The main reason is the high quality of these cars and the absence of recycling fees, because these vehicles are over 30 years old.
For the same reason, classic German cars like the Mercedes W140 and BMW E38 are being actively imported into Russia " the prices for these cars can reach up to 10,000,000 rubles ($118,000.00 USD).
And they are reparable. I talked to a guy with a Lada in Ukraine maybe 15 years ago and he explained that with modern cars "the engine light comes on and nobody knows what to do and then they stop running and you have to buy a new car." I don't think the truth is quite that bad, but it's not good in a lot of countries where the support infrastructure is poor.
--scott
Australians have been importing JDM cars such as Skyline, Chaser, Crown for many years. Makes more sense as both countries are RHD. It becomes expensive to pass vehicle inspections for old cars, so sending them to other countries is attractive.
New Zealand imports lots and lots of second-hand cars from Japan, both "normal cars" and the sports cars. A few car sales yards specialise in the JDM cars. The Toyota 86 / Subaru BRZ cars show up a lot now, taking over from the Nissan 350Z which was a popular import a few years ago. There's also a couple of places that will import to order from the Japanese auctions.
Perhaps the main problem with the Japanese imports are that the car's manuals (what little you get these days) and the infotainment system are all in Japanese - that second one can be quite expensive to replace thanks to the custom-made system in cars these days (rather then ye olde DIN radios), although there are a few places that claim to do it cheaper. Radio frquencies can be fixed with a small adapter, but the rest can be more difficult.
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