buy a vehicle from Japan while you are at it.

 

 

The day started off nicely with a trip to McDonalds. We parked near the seaside after an hour and a half getting out of Yokohama. I was very happy to get out of the city and took some time to stretch since I knew I wouldn't want to get out of the car for a long time.

From here on out we went south to where the mountains were. The vegetation here was very green and nice. Getting excited...

We got stuck behind a really really slow car and decided that this highway pulloff was a nice location to give him a chance to get ahead before we caught up.

So we were now officially off the beaten trail and we were passing through some interesting parts. This is a small town in the valley before we went to climb our first mountain. Look at how small and secluded this town is in the photo below. It's a big change from the 15 million people I live with every day.

It would have been nice to find a soba or ramen shop down there for breakfast instead of McDonalds...

Here is the starting line of the first road we drove on. This was an exciting road to drive and was just amazing to experience. It was everything you would have wished for in a Japanese mountain road. It was twisty, lots of ups and downs, and a permanent smile was on my face the whole way. It was also very narrow (like three to four meters), so I couldn't stop anywhere on the road to take some pictures without stopping on the back side of a blind corner... Sorry nothing much to look at here. Traffic was just enough to prevent me from driving quickly. I got a video of this road but the camera is very shaky and you have to listen to Offspring Smash (It was a highschool friend so nostalgic music was a must). 

We got to a break in the mountain and came across a small farm in the valley. This really was in the middle of nowhere.

Being Japan, of course there was a small temple that we stopped at to check out... Maybe about 400 years old? I don't know.

Now we were hitting some higher speed roads so the temptation to put the power to the road was greater. Just as we start to speed up...

We get passed by a hella fast Forrester (I think)... With stickers everywhere on it... Only in Japan would you see somethign like this. You can't see it in the picture but the lights were all strobes so it was pretty funny to see this thing rip past us.

It was now lunch time so we wound our way over to a city. We eventually caught up with the Forrester as well... This town must have had a population of about 8,000 people but it had a nice beach and a large(ish) hotel on the beach. Parking was free at the hotel so we went to check out the beach... We soon saw a dark staircase peeking out from behind some green leafies. Time to investigate. 

Let's see what's up here.

Looks like another temple... But in a strange location.

Inside the temple there was a gong, a taiko drum and a box to put donations... The finny part is that there was no way to get up here besides the narrow and scary staircase. The builders would have had their work cut out for them.

Follow a scary dirt path up more and you get to see a beautiful bay with a single grave marker...

Neat.

Here we are on the top of the mountain. Hey, you guys get to see what I look like. That's me on the right, the ugly guy on the left is my buddy from middle school. That was a very scary picture to take since we were inches away from the cliff that was about 200 feet up... Yikes.

Okay, we ate lunch (I have tempura ramen) and got some snacks and drinks for the road. On to the fun part.

This road was almost dead. We could drive for about 10 minutes before we found an oncoming car and the roads were wide and very well maintained. The down side was the slippery pine needles on the side of the road. Driving on this road was a real Initial D moment. I could drive aggressively yet still safely. 

After about 45 minutes of windy fun roads we came to something that caught my eye. Here we have an exposed gutter on the side of the road. it's hard to see in the pic but this gutter is about a meter deep and 70 cm wide. This would eat a car quite easily if you were to lose control.

So that portion of the drive would have made the trip all worthwhile but it's what came next that really took the cake.

I pulled over to the side of the road since it looked like we were in for some highway driving. The road widened and the forest stopped. We checked out some hiking trails for a short time but not for long. The bridge above us could be heard making sounds like an RB26dett or a 2JZ-gte does at full throttle. It wasn't long before we heard more. Some SR20 with a dash of Porsche flat 6 thrown in. It was time to investigate.

What we found was a touge drift area and a high speed touge area both side by side on immaculate public roads. I will let the pics do the talking but we ran into a drift Cefiro, A Carrera GT2, and an Alpha Romeo 8C. All doing their things. The 8C was very fast and the driver was amazing. I tried to keep up but my 260ish hp felt like 75.

Look at those tire tracks. This is where the drifters in the area come. This would be their home course.

Complete with broken fibreglass panels...

...and heaps of old tire bits. I didn't want to ever leave.

At the top was a meeting area where the drivers might hang out between runs or use to turn around. I have to say I am guilty of running a few circles in this lot. I don't drift but I had to leave my mark. I know you would do the same in my shoes.

We headed down from tehe mountain with stupid grins on our faces and the odd, "Did we actually just see that?" It was a memory to keep for a nice long time. the road down included a neat area of about 10 switchbacks all in a row... Unfortunately there were some anti drift pegs and no curb to drop your front tire into (Takumi style)... Still fun though

Driving on roads like these is really the reason to have a car in Japan. Day to day driving in Yokohama or Toyko is awful. Imagine 10 kms in 1.5 hours... But after driving roads like these, it is all worth it.

From here, the sun goes down and we start using my friend's $900 camera instead of my $320 one in an attempt to get better pics. I will have to get the pics from him. there was much more driving and some quick night time twisties to report but that will wait for another time.

Lastly take a look at the maps I got of the areas where I drove.

127 was the drift road. Further up it was a high speed section as was 411. the fast and fun road I drove on with the pine needles is the yellow one on the left side of the map.

The yellow road was the 10 switchbacks. Look at the elevation lines to get a good idea about how steep it was.

Road 401 was driven at night. It was something special to experience.

The biggest surprise was that during the whole trip I saw not one police car. I'm not telling you to go nuts on these roads but it is nice to know that you have the freedom to drive above the "lowest common denominator" speed. Just keep it safe and don't do anything stupid. If you live by these guidelines then it seems that the police will turn a blind eye.

The entire trip was 16 hours long and 450 kms. Fuel was 6800 yen. In terms of cost for benefit, I can't think of much better than this. It's a bargain for a day of fun and experiences.

A trip like this should be done by any car enthusiast who visits Japan. If you are coming my way, let me know and I will do my best to make a trip with you to show you some areas.

Best case scenario... Buy a car from auction through me and take a drive in the mountains of Japan before shipping your car back to your country. Sounds like a good plan to me.

Derek