Anyone any experience with buying and importing direct from Japan? Any info/links would be much appreciated.

Regards, Ian.

SVA can be a problem from what i have been told. Lights, emissions etc. I have heard of some people even swapping engines to one that they know will pass emissions!

What about import duties and registration. It must all be doable as plenty of people make good money at it.

You can import a pre-96 car quite easily and have to purely pass a generic SVA test from what I remember. However, legislation was tightened up post 96 in the UK and all cars have to have an Enhanced SVA to be road legal.
For an enhanced SVA (ESVA) you need to hire a model report for the vehicle (Guidelines which define the testing) and just hiring this report costs 100-500 quid!!

Also, as model reports cost so much to author in the first place there are only a subset of Japanese cars that are allowed over here.

From a personal perspective, I would probably go through a japanese auction house for the first time, then look at handling shipping, etc when I was more confident with the legalities!


http://www.modelreportsdirect.com/

http://www.vosa.gov.uk/vosa/publications/model%20reports%20list.pdf

http://www.japaneseimportauctions.com/index.html

Ive got a Japanese Import, they do have to go through SVA though.

Your best and easiest way to go about it though would be to buy one from a dealer who will ship the car and SVA it for you.