Is importing a car from Japan cheaper than buying one locally?

With the rise of the Japanese import market in New Zealand, the various sporting models that came out of it have become incredibly popular for road and motorsport use. A lot of these once common cars are now starting to become quite rare on our roads and so prices have suddenly rose dramatically in the past few years. This raises the question of Japanese imports, would it be cheaper to import one of these specialty cars from Japan or buy local? We did a bit of investigating to see if there is any benefits of importing one.

For our test, we decided to use a car that is well known among Mitsubishi enthusiasts, the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 2. This one we found for sale locally on Trade Me at Autospot up in Auckland. It is in excellent mostly original condition and is priced at $19,990.

Here's an original condition Evo 3 that we found on J Spec Auctions Australia. The site covers cars that come up for auction in Japan and we found this example with a reserve price of 50,000 yen ($687.26). Most of these cars don't sell for too much over reserve and I have calculated that you could spend in total around $9,500 NZD including compliance and shipping. That's a total bid of 240,000 yen ($3,300) Although if someone out bids you, you may have to pay more depending on what car it is and how much demand there is for it. This shows it is still cheaper to import cars from Japan but with buying sight unseen there are risks that what you see isn't necessarily what you get.

For example, early Evo Lancers love to rust and it is not uncommon to see rust spots all over them. Here is a photo I found on the internet of rust on the front chassis beam of an Evo 2. Imagine you had just freshly imported your car from Japan and picked it up for the first time only to discover your car is a rusty basketcase. But it's not always dodgy cars that come from these auctions, there are plenty of mint cars to be had for little money out of these auctions as well.

Overall,  is it worth importing a car from Japan instead of buying locally? If you buy through a reputable importer and are willing to go through compliance then yes it is, but then again buying locally means there is less of a risk.

Stay tuned for more awesome automotive stuff. Thanks for reading!!!