Japan Vehicle Data
If you are buying a Japanese used car from outside Japan, the information that decides whether it was a good buy is in Japanese. This site aggregates it — owner maintenance logs, auction grading standards, ministry statistics — and states its sources and limits every time.
Import rules
The 25-year rule runs on build month — and Japanese paperwork does not record one.
- How to Narrow a JDM Car's Build Date Using Japan's Recall Registry
Japanese vehicle paperwork does not record a date of manufacture, and Japanese chassis numbers do not encode one. We covered why that matters for the…
- JDM Cars Becoming US-Import Eligible in 2027 — By Build Month
Every 2027 eligibility list you can find in English is organised by year. The rule runs on month of manufacture. That gap is where money gets lost, because…
- The 25-Year Rule Runs on Build Month — But Japanese Cars Don't Come With a Build Date
What this guide is: a working method for establishing the actual manufacture month of a JDM vehicle, written from Japanese-language primary sources. Our…
Documents
What the auction sheet and the registration papers actually say, field by field.
- Grade R vs RA on Japanese Auction Sheets — What the Standard Actually Says
Search this question in English and you get three mutually exclusive answers:
- Japanese Vehicle Documents — Field by Field, and What Each One Won't Tell You
Three documents matter when you buy a car out of Japan. English guides usually treat them as one thing called "the export certificate," which causes two…
By chassis
Failure patterns counted from Japanese owner maintenance logs, compared against the English buyer guides.
- Honda Integra Type R DC5 — What Japanese Owners Actually Report
149 maintenance logs posted by Japanese DC5 owners, classified and counted.
- Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VII (CT9A) — What Japanese Owners Actually Report
153 maintenance logs posted by Japanese Evo VII owners, classified and counted.
- Nissan Silvia S15 — What Japanese Owners Actually Report
147 maintenance logs posted by Japanese S15 owners, classified and counted.
- Suzuki Jimny JB23 — All Ten Revision Types Compared, and Which One You Can Actually Import
The JB23 ran for nearly twenty years — October 1998 to February 2018 — through ten revision types that Japanese owners call 1型 through 10型. They look almost…
- Suzuki Jimny JB23 — What Japanese Owners Actually Report
141 maintenance logs posted by Japanese JB23W owners, classified and counted.
- Suzuki Jimny JB23 Rust Map — Where They Actually Rot, and How to Check When You Can't Touch the Car
Every English JB23 guide says "check for rust." None of them tell you where, how, or what to do when the car is 9,000 km away and you have four photos and…
- Toyota Chaser JZX100 — What Japanese Owners Actually Report
147 maintenance logs posted by Japanese X100 owners, classified and counted.
Market data
Public Japanese price and export data your exporter has no reason to show you.
- BE FORWARD vs SBT Japan — What the Review Data Actually Shows
Search this comparison and you get two things: exporters' own "top 10 exporters" lists (which invariably include the exporter publishing them), and…
- How to Research Japanese Auction Prices Yourself — And What You Genuinely Cannot Get
Let's start with what you can't have, because most articles on this topic imply otherwise.
- Japan's Auction Market, Published Monthly and Free — The USS Data Nobody Outside Japan Reads
When you ask an exporter what a car should cost, you get their price. What you don't get is the wholesale market they bought it in. That asymmetry is the…
- What Japan Actually Sells Used Cars For, By Country — Reading the Trade Statistics Yourself
Your exporter knows what cars leave Japan for your country and what they average. You don't. That gap is worth money to them.
Method
How we collect, what it gets wrong, and what we corrected.
- Method: How We Aggregate Japanese Owner Maintenance Logs — And What It Gets Wrong
This page documents the method behind our per-chassis analyses, including a significant correction we made to it on 2026-07-31. Every article using this…