よくある質問 — FAQ
Mostly about money, and rightly so. If yours isn't here, call the desk — we'd rather answer it than have you guess.
7% of the winning hammer price, with a $2,500 minimum, charged only when a car is actually won for you. Everything else on your invoice — Japanese auction fees, inland transport, ocean freight, U.S. duty, customs clearance, port charges, domestic delivery — is passed through at cost with the original receipts attached. There's no margin hidden in the freight line.
No. Opening a hunt is free, and reviewing candidates we find is free. The first money is a $2,500 deposit at the point you authorise a bid on a specific car, and that deposit is credited against the purchase.
Funds go into a segregated client account at our U.S. bank. Not a personal account, and not directly to a Japanese exporter. We pay the auction house and each supplier from it, and every disbursement is itemised on the invoice you receive.
You pay nothing. Most bids lose — that's simply how auctions work, and a hunt involving two or three misses is completely normal. Your deposit rolls forward to the next candidate automatically, or comes back in full within five business days if you'd rather stop.
No, and be sceptical of anyone who does. The hammer price is unknown until the lane closes, and the yen moves daily. What we do guarantee is a bid ceiling you set in writing that we cannot exceed, and a final invoice broken into lines you can check against receipts.
Not directly. Several classic-car lenders will finance an import once it has a U.S. title, and a few will pre-approve against a specific auction purchase. Tell us early if you're planning to finance — it changes the timeline, because most lenders won't release funds until the car has cleared customs.
On auction cars, no — nobody can. The auction inspection sheet is the inspection, which is precisely why we translate all of it rather than the flattering parts. On dealer stock and private consignments, yes: we can arrange an independent pre-shipment inspection by a third party we neither control nor pay per result.
Generally very. Japanese auction sheets flag odometer replacement and tampering, and cars with unverifiable mileage are graded down for it. But a low number on a thirty-year-old car always deserves a question, and we ask it — on the R34 in our current list, for instance, the cluster was swapped for a Nismo unit and the change is documented and stamped. We tell you that rather than quoting the number and hoping.
No. They're twenty-five to fifty year old vehicles sold at wholesale auction, and they're sold as-is. Budget for sorting: fluids, belts, hoses, tyres and bushings at minimum. Anyone offering a warranty on a car like this is either pricing it in heavily or not planning to honour it.
Japanese auction houses run a real dispute process with real timelines for materially misdescribed cars, and we file and run that claim on your behalf. It works most reliably for undisclosed structural or mechanical issues; it doesn't cover a scratch you didn't like the look of in the photos.
That's the main service. The available list is a small sample of what our partners happen to be holding. Around 130,000 cars cross Japanese auction blocks every week, and almost everything we buy is sourced to a specific client brief rather than picked off a shelf.
If it's at least 25 years old counted from its month of manufacture, almost certainly yes. If it's younger, almost certainly not, whatever anyone tells you. Use the eligibility checker for a first answer, and we'll confirm it with our customs broker before you commit anything.
It's the state that needs the most care. California has its own emissions regime and a limited allowance for direct imports, so a car can clear federal customs and still be awkward to plate. It's done successfully every year, including by our clients, but it needs planning before the car ships rather than after. Tell us on the first call.
The Japanese export certificate and its English translation, the bill of lading, the U.S. customs entry summary showing duty paid, the DOT and EPA exemption declarations, and whatever service history came with the car, translated. That's the set your DMV will ask for.
We provide the complete document set and guidance for your specific state, and we'll talk your DMV counter staff through it if it comes to that. The registration itself has to be done by you as the owner — no importer can file it on your behalf.
One to eight weeks to find the right car — a clean R32 might take days, a specific colour and trim combination can take a season. Then eight to twelve weeks from winning bid to your driveway: two to three weeks of Japanese processing, three to five at sea, three to ten days clearing customs, and a few days on a truck.
Yes. Once it sails you get the vessel name, booking number and a tracking link, plus an update from us at each milestone: loaded, sailed, arrived, cleared, released, collected.
RoRo for most cars — faster, cheaper and perfectly safe for a running vehicle. Container for anything very valuable, very low, non-running, or where you're shipping parts alongside it. We'll recommend one and tell you what the other would cost.
Long Beach and Tacoma on the west coast, Baltimore and Jacksonville on the east. West coast is roughly two weeks faster and about $1,300 cheaper from Nagoya, so it's usually the right answer even for east coast buyers once domestic transport is factored in — but we run both numbers for you.