Some Amazing Stats

[Iron Chef]

For those of you who like looking at the bigger picture, it's worth looking at where we fit in the global scheme of things as far as exports out of Japan. Some fascinating figures there, but I'll let you draw your own conclusions

CUSTOMS_DATA_2002_2008_.pdf

[dori34]

god damn russia is ahead by a sh*tload! lol

[rtune]

For those of you who like looking at the bigger picture, it's worth looking at where we fit in the global scheme of things as far as exports out of Japan. Some fascinating figures there, but I'll let you draw your own conclusions

At a wild guess, 2009 numbers are going to half 2008 and russia will have fallen more than most on a percentage basis.

[Blipman]

A few additional notes:

- those figures don't include container shipped vehicles, which for some countries makes up a large proprtion of their imported vehicles

- those figures don't include cars that cost under 200,000 yen FOB, so for some countries which bring in very cheap cars the numbers are actually higher

Therefore in fact Australia is even slightly lower on that list since container shipping to Aus is unusual, and the vast majority of cars into Aus are over 200k FOB.

If you think some of those countries are doing amazing numbers, keep in mind that per capita Australia is still relatively high, especially given how restctive our import laws are. Also for some other countries it's a whole different ball game... for some coutnries for example the average profit (in Japan) on say a $5,000 car might be only $100 so they are hugely volume driven and don't bother wasting their time with finding out about the condition of the car... they just play the numbers. I sometimes speak to people who buy cars for the South American markets at auction here in Tokyo and a typical order for them from a customer will be "I need 5 Toyota Echoes, 3 white, 1 red, 1 black, all manual, all under 80,000km. Here's xxx yen, whatever's left over is yours". That's it! They then go and plug away on however many cars they need to until they get lucky and fill their order. The cars can be beat up, in poor condition, whatever, that's the amount of care given considering the profits involved, they rarely actually go and look at the cars and to get extra photos of a vehicle for a customer after purchase would be considered way too much effort. A very different market indeed. And don't even get me started on some of the garbage the Russians buy.....

[Iron Chef]

Would nice to have one or two customers like that hey Ben!

The other issue is dodgy buyers at the other end - one of my agents does a few cars into Africa, and he was saying that for every 100 emails he sends out, he'd get 20 saying they're interested in buying from him, so to weed them out, he would send them a dummy invoice saying they'd bought the car at auction.

Why? Of the 20 that received a dummy invoice for a car they'd requested that my agent bid on for them, 15 would never contact him again, 4 would say they'd run out of money or apologise and say they couldn't buy the car for a variety of reasons, and 1 out of the original 100 would actually TT the money on the invoice. At that point obviously the agent would go and buy the car, and continue dealing with them, but hell, it's a lot of work.

[elrodeo666]

What about the dodgy Pakis and Indians...funny they and the Ruskies all seem to work together..Bucketloads of em up my way but good for cricket games in summer and the ruskies love to booze on!

Your right about quality. I have a Nepali mate mate that scouts cars for them gets finders fee and as long as it falls into certain price bracket orders are buy it and dont worry too much about the condition. Some of the cars are high km's and on last legs and get sent to Russia and money has already been handed over. No-ones gunna ague at the other end as most are being pre-sold by russian mafia.

[Beer Baron]

lol, it's not hard to see when the 15yo rule hit 1989 and 1990.... thanks very much all the guys who brought in all those lovely rusty, accident damaged and just plain rubbish cars (not just sklines either, heaps of rubbish landcrrushers, and beemers, merc etc) in that period. on the plus side once they binned CPA and 15yo it means the average standard of cars imported these days is much higher. not all 89/90 cars were shit, in fact there were (are) heaps of beautiful ones that came in but they were about 1 in 10 at the time I reckon. importers ruined it for themselves and just went nuts.

[Weapon]

We were beaten by Tanzania lol