Why New Zealand drives Japan's used cars
Roughly half the cars on New Zealand roads were bought new by somebody in Japan. That is not an accident of trade. It is the result of one country making it expensive to keep an old car, and another deciding not to.
Stand in a New Zealand supermarket car park and read the badges. A lot of what you are looking at was never sold new here. It was bought new by somebody in Osaka or Sapporo, driven for six or seven years, and then sold at auction because keeping it had stopped making sense.
That is the whole story, and it explains more about buying a used car in this country than any amount of brand reputation does.
The rule that starts it: shaken
Japan requires a vehicle inspection called shaken. It is thorough, it is expensive, and it comes round again every two years, and the older the car, the more of it there is to fail. Past a certain age, an owner does the arithmetic and finds that certifying a perfectly good car for another two years costs a meaningful fraction of what the car is worth.
So they sell it. Not because it is worn out, but because the cost of keeping it legal has overtaken its value in that market. It goes to a wholesale auction, and from there onto a ship.
Why the ship comes here
- We drive on the left, so the car needs no conversion at all.
- New Zealand has no domestic car industry to protect, and dropped the tariffs that other countries kept.
- The market is small, so it was never worth a manufacturer's while to fight the trade.
Australia, by contrast, spent decades protecting Holden and Ford, and its used-import rules are still far tighter. Two countries a short flight apart ended up with completely different car parks for reasons that have nothing to do with what anybody wanted to drive.
What this means when you go and buy one
Three consequences, and all three catch people out.
The car may not be the model you think it is
Japanese-market cars carry names and specifications that never existed in the local range. A Mazda Demio is a Mazda2. A Toyota Estima is a Previa. A Honda Fit is a Jazz. Look up the wrong name and you get the wrong car's fault list, which is exactly how a buyer ends up reassured by research that was never about their car.
It has a Japanese life behind it, not a local one
Short urban trips, a lot of idling, and in the snow regions, road salt. Salt is the one to take seriously: a car from a snow prefecture can carry underbody corrosion that a shiny paint job hides completely, and it is the single most common nasty surprise on an import.
Its odometer story starts overseas
A car's New Zealand records begin the day it is registered here. Whatever happened before that is on the Japanese auction sheet and the export paperwork, not on the local register, which is why an import's early history is the part worth asking hard questions about.
None of which makes imports a bad buy
They are a large part of why an ordinary person in this country can buy a reliable seven-year-old car at all. A Japanese import that was garaged in a mild prefecture and sold on because of shaken is often a better car than a locally-delivered one of the same age that towed a boat every summer.
The point is that "imported" tells you where the car came from, not whether it is good. What tells you that is the specific model, the specific engine, and the specific car, in that order.
Start with the right car
Type the plate and we will name the model from the register, so you research the car you are actually buying.
Check the model before you view
Every documented fault for these models, with the years and engines each one applies to.
Frequently asked questions
Why are there so many Japanese used imports in New Zealand?
Japan's shaken inspection regime makes keeping an older car expensive, so owners sell perfectly serviceable cars into the wholesale auction system rather than recertify them. New Zealand drives on the left, has no domestic car industry to protect and dropped its tariffs, which made it one of the easiest destinations for that outflow.
Are Japanese imports worse than New Zealand-new cars?
Not as a category. An import sold on because of shaken is frequently in better condition than a locally-delivered car of the same age that worked hard here. What differs is the risk profile: imports carry underbody corrosion risk if they came from a snow region, and their pre-import history is not on the New Zealand register.
Why does my imported car have a different model name?
Japanese-market cars often use names that were never used in the local range: a Demio is a Mazda2, an Estima is a Previa, a Fit is a Jazz. It matters when you research the car: look up the local name and you may be reading a different vehicle's fault list entirely. Resolving the plate against the register avoids the problem, because it names the car as it is actually registered.
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