Used Cars in Japan

As discussed in the last blog (Private Room - Car), car seems to be more than transportation means for many Japanese.

Many car owners maintain their cars with special cares.  Any scratch or dent on the cars would make them very nervous, even thought they are very tiny ones.

Although the car owners treasure their cars like their babies, they tend to abandon those their "babies" once the babies become old (maybe 3 to 5 years old!) or get tired (i.e. around 40,000 to 50,000km of driving mileage), and get brand new ones.  These definitions of "old" and "get tired" by Japanese car owners might surprise many car owners in other countries...

Regulations also require car owners to carefully maintain their cars by forcing  them a regular inspection of their cars every two or three years.  The cost of this regular inspection is usually more than US$1,000-1,500.  Yes, it's expensive!

As a result of the car owners' high consciousness toward their cars and the regular inspection requirement, used cars in the Japan market are generally in good conditions.  These used cars attract many people in other countries and are exported overseas.  In fact, I also have many requests from my business partners in foreign countries to export used cars in Japan.

Interesting thing is that their requests include not only Japanese cars, but non-Japanese cars like Mercedes, BMW, etc. as well.  These my partners say they would like to buy non-Japanese cars from the Japan market as the cars are generally carefully maintained.

Other interesting thing is any cars, which are regarded as "scrap" in Japan, just because of its mileage of nearly 100,000 km or age of maybe 10 years or so, are still demanded by people in other countries, since those cars still run great!  These demands make sense to me, and I think Japanese might need to realize "high value" of the used cars in the Japan market.
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