old japanese cars? (80s)

Well, I'm the biggest classic japanese car fan in Iceland so i thought I'd ask, in Iceland we so many old 80s japanese cars, and most of my 7 cars are 87-91 japanese cars. :3 Nissan Sunny '87-88 and MMC 3x in a row, now only 1 left '91 Colt but anyway.. if you go to Japan can you still see those older cars (original, not on shows) and just driving around, like Daihatsu Cuore '86-'90 and DaihatsU charade etc.. and Toyota Carina '84-'87 & just yeah, those popular ones? :3

 

Sometimes, yes, but usually no. You don't see a lot of old cars on the streets when compared to other countries in NA, Europe, Australia...

In Japan, there's this government-mandated racket named "sha-ken", in which the older your car gets, the more you have to pay for "repairs", even if your car was "repaired" perfectly just the year(s) before...

In other words, it makes continually buying new cars the status quo, since merely holding on to an old car becomes cost-prohibitive.

 

Inspection system IIRC, in USA the older the car gets, the more the Vehicular Tax you will pay.

Well Brazil would be a paradise for old cars, the older it gets, the cheaper is the Tax IIRC, also, when the car reaches 20 years, it won't pay anymore, besides the licensing which is something like R$150,00 (66 dollars).

Not sure about Japan, but don't the USA have an Tax Incentive for those who send their old cars to the scrapyard?

 

and this is why we get spoiled in Canada with mint, low km Japanese imports. i worked for a number of years brokering vehicle sales from Japan for Canadian market, we have a 15 year rule, eligible for import if 15 years or older to the month.

So typically imported the newest available, Nissan (Skyline GTR'S, Silvias's etc) Toyota (Supra,MR2,Celica) , Subaru STi's and Mitsubishi EVO's to name a few.

But a 15 year old car from Japan come relatively cheap, and typically 50-120k Km's on the odometer , And very good condition.

And all due to reasons 'ccovell' posted above.

 

I don't know the rules for every state in the US but in many places the older it gets the better it is. Smog exemptions, Historic license plates without yearly registration fees, and oddly enough cheap classic car insurance.

Since you brokered imports do you happen to know any good import dealers on the eastern side of Canada preferably Windsor that have been around a while and have stock on hand? So many of these companies I find online are either fly-by-night or the cars are still overseas it is hard to know who to trust.

Also, Do you know if a US citizen can purchase a car in Canada without any type of residence there?

 

Actually in the US, well here in California, the older the car is the lower the car license registration fee is. That is the only tax we pay for the car. Actually, it cheaper if the car is not going to driven. The car buy back program is no longer available. It was couple years ago at the start of the recession that's when no one was buying cars and the US car companies and car dealerships were going bankrupt.

As for the smog in California, new cars don't have do the smog check for the first 5 years of the car. Cars older than 1975 doesn't require smog check. Actually one of my cars have to go through a more expensive smog check because it had older emission systems. It's 1995 Nissan 200SX SE-R(2 doors Sentra/Sunny). Still keep it around, never sold it, since it has a very low resell value. And it was the first new car I bought with my own money. I don't personally drive it every day, but my dad drive when he needs to go to places that the local bus system doesn't go to.

 

Sheesh, late Eighties to early Nineties is old now?! Now I feel old!

They have really strict MOTs and emissions tests in Japan, for cars over 6 or 7 years old, I think it is. This causes huge depreciation, so they export them to places like Europe, where they can get something for them still.

It's getting rare in the UK to see an 80s UK car on the road nowadays - sure, you see them, but not as often as you would have say 10 years ago. Japan is stricter, so it's going to be an even rarer occurrence.

 

The Shaken system in Japan is nothing but a racket. It's just bull shit from the goverment and it's ruining the classic cars that people would love to own.

 

japanese cars rules, my dad had a 1980 Suzuki ST90V, it was great for small trips. Now we have a Nissan March, it's a small lovely car.

 

What about PROPER classics? Do you ever see those about over there? I know the Toyota 2000GT is super rare, but it's super gorgeous! Any stuff of that era? Maybe some early Skylines? God, some of those were ugly!

 

The only car that really turns my head when I see it from time to time is the 1992 Mazda AZ-1. It is stylish and awfully cute:


(the one on the left.)

 

haha, there is a guy in my neighborhood that has a Red AZ-1 and a Honda Beat convertible with full zebra interior

 

Nope. Every now and then you may see a very early 80's car but not too often. People just can't afford to get the MOT (Shaken) for them due to the stupid law. I mean, I could buy a car today, never use it for 20 years then get told that it needs repairing even though it's never been used and have to foot a whopping bill to get it on the road. It's just a load of crap. Shaken should be cheaper the older the car is.

 

They probably want you to send your old car to an scrapyard and buy a new model, so they don't have an excess of vehicles, at least is what I think

Well, blame the urban project that made the roads pretty small, no wonder that there are kei cars.

 

That's really sad to hear about Japan, in Iceland it really feels like there was a scrapping program but IDK, I've never found anything about it, but people were excessively SCRAPPING, FINE cars (1986-1990) models in 1997-2006, just because they were old or yea.

In many cases they drove the car to the scrapyard... and in many cases the cars were in good or excellent conditions. >.<

and today I have a car that survived, just because it was "spared" and put on a field, instead of .. being dumped. How amazingly lucky it is. It was suppoed to be a parts car but the owner decided to just let it stand on a field and so i got it
1987-2004

 

You've heard of "Buy Nothing Day", right? We should promote a "Buy No New Cars Decade" and see how that changes the world for the better. ;-)

 

Lol.. ?