You guys probably know I like to try out new cars. Well I've got a new one for ya. I needed another daily driver as we now have 4 drivers in the household.
I ended up purchasing an automatic 2003 Subaru Forester XT with 50,000km on it, straight out of of Japan.
The Criteria
First let me explain how I ended up here: my criteria for vehicle selection had to meet the following spec:
1. Inexpensive
2. Low mileage
3. No rust
Well, no surprise, in Canada you can only choose two out of those three and find anything reasonable. You can get no rust, cheap, but high mileage. Lots of those around. And you can get cheap, and low mileage, but it will have major mechanical or body issues. And finally, you can get low mileage and no rust, but it's going to be expensive.
It turns out that Japan is a great place to buy used vehicles. It's a small island and it's extremely congested. So people buy vehicles, but then they don't drive them, because they have nowhere to go. And the lower part of Japan's geography/climate is such that they don't need to salt their roads. This leads to older, lower mileage vehicles that are in great condition.
But why so cheap, then?
Japan has an extremely stringent, thorough vehicle examination that all vehicles must go through at different stages of their life. And for one reason or another, many people choose to just buy a new vehicle rather than go through the trouble of these exams.
So there is a huge export market in Japan where they are just constantly rolling these vehicles on to ships and sending them all over the world. In Canada, you can import a vehicle from anywhere in the world provided it's at least 15 years old. This is really cool, because there are now all kinds of great, well-built vehicles available from the early 2000's that we can get our hands on.
The Caveat
The one weird thing about all of this, of course, is that the vehicle is right-hand drive. I've had all kinds of people telling me i'm nuts. I don't care. I've been driving it now for 3 days, and I was completely used to the different setup after a couple of hours. It feels completely normal to me already.
The Cost
I'm an open book. Here's exactly what this cost me so far:
$5800
This is the total cost to get the vehicle from Japan into the Halifax port. This includes any fee you can think of, including 5% tax. I used a Commercial Import Broker to help me get this thing here. They handled all of the communication, shipping, insurance, transactions, exporting and importing for me.
$395
This is what I paid to Service New Brunswick. This covered licensing (sticker), license plate (they only issue one now!), tire levy ($4 on 5 tires) and the remaining 10% tax owed.
Bonus: out of the $5800 above, the vehicle invoice / customs value was only $1500!!. The rest of it was fees, shipping, etc.
$190
Paid to Canadian tire. New Brunswick Inspection and Daytime Running Light install. The Subaru passed inspection without issue. Tires are in great shape, brakes are great, etc.
Bonus: Vehicles from Japan that are 15+ years old are RIV exempt, so no extra fees for that!
The Result
For $6385 total (equivalent to $5552 before tax if I bought it locally), I have a low mileage, no rust, and inexpensive daily driver. And did I mention it's all-wheel-drive? Great for winter driving.
And did I mention it's the legendary Subaru 2.0 turbo boxer engine? I'm one muffler away from "BRAP BRAPPPP" all day long
Here are some pictures!
I ended up purchasing an automatic 2003 Subaru Forester XT with 50,000km on it, straight out of of Japan.
The Criteria
First let me explain how I ended up here: my criteria for vehicle selection had to meet the following spec:
1. Inexpensive
2. Low mileage
3. No rust
Well, no surprise, in Canada you can only choose two out of those three and find anything reasonable. You can get no rust, cheap, but high mileage. Lots of those around. And you can get cheap, and low mileage, but it will have major mechanical or body issues. And finally, you can get low mileage and no rust, but it's going to be expensive.
It turns out that Japan is a great place to buy used vehicles. It's a small island and it's extremely congested. So people buy vehicles, but then they don't drive them, because they have nowhere to go. And the lower part of Japan's geography/climate is such that they don't need to salt their roads. This leads to older, lower mileage vehicles that are in great condition.
But why so cheap, then?
Japan has an extremely stringent, thorough vehicle examination that all vehicles must go through at different stages of their life. And for one reason or another, many people choose to just buy a new vehicle rather than go through the trouble of these exams.
So there is a huge export market in Japan where they are just constantly rolling these vehicles on to ships and sending them all over the world. In Canada, you can import a vehicle from anywhere in the world provided it's at least 15 years old. This is really cool, because there are now all kinds of great, well-built vehicles available from the early 2000's that we can get our hands on.
The Caveat
The one weird thing about all of this, of course, is that the vehicle is right-hand drive. I've had all kinds of people telling me i'm nuts. I don't care. I've been driving it now for 3 days, and I was completely used to the different setup after a couple of hours. It feels completely normal to me already.
The Cost
I'm an open book. Here's exactly what this cost me so far:
$5800
This is the total cost to get the vehicle from Japan into the Halifax port. This includes any fee you can think of, including 5% tax. I used a Commercial Import Broker to help me get this thing here. They handled all of the communication, shipping, insurance, transactions, exporting and importing for me.
$395
This is what I paid to Service New Brunswick. This covered licensing (sticker), license plate (they only issue one now!), tire levy ($4 on 5 tires) and the remaining 10% tax owed.
Bonus: out of the $5800 above, the vehicle invoice / customs value was only $1500!!. The rest of it was fees, shipping, etc.
$190
Paid to Canadian tire. New Brunswick Inspection and Daytime Running Light install. The Subaru passed inspection without issue. Tires are in great shape, brakes are great, etc.
Bonus: Vehicles from Japan that are 15+ years old are RIV exempt, so no extra fees for that!
The Result
For $6385 total (equivalent to $5552 before tax if I bought it locally), I have a low mileage, no rust, and inexpensive daily driver. And did I mention it's all-wheel-drive? Great for winter driving.
And did I mention it's the legendary Subaru 2.0 turbo boxer engine? I'm one muffler away from "BRAP BRAPPPP" all day long
Here are some pictures!
Attachments
Last edited:
