Hello, Nellyjak :)

Thanks for your opinion, I really appreciate it.

What do you think about importing cars from Japan? Is it a good idea to try to find new costumes in the UK? It would be helpful for me know wether it's interesting for your country or not

Thanks!

costumes.?...I assume you mean customers.?

"grey imports" as they are often referred to in the UK have always been treated cautiously here.

Although numbers have increased much over the recent years as people find they usually represent really good value for money.....but many fear the potential issues of parts/servicing/insurance etc....even though it's rarely problematic.

I've had my own imported V6 Toyota Estima for 7 years now and it's been utterly reliable and a joy to own.

People also have the concern that the motor trade here usually do not have service/repair information for models that were never officially imported to the UK and are often reluctant to help.

So I would say that there is still an inherent reluctance here for buying imports although it would be true to say that it has certainly improved quite a lot.

Although numbers have increased much over the recent years

Don't agree with that comment. Back in the 90's Mazda Eunos, Mitsubishi small coupe (whatever it was called) and Pajero were very popular round her and there were at least 3 garages that specialised in them. I know several people who bought them and all were satisfied but one did have issues when his needed plugging into the diagnostics, the local dealers machine simply spat out a load of gibberish and he had to travel well over 100 miles to a chap who had the kit, not convenient.

Now you rarely see a grey import and the garages that sold them are either supermarkets or sell other brands. I know of no one with a grey import.

In 1992 I sold my first Caterham to one of the importers for way more than I could get over here. He sent the cars to Japan where he had customers waiting. Allegedly he had Yakuza connections and his huge body guard/chauffer/translator only made this seem more likely. Paid by bank transfer and collected car by transporter the same day.

Yes there can be some European cars that make superb ex Japan imports, one importer about 5 or 6 years ago was selling several of the wonderful Merc W124 E500, one of the most iconic cars of the late last century, the later facelift model that didn't get imported to Britain, again these were low mileage 15+ year old cars that had never seen salt, literally in as good condition all over as they rolled off the production line.

Ah, back when Mercedes made cars for people who appreciated terms like "understated", "elegance" and "tasteful".........

Came upon an outfit called The Car Warehouse several months ago. As well as some of the usual (and some more obscure) JDM imports, they have some European machines imported from Japan. This includes a 1999 Opel Vectra i500 (2.5V6, 195PS) estate with 11.5k miles and a 2000 Golf GTI 1.8t auto (a combination we never got) with 14k miles!. Also some nice Volvo's and the usual German "prestige" trio (sadly no W124's though).

Hello, gordonbennet!

Thanks a lot for your detailed explanation and opinion, I really appreciate it.

Definitely Japanese cars are of good conditions because of absence of salt and other reagents on the roads. Also Japanese are usually take care of their autos a lot as it's the feature of their culture of being neat, I think :)

UK does not get many good Japanese cars which are already mentioned earlier.

My personal favourites are Toyota Estima and Vellfire.

One word of caution though. Although these cars are fairly reliable, they do still need occasional maintenance. Toyota UK won't help on JDM import cars (I asked them) so customers will be of their own when things to wrong.