Back in 2021, I bought a car I had been dreaming about ever since I first learned it existed: the Honda Beat. The tiny Kei roadster is one of the best cars in Honda’s history, and after spending a total of $4,700 to buy and import a 1991 Beat, the object of my long-held desire was finally home. At first, I had a smile as wide as the Grand Canyon; then, after the novelty wore off, I realized I had made a huge mistake. It’s taken over four years for me to admit that I screwed up, and now it’s time to fix my error and move on.
The Honda Beat remains one of the most favored cars among fans of affordable Japanese domestic market imports. The Beat is famous for its zebra-patterned seats, mid-rear engine layout, surprisingly good handling, and cute-as-a-button looks. And they’re cheap – you can get a decent Beat for under $10,000. Honestly, if you’ve been thinking about dipping your toes into buying a true JDM car, a Beat would be a great way to start.
That’s exactly what I did in 2021. I had spent years reading stories about the Honda Beat, watching videos from my favorite creators, and absorbing all I could about all things Beat. When I discovered a Honda Beat could be had for well under a year’s worth of my salary, I taught myself how to get access to the Japanese auction systems, and the hunt was on. I soon bought a Beat, drove more than 2,000 miles to Washington state to pick it up, loaded it onto a trailer, made a U-turn, and completed the 2,000 mile trip back home.
“This Old Honda Beat Is The Best Car I’ve Ever Owned.” That’s the headline I wrote on May 27, 2021, in a post for Jalopnik. At the time, I really meant it. But now, I think I made a huge mistake.
The Beat Remains A Legend
According to Octane Magazine, the Honda Beat was developed by Honda engineers who wanted to build a new car that recaptured the spirit of what made Honda’s old Kei sports cars so engaging and fun.
Honda’s history is chock-full of tiny sports cars that are low on power, but light in weight and big on fun. Historically, buying a kei-jidōsha – Japan’s smallest class of road-legal car –meant getting tax benefits and an overall cheaper way of getting around. However, the Kei class highly limits vehicle size and engine parameters in exchange for those benefits. Japanese automakers have long realized that being limited to tiny cars with minuscule engines doesn’t mean that those cars have to be boring. So, there’s an entire category of adorable Kei car hot hatches and Kei car sports cars.
The Honda Beat feels like a fun-size Honda NSX. I’ve now owned a Beat and have driven an original NSX, and it’s both shocking and wonderful how similar the two feel.
What makes the Beat so great is that it’s not just a scaled-down sports car. Honda put a ton of effort into making a car whose entire purpose seems to be making people smile. That cute body? It was designed by Pininfarina. Allegedly, the Beat was also the last car to get the Soichiro Honda stamp of approval. That’s cool enough, but then you check out the interior and see zebra-patterned seats with matching floormats. The driver gets to shift with one of Honda’s legendary clicky manual transmissions, and critical information is transmitted to the driver’s eyeballs through an instrument cluster that looks like it could have been pulled from a motorcycle.
The specs initially don’t seem that impressive. There’s a 660cc triple behind the seats, and it’s making all of 64 HP. The car’s top speed is also electronically limited to 84 mph.
But then, you dig deeper and find out that this engine has what Honda calls MTREC, which stands for Multi Throttle Responsive Engine Control. The engine has individual throttle bodies for each cylinder, and the tachometer doesn’t even turn red until you hit 9,000 RPM.
Driving the Beat is a total riot. The engine runs up relatively quickly and makes quite a nice growl as you race up to 9,000 RPM. There’s a surprising amount of drama going on between the engine note, the tachometer going sky-high, and you banging off gears. You might feel like a racing driver giving it your all. Yet, you look down and realize that you haven’t even broken the speed limit in doing so. The speedometer may read in kilometers, but to you, it’ll feel like it’s reading in miles.
The Beat even swallows some big folks. In 2021, I weighed about 50 pounds more than I do now. I already have a wide frame, and I wasn’t doing myself any favors. But my Beat didn’t care, and swallowed my American body up in relative comfort. The only dimension that wasn’t the best was legroom, as I often found myself putting my left foot behind the clutch pedal for comfort rather than using the dead pedal.
This is all to say that the Beat remains a dream car for me. So, you might be wondering why it all fell apart. Why did I just sell the car I just spent hundreds of words gushing about?
My First Import
This Honda Beat was my first-ever import. I hired the awesome Dylan Cain of the Import Guys to help me get a Honda Beat. He also taught me a thing or two about how the car importation process worked. But there was also a lot that I needed to learn on my own.
The Japanese auction system is an incredible playground where you will see all kinds of cars going in and out every day. You can find cars from every major brand and across decades of time. In a single session within the system, you might check out a Toyota Coaster bus on one page, look at a Subaru Vivio T-Top on another, then pore over a custom Corvette on the next. Want to put a bid on any of these cars? Just tell your auction agent or importer. Honestly, buying your dream car could be only a few clicks away.
In theory, buying a car from the Japanese auction system should be safe. Most cars that go through the system are inspected and are given detailed condition sheets featuring overall grade scores. The inspectors will note everything from minor scratches and paint fade to underbody corrosion and obvious engine issues. On the surface, these inspections seem outrageously thorough. Japan also has the Shaken motor vehicle inspection program, and it’s incredibly thorough compared to almost any inspection the average American car will ever see.
Many exporter websites will even try to teach you how to translate these auction sheets by yourself. Here’s an example from Elite Auto Export Japan:
S – The car is less than 12 months old from the first registration date and under 10,000km. As good as new. The exterior and interior are in immaculate condition.
6 – The car is less than 36 months old from the first registration date and under 30,000km. Basically a very late model and new car.
5 – The car is under 50,000km. The exterior may have some very minor scratches/scrapes and dents. A very difficult grade to obtain, the unit will be in near perfect condition with very minor imperfections.
4.5 – The car is under 100,000km. Again, a very high grade that you can be confident in. The car may have some very slight imperfections in the body work, but will not need major repair. Grade 6,5 and 4.5 are the top grades you could expect for a used car, and as such attract the top prices in the top 10%.
4– The car is under 150,000km. The exterior may have some scratches/scrapes and dents. The car is in above average condition. No Crash history. The interior may have some tears, cigarette burn marks, and/or stains. They will require some minor repair. The auction sheet will tell us in more detail.
Generally a 4 grade car is a good target and the most popular for export. Price range will be in the top 30%.
3.5 – The exterior has some noticeable large scratches/scrapes and/or large dents. They may require some minor panel beating work and/or painting.
The interior may have many tears, cigarette burn marks, and/or stains. They will require repairs. Auction sheet will explain in more detail. The car is in average condition taking in to consideration the year and ks on the car.
3 – The exterior has many noticeable large scratches/scrapes, paint blemishes, and/or large dents. They will require major panel beating work and/or painting.
The interior has many tears, cigarette burn marks, and/or stains. They will require many repairs and/or interior parts will need to be replaced.
2 – The car is in very poor condition and often denotes the presence of corrosion holes – PASS!
1 – The car which has one or more of the following:
1. An aftermarket turbo
2. An automatic transmission converted to manual transmission
3. Flood damage
4. Fire extinguisher damageRA – The car which has had accident damage which can be ranked MINOR, and has been repaired.
R – The car has had accident damage and has been repaired. The auction definition “A car which has had accident damage” is a car that has accident damage to the following area(s) which parts were repaired or replaced : 1. Lower Tie Bar or Frame 2. Windshield Pillar (A Pillar) 3. Center Pillar (B Pillar) 4. Rear Pillar (C Pillar) 5. Strut Housing 6. Roof Panel 7. Trunk flooring Panel 8. Floor Pan. These cars can be good buying, and the repair work can be of top standard. Thorough inspection at auction and the car can be purchased if the repair is good. Repair may be invisible…or could be bad!
Alright, so say you were just like me in 2021. You’ve learned how to read auction condition sheets, you’ve got paid access to the Japanese auction system, and you’re like a kid in a candy store with money to spend. Any one of these cars could be yours with a few clicks and an email.
There’s also some anxiety, fear, and a dose of impatience. Working with a budget puts you in a weird place. The best cars will be out of your budget, so sometimes, working in the auction system means balancing both your expectations and your budget. Your money might not get you that glistening car with a 4.5 grade, but it might afford you a 3 or a 3.5. There are also some R-grade cars out there that are in way better shape than their grades would suggest.
On the other hand, you’ll find a lot of cars assessed with 3 grades or R grades that are actually total piles. Countless vintage cars coming through the Japanese auction system fit the latter category. They’re held together with Bondo, have questionable modifications, are worn out, or have just a catastrophic amount of rust.
Because of this, cars that fit your budget and are also in decent shape might be rare for you to find in the auction system. You could actually wait for months between finding just one car that might fit the bill. If you’re impatient, like I was, you might feel inclined to make some compromises to get your car sooner. Or, maybe you’ll find a car with one feature that you like, and then you compromise on everything else.
In my case, I saw a beautiful little car show up in the Hero auction. That 1991 Honda Beat’s bright yellow paint immediately drew me in. Then, I saw that it still had its factory steering wheel, and it had somewhat uncommon options like an upgraded factory stereo system and fog lights. So many Honda Beats have custom steering wheels, and, admittedly, the steering wheel does get in the way of entry and egress. So, a lot of Beat owners just install a custom, removable wheel to give themselves more space to get in and out. I often saw Beats that were otherwise entirely stock except for the steering wheel.
But I like my dream cars as close to factory condition as possible, so the stock steering wheel was a huge plus. The car also didn’t have any goofy modifications, and its interior was mostly intact. I became sure that this car was the one, then I read the condition sheet.
The inspector noted that the car had a bad front right wheel bearing, a loose interior panel, aftermarket seats, a tear in the driver seat, a stereo that would not power on, and a convertible top window that was on its final legs. The inspection also noted one big rust spot, but an otherwise clean body. Good news came from the confirmed operation of the engine and transmission.
A lot of these were gigantic red flags to me. I didn’t want to deal with rust. I didn’t want to have to repair a Japanese stereo, and I absolutely didn’t want to deal with having the wrong seats. I also noticed that the car had the wrong wheels. The auction grade of RA and the 171,000 kilometers on its odometer (about 106,254 miles) also weren’t particularly inspiring.
But at the same time, the Beat was the correct color, and it had options that I didn’t see on other cars. I began worrying about how long it would be before I found the right Beat. If I missed out on this one, was it going to take months? What if the market for Beats changed, and I got priced out?
I began convincing myself that I could easily just buy the correct wheels and seats later on, and that the rust probably wasn’t that bad. Dylan offered to have the car inspected independently, but I figured the auction sheet was more than good enough. So, I told Dylan to put in a bid, and $1,910 later, the car was mine. My total cost after getting the vehicle shipped to America, cleared through Customs, and given a valid title was just $4,700, which included the fee to use the services of the Import Guys.
To be clear here, Dylan and the Import Guys did nothing wrong. He even tried to steer me toward not buying this car, but I ignored his wise advice. I highly recommend the company if you want to import a sweet car!
Was It My Dream Car?
In some ways, my car was in better shape than the inspector suggested. The inspector said that the core support was bent, but it was really just a tiny dent to the vehicle’s front tow hook, which is welded to the bottom of the core support. The inspector also said that the paint was dull, and though it was indeed faded and damaged in many areas, a good cleaning brought out a little shine.
The rest of the car, however, was worse than expected. The rust spot was huge and had spread deeply into the metal. The aftermarket wheels were hammered and bent so badly that they leaked air. The engine sat on mounts well past their expiration date, allowing it to vibrate like a paint mixer. The instrument cluster was cloudy and scuffed, and the horn button, loosened by all the vibration, rattled annoyingly in the steering wheel hub.
Worst was the convertible top. I knew about the bad window and planned on replacing it, but the entire top was actually garbage. The material had clearly shrunk over time, to the point where the top could no longer reach behind the doors, and thus was no longer capable of completely sealing the car. The previous owners clearly tried to fix it, but as the roof continued to shrink after the repairs, their efforts failed.
Then there was just a bunch of little stuff; rusty windshield wipers, trim paint peeling off the windshield, a leaking brake master cylinder …
I told myself I could fix all of it. I would have the front right wheel bearing replaced. I would import the correct wheels and seats. Maybe I’d have a local boat shop fix the convertible top, and my rust repair guy could tackle the forboding metal rot.
Things began falling apart almost immediately. I learned pretty quickly that importing large and heavy parts like four wheels could cost me $1,500, and seats were looking especially pricey – $900 per seat to import and ship. The guy my family had used for affordable rust repair closed up shop. The other shops I called gave me quotes higher than what I’d spent on the whole car.
I began to realize that this would not be my dream Beat. The cost to fix everything wrong with it would be better spent on a Beat in nicer condition. In a way, I was also a bit embarrassed by my screw up. You’ll notice that I didn’t actually show the rust spot in the images I’ve published to Jalopnik or The Autopian. Well, my friends, take a long look:
I then just sort of decided to live with it. I drove the car as it was and had lots of fun with it. But I just couldn’t escape the feeling that I had made a huge mistake and bought what I felt was one of the worst versions of a car I loved so dearly.
I didn’t really know what to do about the Beat, so I stuffed the car into my mini warehouse. I eventually stopped driving it just sort of ignored its existence. A part of me kept thinking, “one day.” Maybe one day I’d buy the right seats, or maybe, one day I’ll find a parts car with the right parts.
As time went on, I was slightly correct. Parts Beats did show up for sale, but their sellers wanted $3,000 for them, and I’d have to drive across the country to pick them up. Then, I’d have to deal with the carcass of another Honda Beat after I stole the good parts from it. I live in an apartment, so having a parts car sitting around isn’t exactly feasible.
So, my Beat continued to sit as I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to give up my dream car, but I also couldn’t escape the regret of buying the wrong one in the first place.
Turning The Corner
That was until this year. On June 10, I bought another dream car, a 1998 MGF, entirely on impulse. After I transferred the money to JDM car marketplace Be Forward, I decided to make a plan for the Beat. It’s been a little over four years, and aside from fixing little odds and ends, my Beat was still the same pile it was when I bought it in 2021.
So, I decided to sell it. In the short term, I figured I’d make my money back from buying the MGF. In the long term, I figure I will just buy another Honda Beat. Prices for Honda Beats have remained pretty flat for the past few years, so I should be able to get a nice one with the correct parts without spending too much dough.
I listed the Beat for $5,000, but really wanted about $4,500. I’m not in this car enthusiasm game to make a big buck. So, I figured if I made back about what I spent on importing the car, I’d be satisfied. My phone blew up with all kinds of messages. Most people offered $2,000 or $3,000. I told them pretty bluntly that $3,000 gets them a non-running parts Beat, so I won’t even entertain their offers.
One guy drove in from near Central Illinois to look at it, and he fell in love. He knew what he was getting into because he already owned JDM cars and knew that my Beat was the cheapest running and driving example in America.
Unfortunately, the guy discovered some bad news during his inspection. As it turns out, the rockers were largely made out of Bondo. I didn’t notice this before, and neither did the Japanese auction inspector. But sure enough, when he started knocking on the rockers, they began to crumble. We peeled back the paint next to the visible rust spot, and crap, there was Bondo there, too. How much of the Beat was Bondo? We stopped knocking after a while, because the answer was clearly too much.
At some point during the inspection, I noted the car had what appeared to be custom stereo wiring behind the passenger seat. Truth be told, I never really investigated the wiring all that much, since the car currently had a factory stereo installed and the vehicle functioned fine.
Well, the prospective buyer did check out the wiring, and I’ll be dipped, it wasn’t stereo wiring at all. Instead, it was an aftermarket ECU. We discovered what likely happened was heat in the engine bay killed the original ECU. Some Japanese Beat enthusiasts buy aftermarket ECUs and relocate them to their Beat’s cabins, safe from getting cooked by the engine. Unfortunately, the wiring job for this custom ECU wasn’t the best. But the car worked fine, so it was okay enough for the buyer.
I accepted $4,000 and my Beat rolled away to its new home. Admittedly, that was less than I wanted to sell the Beat for. Perhaps I could have sent that guy away and sold the car to one of the other 100 or so people blowing up my phone, but then I’d have to explain the car was frosted with Bondo and had an aftermarket ECU wired like an amateur lamp repair. So, it was take $4,000 now, or deal with the unwashed masses. I took the money. Besides, losing only $700 over the course of four years isn’t that bad.
A part of me regrets selling the Beat, even though I regretted buying it in the first place. I keep thinking, what if I found those parts? What if I convinced someone to fix the rust? The car was mechanically great, it was just everything else that sucked. But deep down, I know that I made the right choice. If I didn’t spend $2,000 on a pair of good seats in 2021, it was unlikely I was going to do it in 2025.
In fairness to myself, my Honda Beat was my first-ever import, and I had no idea what I was doing. I basically just saw the shiny thing and bought it.
How To Avoid Screwing Up
Now, I know how to avoid making the same mistake again. Here’s how you can avoid this mistake, too. First, just be prepared with the knowledge that buying your dream JDM car might not be something that happens quickly. It may take several months or even over a year to find the right one. That’s okay!
Now I also know that while Japan’s auction inspectors are generally good enough, they will miss major problems and will sometimes exaggerate other problems. Sometimes, a car gets a rating that’s too high or a rating that’s too low. In other words, you should not trust the auction sheet alone. Yes, it’ll cost you money, but it is always worth paying for a second, independent inspection, which importers, auction agents, and exporters do offer. Even better would be flying out to the country yourself and getting your own eyes on it, but I do understand that may not be feasible for everyone.
Likewise, it’s okay to compromise on some minor details, like fog lights or other small features. But if the car you’re looking at doesn’t have a part that you feel is non-negotiable, it’ll probably just be better to wait until you find another example that actually has what you’re looking for. Importing these parts later on might be surprisingly expensive, so keep that in mind.
Finally, try to have enough cushion in your budget so that you can spend maybe a little more on a better car. Or, at the very least, don’t force yourself into a bad car just because you’re ballin’ on a budget.
I think my biggest nugget of advice here is to stay calm, take your time, and try to get what you actually want. It’s easy to get excited and all worked up, but then you might end up making a mistake.
My importing days are only just beginning. In addition to buying a better Honda Beat, I still want an Audi A2, a Smart Roadster, a Smart Forfour, a Smart Crossblade, a Royal Enfield Diesel, and a Honda CBR250RR MC22, so my bank account is not done being tortured just yet. Knowing me, I probably won’t even make it out of 2025 before importing yet another car.
Loved the picture of the kei(satsu) car next to the kei car. 素晴らしいです！
Seems like a Japanese auction is no d6than an American dealer auction just getting a description the seller gives you unless paying extra.
So maybe find an expert and listen to them. Define what is unfixable and what is fixable. Rusted frame bad color can be changed easy. Do these inspections have real mechanics or just random people? I think going in country would be awesome and a best choice but I am guessing adding $3k to the cost of the vehicle. Good advice here you gave if you make a mistake and overpaid for a vehicle don’t expect to get back what you spent sell it for what it is. I think $4k was a great deal
I don’t think I could do this. I would be dad-mad every step of the way, growling the question: “why doesn’t the US market still have cars like this?!”
Yeah we never got Keis proper but the Geo Metro LSi was not far off. Let alone nearly all of Japan’s automotive exports in the 60’s and 70’s. No car Honda currently sells in the US even feels like a real Honda to me.
My partner got his Beat from The Import Guys in pretty similar shape, funny enough. It was actually pretty decent with some typical Beat flaws when it was imported (I don’t recall the grade), but it was stuck in port for a few weeks and some jerkwad stole a bunch of parts off of it. They obviously couldn’t deliver it to their intended customer like that, so instead sold it to their mechanic who used it as his commuter for a bit until he decided to sell it too. Cue us looking for new problems and seeing one of the cheapest (for a reason) Beats pop up only a couple hours away, and we were there like the next day. We just recently nabbed a parts Beat to restore it since yeah, it actually made more sense than importing a ton of parts on their own (it was a theft recovery that was auctioned off; he coincidentally found the previous owner through a mutual friend). I’m hoping to do an electric swap with that one once we strip the parts we need for Beat #1, but that’s a far-off dream at this point.
I find it interesting that the inspection rates a manual conversion worse than rust holes.
I will note that the inspections are highly subjective, so one inspector at one auction might care more about mods than another.
Lose $500 or deal with idiots on Marketplace or CL? I’ll drop that $500 every single time. I hate selling cars anymore, and dealing with bots and “yo what about $1K and my xBox”.
I’d love to play with a JDM import but not sure I could learn to love RHD.
Selling my Camry asking below average. Some Nimrod calls me says he checked out car values, how he asked the proper conditions, but said top value was $2900. I was asking $3500 a local dealer had a real nice one for $10k. I simply told him I guess you don’t want this one then and hung up. Another guy stopped test drove asked best price I knocked off $500. He said I’ll check with the wife. He was a foreigner, I have nothing against that, but it wasn’t a nationality that checks with their wives. Test drove it again took it to a shop. Came back and said the condition was as described but as the mileage was high he might have to replace the transmission even though no problem showed up and wanted me to reduce the price by what installing a new transmission in a 2007 Camry would cost. I declined
You’ve hit the nail on the head with the advice to have patience – it’s the number one thing you need to have with the Japanese auction system.
I purchased a silver 2013 GRS214 Toyota Crown Athlete last year from the auctions – but I went in with a plan to get a previous-gen GRS204 in a cool colour. What I soon discovered was that, even with a supposedly common car that wasn’t that old, there’s still a lot of guff going thru the auctions and there’ll be some weeks where literally nothing comes up.
After about a month I lost patience and widened my search (and budget) to look for the 214s as well. That’s when a 214 popped up in *almost* ideal spec – highest trim, sunroof, radar cruise and front/rear sensors. The only thing missing was the optional 360 degree camera. I jumped on it and got a good price due to the “undesirable” colour (which actually looks amazing, a beautiful deep reflective silver), “high” mileage (92,000ks, or under 60,000 miles) and a scrape on the underside of the side skirt that you can’t see unless you’re looking closely but was large enough to drag it down to a “4” grade at the auctions.
I think I was lucky to find a car so quickly but it still took a solid two months of searching the auctions – and then it took another 4 months to ship and get complied in Australia! Not a fast process, but in the end I got a beautiful car that’s extremely rare on our roads for a price about 15-20% lower than what I would have paid going through a local dealer.
And being willing to compromise on more trivial stuff is another good point you touched on, especially if you can’t wait forever. For example, even though I’m happy with what I got, sometimes when parking somewhere tight (or pulling into a 90 degree park near a raised kerb – this car is *low* even at stock height) I do briefly wish I waited for one with the 360 degree camera. But who knows, I could still be searching the auctions to this day!
I bought a Beat from {redacted} auctioneers just off the grounds of the 2018 Amelia Island Concours and thought I’d gotten a great deal at $6000 on one with 70,000 kilometers. Sadly, I didn’t inspect it prior to purchase as I arrived late to the auction and just trusted them to be honest. Once the auction was over, I could only peer at it in the darkness with my phone’s flashlight, and didn’t have the key. The turd they offloaded at my house in Tampa a week later ran poorly, had a dying throwout bearing, check engine light, stinky exhaust, rattles aplenty and more.
I poked around in the car and found a hidden compartment behind the driver’s seat, which contained the owner’s manual – and a number of JDM receipts that showed the car had more than 185,000 km on it before the odometer had been rolled back. The auction company resisted my angry requests for a full refund – but later gave me a partial refund as long as I signed a NDA to not reveal who they were. I lost a couple grand in that fiasco and the Beat went on a trailer to Virginia for some other hapless fan to unhappily acquire. Possibly Mercedes for all I know. I secreted a note to the next buyer in the same place behind the seat but never heard a peep from them.
Point being: trust but verify. Take a close look at your potential purchase before making the plunge. Unless it’s a $2k Beat in a wrecking yard, in which case all bets are off.
Here’s the one photo I posted with an optimistic caption.
Honestly, Mercedes articles are easily the best reads on this site.
I think we have all made bad purchases. I certainly have. It sounds like this one was a combination of over eagerness and some bad luck.
I think I would have lived with those seats and slapped on some 13″ Honda Civic rims that look similar to the stock ones as a cheap fix.
This is why I got my kei van from an importer. Sure I could have done all the leg work myself and saved 50% or more but its not worth it. Its also why the first thing you do when you get a 25+ year old car is thorough inspection and preventive maintenance which includes replacing all the rubber and fluids and removing wierdo electronic gadgets. My van had a radar remotely mounted (gone) and a huge capacitor wired between the batter terminals (gone). The capacitor supposedly helped with first starts by storing energy and giving the starter a boost of voltage. It was from the early 2000s and cost several hundred USD.
I follow a few importers on instagram and it seems like they even get taken for a ride by the auction systems regularly. Seems like every couple months one of them is posting a car for an incredible deal that has a big issue they didn’t see until they got it here.
Something that importers like Dylan and Tyler (Tiki Bunny in our comments) have taught me is that there’s often something that the auctions, Goonet, and other platforms miss. Sometimes it’s huge, sometimes it’s no big deal.
Heck, the bad wheel bearing in my Honda Life was never disclosed, and I paid for an inspection for that car.
… Or, hear me out, dear Autopian folks, use one of us lovely importers to shoulder the risk and put years of experience to work to avoid the pitfalls we’ve all made already so you don’t fall into any more. Especially ones that have shops in Japan to do secondary inspections and can do mechanical work before it leaves for the US to save you money, headache and worry. Joy is the goal 😀
So would you say it was in Beat-er condition?
My question is the buyers premium and trip to the various importers with stock you can look at worth it over taking all the risk you mention? Sure the price is pretty cheap from the auction usually, but factor in the expensive and time consuming import issues and it almost seems worth it.
https://www.duncanimports.com/used/Daihatsu/1992-Daihatsu-Leeza-3f77fabb0a0e0971591af1cd31e79191.htm
https://www.duncanimports.com/used/Honda/1991-Honda-Beat-0d6c8707ac180055309fc0f1307431a7.htm
Duncan Imports has a bit of an asterisk, and it’s that Gary gets his cars from the same auctions everyone else does. The dealer will give the cars a nice detailing, but otherwise sells the cars pretty much in the condition they came from the auction. Unfortunately, Gary had also been caught more than once artificially inflating the prices of his Bring a Trailer auctions by placing fake bids with a shill account.
To be fair, Duncan does have a reputation for selling cars that match their descriptions, so what you see is what you get. But the price you’re paying isn’t necessarily reflective of quality. In 2021, Duncan had a Honda Beat with more miles than mine and in only slightly better shape for about $10,000. I wouldn’t pay $10k for a Beat that was only slightly better than the one I had. The premium you pay is sometimes for the convenience of being able to see a car in person and knowing that it already has a title. But, hey, if I saw this Beat in person I wouldn’t have bought it, so the convenience is worth it to some people.
Some of the best dealers in the biz will hand-pick the best cars that they can find. Those are the ones I’d say to buy a car from. Sadly, a lot of the other dealers aren’t doing anything different than buying cars from the same auctions that I’ve bought my cars from.
Some less-trustworthy dealers (and there’s a whole Facebook group to point them out) have a reputation for giving rusty cars Maaco-style paint jobs and then shipping them out to buyers who do not know any better. Yeah, the JDM scene gets really sad. People have spent tens of thousands of dollars on absolute junk that they thought was minty. Maybe that’s worth a story one day…
Yeaaaah… not so much with cars, but I’ve definitely noticed I have a habit of buying the shiny, expensive thing first, and doing the in-depth research about it second.
That sounds like a whole lot of winning, well done Miss Mercedes!
You’ll have more fun with the MG anyway.
This is a case where the name of the car was 100% accurate.
And probably the ER trim level.
Maybe next time – stick with a Legend, Vigor or Inspire.
I bought a coffee table in an online auction . . . I asked the seller about some concerns, he said the table was “fine.” When picked it up, it looked like it was used for the kids’ art table and one supporting cross posts was missing. It’s in a dark corner of the basement because it pains me to look at it.