Iron Chef

They'll use the western calendar for our benefit, but they always use theirs when the reader is local.

Yeah 19 is the 19th year of the current Emperor.

30 October 2007, that was the mileage I take it you paid pretty decent money for it

The manual one has had its inspection, just going through paperwork DIs, the auto is having its inspection tomorrow

NA S13s haven't been eligible since SEVS was introduced - they don't meet power/weight requirements.

Since 2005

The problem Nigel is alluding to (correct me if I'm wrong) is that it's very easy to become a broker, but it's difficult to do the job properly. So what happens that the established players have to put up with new backyard brokers who find a car on Trade Carview, send an email to the seller in Japan, and then think they can import cars cheaper than anyone else. I'm sure the same thing happens for other brokers who've been around for a while, but every couple of months I have someone call me up with a horror story. The best I've had is some rocket scientist attempted to import a 1992 Cefiro... Here's one I got last week, from a customer who bought an auto S15 Spec R for $14K landed and complied....what a surprise it turned sour... What do you reckon the chances of this guy importing again are? Situations like this stuff it for everyone. As far as workshops go, the airline travel industry is a classic analogy. Common business practice these days is to undercut everyone else on price so you send them all broke, then when you have a monopoly you can charge whatever you like. I bought tickets last week from Adelaide to Sydney on Tiger (and the plane actually left at the scheduled time!) for $25 - now there is no way in hell that can be covering the costs of running the plane, but Qantas (via Jetstar), Virgin and Singapore Airlines (via Tiger) have been slashing prices for so long that people eventually start to EXPECT to pay those kinds of prices. Workshops are in the same boat - someone starts charging $1500 for compliance and suddenly everyone thinks that's what compliance is worth, when in reality, a proper job should be bringing in closer to $3000, but workshops will cut of their noses to get the work when things are tight. Dealers buy cars with telephone numbers on their odometers, knock them back to 80,000km and still make reasonable profits on crap cars, but end up selling them at LESS than what I can import a similar car with genuine kms from Japan. Again, this goes on for a while, and people start thinking I'M ripping them off, because they're not worth that much. I even see it in the broker's world, where people try and haggle over my broker's fee! I ask them if they would go to work next week and work for free lol. Everyone wants businesses to make money, but just not off them... Another classis example is I often cop flak for suggesting that people should be selling their cars locally (and this includes deaers) for more than what we import them for - given the risks associated with importing something yourself versus being able to see a car in the metal, test drive it etc, that SHOULD be worth a premium over importing. Yet again, try selling a clean manual Chaser for $22K locally and see how many whingers ring up and low-ball you with $15K because that's what they reckon they can import them for.

Jap spec R31 Excel sedans came with pillars, the Passage was the pillarless hardtop. It looks like an early JDM Excel to me, but the chassis number will solve it for good.

Well I've kept the auction sheet

Again, no consultation with anyone. They're already asking for photos from all applicants.... As you can imagine, the Australian Street Rod Federation is seeing red over it. http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/roads/veh...1989scheme.aspx

All Japan Day has a lot of work to do to beat the Yanks.. http://zilvia.net/f/off-topic-chat/321517-...you-missed.html

Lamborghini Gallardos are getting relatively cheap to import these days

Answer my PM on NS, f4g!

Getting to your email Stef.

No offence, but why on earth would you buy one from Queensland when there are already stacks of them in Victoria?? Unless it's about $3K cheaper than anything you can find locally, don't bother.

It's all good, I wasn't taking it that way. The point I'm making is that the industry is full of greedy people, for want of a better way of putting it. Say I bundle a compliance cost of $3300 together with my $1000 broker's fee, the customer then pays me that money, then I still tell the workshop "if you want my business, you have to do my compliance jobs for $2500", there are plenty of workshops who would be keen to do that because of the volume of cars I do, and then I could theoretically pocket that extra $800 every time I got a car complied there. In strict profit terms, I would end up making more money than the workshop, which is ridiculous. There are a multitude of issues. The first is that the general public just doesn't understand why compliance is so expensive. The costs aren't (just) because of the work that is being done, they are to recoup the costs of becoming a RAW and doing the relevant testing for that vehicle. A late model emissions test means shipping a car to Melbourne, and the test itself costs $20K, regardless of whether you pass or fail. In other words, you fail the test, it's another $20K you need to drop to get the car ready for compliance. Add to that the cost of purchasing the vehicle itself and having that money tied up for anywhere up to 12 months, and it's little wonder some workshops are saying $4400 minimum for compliance if they get plates for an all new model. I'm a fairly loyal sort of person, and I tend to stick to the workshops that give my customers the best service over the ones that have the cheapest price. One particular Melbourne workshop I use gutted all their prices last year and I told them they were mad, they were getting my business anyway, so they didn't really need to reduce them. I seriously despair at the state of the industry sometimes. Many workshops do excellent work, but they also suck when it comes to running a business and 'future-proofing'. A case in point was the Nissan Cube - the two things I said a few years back that could kill the industry would be 1) a crap exchange rate (happened after the GFC) and 2) fuel prices skyrocketing (happened just before the GFC). My reasoning for getting the Cube on SEVS was that if fuel gets too expensive, guys with Skylines will be looking for a funky buzz-box to use as a daily, then keep their GT-Rs for weekend-only use. There are very few players in the industry prepared to lead the way and keep pushing ahead with getting plates for new models, and if no-one keeps getting new evidence packs done, then the import industry's long term future is pretty bleak. You guys have given me some inspiration for my next HPI article haha

hahaha Man you should see how many bottles I've had to buy! My bedroom's chockers with the stuff!

Needs to be a Buddhist one with a temple on the back to float my boat...

Aaron, try [email protected] that normally works pretty well haha

I don't remember ever having crunched a workshop on price - there are times when I've gone with the workshop that quotes me a cheaper price in order to make my customer's budget doable, but in the end, without the workshops making money, I wouldn't have a job. The problem with masking costs is that firstly, it goes against the whole premise of a broker, in that the process and the costs are transparent. The other is that having such a setup would also allow less scrupulous brokers to keep haggling and make more fat in the middle. I think $3300 for every car would be far better for the industry.

Nope you'll be looking at $20K at least I suspect - they were a 5.5 million yen car when they were released... Phil probably knows better than I do, but if you want black, expect to pay shitloads more.

Oh it can be done still

1UZ-FE V8 - sedan only 1JZ-GTE - sedan and wagon Phil, the Crown/Crown Majesta/Crown Athlete thing confused them a bit, as did the fact that I didn't bother listing a few engine variants because the chassis numbers didn't match up, hence they're referred to as S17 series in the application...

Another win! The JZS171/UZS173 Crown and Crown Majesta are now eligible in both sedan and wagon versions. Eligible motors are 1JZ-GTE and 1UZ-FE. This one actually took a fair bit of work to get through, but we got there in the end! Remember it's still early days, but it does mean we can start work on getting plates for them, around 12 months away.

Getting there, sorry, just got my PC back up and running after two days, had SAU withdrawals haha