After two years in Japan, I started to really miss my car hobby. Back in Germany, I had a Honda Insight and several Nissan Sunny‘s I used to tinker on the weekends, giving me some relaxing time off from my daily work with software. In Tokyo, owning a car is more difficult – and expensive.
I tried to cope with my car addiction by buying car magazines or building a huge AE86 model car, but I realized these aren’t the real thing. A 1:1 scale version was necessary.
This is the story of my new white-over-black Panda JDM Levin coupe, which is now parked in front of my place!
Searching for a Car
The whole story of buying this car was so strange and twisted that this will take a while to tell. I will write down the full story of this car in several blog posts. Today’s post is about the first part, finding the car on yahoo auctions, bidding on it, an deciding to drive it home under it’s own power.
Living in the grater Tokyo metropolitan area, owning a car is pretty much unnecessary. Public transportation is convenient and frequent, and you can get everywhere faster and cheaper by taking the bus or train. Even though I live in Yokohama, about 60km away from my workplace, I don’t need a car. As such, efficiency or reliability was not a criteria for buying a car – my car in Japan would be solely for pleasure: driving in the sunset along the beaches of Kamakura on the weekend, or driving through brightly illuminated Tokyo at night on the city highway.
Driving the curvy roads of Hakone during the cherry blossom season is also on my bucket list.
I actually enjoy working on cars more than driving them, and I especially like metal work. Therefore, lots of rust was fine with me. I was looking for a project car, not something ready to drive. The cheaper, the better. I prefer OEM look, so I was looking for something not-too-molested, ideally with a complete interior. The cars I kept an eye open for were a Sunny Rz1 Coupe, a Skyline R30, or an AE86. If it would be an AE86, I would prefer a Levin coupe, perhaps even a low-spec AE85 model. In Germany, I drove a US import Corolla GT-S hatchback, so I was looking for something different.
There were almost no offers for the Sunny, I wasn’t familiar with the R30, so I settled on the 86. After several months of watching yahoo auctions come and go, one evening on the train home, I found this Levin, with 7 hours left until the auction ends!
Bidding on a Car on Yahoo Auctions
The seller had bad reviews (1 negative, 7 positive), the car had many rust spots, the price was still quite low. It hasn’t been driven for about eight years, and has been sitting outside since. Exactly what I was looking for!
In fact, the sellers’ account got deleted one month after buying the car.
At first glance, it seemed like the factory paint. I usually check this by looking at the fuel door – the factory paint has a small white stripe around the fuel door. Also, the width of the black area on the front and rear fenders looked correct. In retrospective, I should have known better looking at the white door window frame – on the two-door coupes, the B pillar should be black instead of white, but I didn’t notice.
Not 100% original, but I somewhat like the OEM+ look. The Bride seat looks cool, the front Hayashi Techno R wheels fit great, and the body doesn’t look too bad. My plan was to buy the cheapest 86 I could find, and restore it – there was no room having too many demands. After consulting with a friend if he would be willed to help me pick up the car, I decided to give it a try, and started bidding. My goal was to get a cheap car, not necessarily this car. If I would be outbid, I would try the next one. I wasn’t in a hurry. Nevertheless, I was quite nervous. Buying a car in Japan is very different to buying a car in Europe or the US. What about the language barrier? Would the seller be OK to sell the car to foreigner? What if he seems me, crosses his arms and says “No foreigners”? How can I organize pick up? If you are not fluent in the local language, all of these issues could grow to impassable mountains. My thoughts were racing. Nevertheless, I wanted to give it a try.
Nervously, I entered my first bid, 1,000,000 yen, about 6000 Euro. I wasn’t the highest bidder, and only a few minutes before the auction ended, I decided to increase to 1,1 million, the highest I was willing to go. Finally, I was the highest bidder! Three minutes left, and the car would be mine!
Until I got outbid. The counter jumped back to 10 minutes, and I was left with the option to bid even higher, or to give up. Keeping a cool head, I decided that this car was not worth 1,101,010 Yen, and decided to give up. The other guy can have it. Here you go, take it, have fun. I’m out. I turned the PC off, and prepared to got to bed.
About an hour later, I opened the auction again to check the final selling price.
Unexpectedly Winning the Car
I can read Kanji, but they are still unfamiliar to me. Even after years of learning, I need to actively force myself to read them. They don’t come naturally as the Latin alphabet. That’s why it took me several seconds to realize that the 落札 in the green corner means “successful bid”. The price has decreased to one million. What the hell happened?
As it turned out, the other bidder got scared and cancelled his bid – I didn’t even know that was possible! As the second-highest bidder, I got the car. I couldn’t believe it. Very quickly, I hopped onto a call with my friend to discuss the next steps.
The car was located in Nagoya, and based on the auction, I knew it hasn’t been driven in about 8 years. The car inspection (Shaken) expired many years ago. Bringing the car home to Yokohama would not be an easy task. We came up with the following options.
- Hiring a transportation company to pick up the car.
- Renting a flatbed truck, and picking up the car ourselves.
- Driving the car home under it’s own power.
Option 1 turned out to be a major hassle. Some hauling companies wouldn’t even offer transporting an 86, as they deemed it too risky. Others required tons of information, car dimension and weight, modifications, manufacturer, last registration date, minimum ground clearance, condition of the brakes and wheels. Eventually, I got an expensive offer over 400,000 Yen (~2500 Euro), which I refused.
Option 2 seemed more feasible, but it turned out that neither my friend nor me had a drivers license that would allow driving a hauling truck. The Japanese driver license regulations changed a few years ago, and as it turned out, our licenses were issues after some additional restrictions were put in place. So, this was also a dead end.
This left only option 3, which would also not be an easy task. Few people know that it is actually possible to drive a car without Shaken on public roads, as long as the vehicle is road-safe and the trip is required to register the car, which means bringing it home, or bringing it to the closest vehicle inspection center. However, driving a car that has been sitting outside for years with tons of potential problems was a recipe for disaster. We came up with the plan to fix the car up on the spot, and drive it home.
I started ordering all necessary parts: brake parts, new fluids, a new interior mirror (I noticed on the pictures that it was missing), oil filter, new ignition system, new tires and second-hand 13″ factory pizza cutter wheels, wheel nuts, and lots of new tools.
While I was ordering parts, a problem appeared: the seller did not neither contact me, nor did he reply to my messages.
The Seller is Ghosting Me
Right after winning the auction, I wrote the seller a friendly message in Japanese, introducing myself, stating my intentions to pick up the car, but the seller wouldn’t reply. I tried several follow-ups, but to no avail. 10 days later, I saw two possible options, either he was not satisfied with the price, or he didn’t want to sell the car to foreigners. We wrote a very long letter, explaining my background, and I made him a slightly higher offer, offering him a my final price of 1,100,000 Yen.
That’s when he finally replied, and shamelessly tried to negotiate for an even higher price. By the way he wrote Japanese, we could tell that it didn’t feel natural. As it turned out, he is also a foreigner, running a questionable car trading business.
Lots of red flags, definitely not trustworthy, but I thought the price was still acceptable. I am used to buy cars from shady places. It’s more fun, and this story promised to be entertaining. It reminded me of the days in the late 2000s, when buying shitboxes of ebay, driving them home and modding the hell out of them was normal.
On the Road
After we agreed on a buying price, the seller also sent more pictures of the car. The tires were cracked by the sun, and the brake discs rusty. A full brake maintenance would be necessary. Luckily, I had already bought all the parts needed.
My friend and I loaded all parts and tools into his minivan, I prepared a set of new wheels and tires, and tried to think of every possibility that could possibly go wrong, trying to be prepared.
On the day before the trip, I went to the ward office to get temporary license plates.
Saturday, 6AM, we loaded the minivan, and left for Nagoya.
We drove for about five hours, and after reaching Nagoya area, we grabbed some breakfast. Nagoya is famous for Japanese spaghetti, so we gave it a try!
At about noon, we reached the sellers place. The car trading business of the seller was in a deserted industrial district in Nagoya. However, that’s not where the AE86 was parked – for that, we had to drive another 15 minutes into a residential district. One of the houses has a large front garden, that had been repurposed as a car storage lot.
On the premises were also lots of other cars, trucks, cars that had been into accidents and construction equipment. The area was super messy.
Of course, the car was worse than described in the auction (expected), and it became obvious that this AE86 requires lots of work (also expected).
How did the car look like in reality? What did we do next to drive this car home? I will answer these questions in another post soon. Stay tuned!
