Hi,
I have one family member who is extremely gifted with car mechanics and who has started what initially was a side gig to a now full time job as a car repairer.
What he does is buying old collection and/or abandoned vehicle which cannot circulate anymore and completely redo them, either back to their original state as much as possible, or fully custom.
He then proceeds to pass all acceptance tests and certifications for driving the new vehicle and then sells it all over Europe.
Vehicles are literally of any brands and value, but since he buys them in an almost destroyed state, the initial money investment for him is usually pretty cheap.
Anyway, while discussing with him, I was curious to know if there is an existing market for imported cars in Japan. Obviously, European brands (sometimes US). I know this is at best a niche interest since Japan is mostly automatic transmission. There is also a lot of things that needs to be done money wise and certification wise (had to do it myself for an acquaintance a while back) in order to import a car from overseas.
That being said, would it still be interesting to investigate the possibility of having my guy prepare the car and ship it to Japan ? Would it be worth to start polling relevant garage and networking or the interest here is actually too low so it’s not even worth considering ?
I know that there is a lot of things to overcome from an administrative and language perpective, but I’m more interested in the potential capital gains prospects (or lack of).
TIA!