Maybe you are looking for classic Japanese cars, such as Toyota Sport 800s and Mazda Cosmo Sports of the 1960s, or perhaps the 1970s Skylines, or maybe the RX-7s, AE86 Corolla GT-APEX, or BNR32 Skyline GT-Rs of the 1980s. Then again, perhaps it's oddballs like 3-wheeler Daihatsus, V12 Toyota Centurys, Nissan Paos and Honda Beats that float your boat?
On the other hand, you might be interested in non-Japanese makes, like the"new timers" from Germany, such as Porsche 924, 944, 928 and, of course, 911 Carreras, or perhaps Mercedes such as W107 SLs, 560SECs and 190 2.3-16V, or early BMW M cars such as 1980s M3 and M5?
What about the Lancia Delta Integrale Evolutione? Or the Jaguar E-Type? Or old Minis? The list could go on and on.
So you will be happy to discover that these, and more, can be found in Japan's car auctions. But they take a little more digging out than their modern counterparts.
You see, the problem is that many sellers do not classify these older, classic cars correctly. In fact, the older they are, the more likely they are to have been put in the auction under the generic "Other" category.
So, while you would first do a regular search, setting the manufacturer and model, you don't stop there. The best way to trawl for interesting older vehicles is to simply set the latest year as early as possible, but leave the manufacturer and model unspecified. Also, make sure that you have all of the lower auction grades selected too. After all, it's not likely you're going to find that many cars of grade 4 and above if you are looking and vehicles registered before 1990, for example.
To give you an idea of what you might find, take a look at just some of the cars I netted doing precisely this kind of search:
All kinds of interesting older cars -- hundreds of them!
The beauty of this is that you may even find cars that you had not even heard of before, but which turn out to be really quite fascinating. And if you end up with a list which is just a bit too long, try restricting the search parameters a bit more by selecting one particular auction day, or by choosing and narrower band of years to search through.
There’s just one thing you need to be careful of, and that is that this kind of auction search can become rather addictive. After all, you never know what interesting and unusual gems you may unearth!
We find that the most successful importers really understand how it all works - from the auction to the ship and beyond. Don't get left behind!
