In 1989, Gary Duncan had a purportedly life-changing incident. Duncan, who had been selling foreign vehicles since he was 19, earned a trip to Japan the following year to attend the Tokyo Motor Show. It was there that he first saw the Nissan Figaro concept car, a retro-styled convertible with a one-liter engine producing just over 50 horsepower and measuring just over 12 feet long and five feet wide. Duncan recalls, “I thought to myself, ‘Man, those are cool…’ I’ve got to get one.” “I had no notion it would take twenty-five years at the time.”
Duncan, who is now 65 years old, still has his Figaro. In fact, as of this writing, he has 150 of them in his warehouse in Christiansburg, Virginia, along with hundreds of other Japanese cars and trucks from the 1980s and 1990s. Duncan claims to have the world’s most incredible collection of Japanese-market automobiles in North America. The majority of them are available for purchase at JDM Sport Classics.
It’s a stunning depiction of an era in the auto industry distinguished by invention, ingenuity, and excess that was long kept hidden from a generation of American automobile fans who couldn’t legally experience it in person and had to make do with vicarious exposure through video games and movies. These cars are finally receiving their due, owing to people like Duncan and a provision in a 1988 piece of legislation known as the Import Motor Vehicle Safety Compliance Act.
After decades of stable economic progress, Japan began to suffer a financial bubble towards the end of 1985, fueled by a stronger yen, low-interest rates, and active speculation, resulting in significant stock and real estate price inflation. This affluent period encouraged Japanese automakers to dream bigger, invest substantially in research and development, and pursue a rising proportion of increasingly affluent customers. There was no niche too obscure to fill and no technology too far-fetched to pursue. Gull-wing doors on compact automobiles. Steering with all four wheels Systems that use gyroscopic navigation. Engines with three rotors The Japanese manufacturers’ competition stoked the flames of the invention.
As a result, Japan’s automobile industry enjoyed a golden age. Until now, most Japanese cars had been well-built but bland mass-market vehicles, but suddenly every automaker had a sports car, a sumptuous land yacht, or a quirky economy car. Some of these automobiles, such as the Honda NSX (also known as an Acura in the United States) and the Mitsubishi 3000GT, were sold in the United States, although many remained unique to Japan. Even though Japan’s bubble economy had broken by 1992, halo vehicles continued to be made and marketed throughout the decade.
The car market in the United States was undergoing its transformation. Demand for European automobiles from names like Mercedes-Benz and BMW grew while domestic manufacturers competed with imports. Because the United States has its emissions and safety regulations, these European automakers’ goods have to be tailored expressly for the home market in the United States (USDM). This meant that various models and trimmings were not sold here, many of which were rated more desired by fans since the earnings wouldn’t cover the additional costs.
Thousands of international automobile buyers were drawn to the “grey market” as a result of this, as well as a strong U.S. currency at the time. Gray-market cars were purchased in Europe, moved to the United States, and restored to U.S. standards in shops. This way, even after spending thousands to import a car from overseas and modify it to comply with U.S. regulations, a car buyer in the U.S. could get a Euro-market trim — often at a significant discount — even after spending thousands to import the car from overseas and modify it to comply with U.S. regulations.
Automakers, understandably, didn’t appreciate losing sales in the United States as a result of this workaround. In the late 1980s, Mercedes-Benz spearheaded a lobbying drive to prevent gray-market vehicles from entering the country. The Motor Vehicle Safety Compliance Act, passed in 1988, made it nearly impossible for importers to bring non-USDM cars into compliance. Importers must now either do costly crash testing to demonstrate that non-USDM vehicles are safe to enter the U.S. or receive an official letter from a manufacturer stating that they are “substantially comparable” to those sold in the U.S.
However, the Imported Motor Vehicle Safety Compliance Act makes one minor concession to car enthusiasts: any car can enter the U.S., totally exempt from federal safety and emissions rules, as long as it is 25 years old (according to the date of manufacture, not the model year). The 25-year rule was the only hope for anyone willing to wait two and a half decades to obtain the forbidden fruit of automobile ownership.
Now that the 25-year timeframe coincides with Japan’s golden era of automobiles, the stars have begun to align for U.S. car fans. JDM (Japanese domestic market-only) imports look to be a rapidly developing element of the American car-collecting culture. According to the United States Department of Commerce, secondhand cars worth $9.36 million arrived in the United States from Japan in 2013. In 2017, that sum had risen to $72.6 million.
Chris Bishop, who founded Japanese Classics LLC in 2011, says, “We started off with fairly low volume, [selling] approximately four or five cars a month.” “However, I’d say the average age is around twenty-five to thirty right now. Part of it was availability; when we first started, there weren’t a lot of exciting automobiles with a lot of demand.”
According to Bishop, the number of importers attempting to cash in on the nostalgic appeal of these vehicles has risen dramatically. “I guess there were probably four other companies, max, that had similar businesses importing automobiles from Japan, mainly sports cars, when we first started,” he says. “There are maybe a hundred of them now,” says the narrator.
The initial step, though, is likely the most difficult for Bishop, Duncan, and other importers. “People say, ‘Oh, I’m going to fly to Japan and buy a car.’ But it’s not that simple,” Bishop explains. “When you’re driving around, you don’t see many antique cars…rare it’s to come across something intriguing. We import approximately 300 automobiles every year. Therefore we have to rely on every possible source — individual sellers, dealers, wholesalers, and auctions — to meet that volume.”
Duncan shares this frustration: “When I first arrived in Japan, I had this preconceived concept that I knew more about locating vehicles than the Japanese did and that we needed to be knocking on doors and meeting dealers,” he says. “However, I immediately realized over there that the cars are frequently sold to a dealer and then auctioned.”
In Japan, used-car auctions are huge, with thousands of cars auctioned every day. However, not just anyone may place a bid on them. Only dealers and exporters are allowed to register to bid, so would-be auto importers will have to hire someone to buy a car on their behalf. Duncan and Bishop agree that inspecting the car in person, or having a trusted proxy do so, is a good idea. Duncan and Bishop both have personnel or brokers on the ground in Japan to scout, inspect, and buy vehicles for these reasons.