where do all the left hand vehicles in Japanese auctions come from?

4 comments

1. I used to work for a vehicle exporter in Japan. As a general rule, if they export an LHD vehicle, that’s how they bought it at auction. Usually, those are luxury, big-ticket items which were only available LHD to begin with.

   Converting a car from RHD to LHD is ridiculously expensive (given what the seller buys the car for at auction), requires more than just moving the wheel (also pedals, gauges, dash panel, firewall, usually wiring harnesses, and sometimes even suspension controls have to be switched over), takes a non-zero amount of time during which the seller has to sit on the car without making any money, and often doesn’t work or makes the car worse.

   My company REALLY considered conversions as an option to open up some new markets some time ago, and I was part of the group that was doing the cost analysis, which ended up being printed as variations on the theme of “Hell no” in fourteen different languages.

2. I imagine mostly from the USA and mainland Europe.

3. Back in the day, having a LHD was a symbol of wealth. It meant you could afford to import a foreign spec car rather than having to wait on or settle for a JDM model. There are also a number left over from American service members who had a car shipped over when they were stationed there and left.

   Japan also has relatively strict emissions regulations that tax older cars at a higher rate than new, so there tends to be a lot of gently used cars flooding the market as they approach the 10 year mark that it makes sense to export because it isn’t as economical to buy a 10+ year old car in Japan due to the taxes as it is elsewhere.

4. I know a family who loves the outdoors and goes surfing every weekend here (Japan). I think they imported a full size Toyota pick-up truck from the US with the LHD and they put their surfboards in the back. I think it is rare to see a full size pick-up truck here, only see the farmer Kei truck.