Last weekend, one of you dear readers infected me with a virus. This bug is telling me that I must give some unknown seller in Japan my money in exchange for some hooptie that’s over 25 years old. After a reader brought a glorious Honda Life to my first-ever Milwaukee area Autopian meetup, I’m now bidding my money on old cars in Japanese auctions. My target? I want to reel in the best car Toyota sold in 1997 (the last full year that is legal to import to the U.S. due to the 25 year import law), the Century. It was once a vehicle for CEOs or heads of state, and I’m going to try to bring the V12 equivalent of Rolls-Royce to America for pocket change. But there are other cars that I want too, so check these out!
Last Saturday, I hosted what will be the first of many Illinois and Wisconsin meetups. It was cold, it was wet, the parking lot was snowed in, and the day was just aggressively Midwestern. Yet, at least 10 of you showed up to American Family Field in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for our little car meetup. The cars that came to the meetup were great and ranged from a new Ford Maverick to a pair of clean Jeeps. One of you came from Ohio, which still blows my mind! A few of you even joined me in exploring the Milwaukee International Autoshow, which, bizarrely, had more brands than Chicago despite a far smaller size. Thank you so much for a great time, and I promise there will be another meeting when the weather gets a bit warmer!
Great Influences
One of the cars that came to the meet was this adorable 1997 Honda Life kei car. Now, I’ve known about the Life and have even featured one in an entry of my weekly car find column. However, I’ve never seen one in person and admittedly, I sort of dismissed them because they weren’t the Honda Beat. Then I saw this car and I was instantly reeled in.
The Life is one of several vehicles throughout Honda’s history to bear the name. The first Life was launched in 1971 as a city car available as a two-door and four-door hatch, wagon, and panel van. Then it morphed into a step van and a pickup truck before dying in 1974. Honda brought it back in 1997 as a kei car MPV with a design that sort of nods back to the Life Step Van. The new Life was designed to be roomy and practical while being fun to look at and drive.
Sure, that’s what it says on the press release, but driving it was another story. I got to take the reader’s Life for a spin around the parking lot and it reignited a passion within me. This little car was so fun to scoot around the parking lot with its 658cc 47 HP triple singing. This particular car sported a three-speed automatic, which I’m told still gets the job done. The car will do 80 mph, too. I mean, the reader drove in from Madison, a 75-mile jaunt down the interstate.
As luck would have it, I suddenly have a free parking space for another vehicle. My wife has decided to sell her 2010 Toyota Prius to a friend in need. This friend is a new parent and needs an efficient, reliable, and safe car. I offered them one of my diesel wagons, but our friends are smart. They know that I deal almost exclusively in bottom-of-the-barrel cars with questionable track records. Picking the Prius will almost certainly be best.
To replace the Prius, my partner Sheryl will now drive my 2012 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI. This works out great because it’s the car that I’ve been struggling to sell for over a year. I haven’t driven it much since I bought the same car, but with a manual transmission. Now, it’ll be her car, technically removing it from my fleet, which means I have room for one more car!
On my July 21, 2022 edition of Mercedes’ Marketplace Madness, I featured two cars that I’ve been dreaming about lately. The cars that I feature in that column are cars that I genuinely want. Thankfully, I usually don’t have piles of cash like that. One of the cars was a 1997 MGF that was listed for $9,100 and the other was a 1997 Toyota Century for $19,500. I thought that both of these cars were outside of my budget until I checked Japanese auctions, where I found some surprises.
Japan’s Rolls-Royce
The Century is a seemingly ageless limo that has gone through just a few generations in its over half of a century on this planet. Toyota’s first-generation Century was in production from 1967 to 1997, its design only receiving small updates along the way.
Toyota says that the Century was launched in 1967 as a replacement for the Crown Eight. And while other Japanese luxury cars copied flashy American style, Toyota intentionally built the Century to be restrained. The name isn’t random, either. It’s a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Toyota founder Sakichi Toyoda.
A Century is so conservative that you might blend in with traffic. Yet, it’s a vehicle with such presence that it commands attention wherever it goes without yelling at you as other luxury cars might. The second-generation Century launched in 1997 and I’ll let Toyota explain why you should care:
Exterior Styling
1) The distinctive front-end design centers around the unique Phoenix mark, made with a hand-carved mold, which perches on a refined, grid-shaped front grille and classic headlamp units with built-in fog lamps.
2) The bumpers consist of superb, hand-finished steel components and shock-absorbing resin parts.
3) The body emphasizes horizontal flows, while the cabin is balanced with the front and the rear, creating a firm and distinguished profile. As with the previous model, the new Century utilizes aluminum door frames.
4) The serene and refined rear view consists of combination lamps arranged along a horizontal line, set with an aluminum center ornament.
5) The full, rich paint tone is achieved by polishing the entirety of the exterior sheet metal and applying up to seven coats of paint.
Interior Design
1) Several pieces of wood paneling are fashioned from the same piece of wood to maintain a continuous grain pattern.
2) Only the highest quality materials, such as crystal glass for the dashboard clock, are used for the Century.
3) Refined Jacquard woolen fabric and the finest leather are used for the seat covers.
This is just a snippet of the incredible amount of work Toyota put into the Century. I highly recommend finishing the press release because it’s just that amazing. These cars have dual-zone climate control, C-pillar pillows for you to lay your head on, soft-close doors, power curtains, and countless other features I’m sure to be missing. Even the engine is there for your comfort. The 5.0-liter V12 under the hood isn’t there to win races, after all, it’s making 276 HP and 340 lb-ft torque and pushing a 4,520-pound car. This V12 is designed to produce the buttery smooth performance that you’d expect in your opulent ride. Check out this lovely review from Throttle House:
The best part is that these are cheap in Japanese auctions. Sure, if you go for a pristine one like in the video above you’ll be paying some decent cash. However, if you don’t mind high mileage–it’s a Toyota, it can handle it–and aren’t afraid of an auction grade that suggests past damage, you can find them for well under $5,000. Just a few days ago, I missed out on one with 100,000 miles that sold for about $2,000.
A British Sports Car, From Japan
The other car that’s captivating me is the prospect of getting an MGF. Now, you may ask why I’m trying to import a British sports car from Japan when I can just get one from the UK. The answer to that one is a bit silly. For this import, I am working with Japan Car Direct, the firm of auction agents who helped me buy a Suzuki Every in 2021. They make the process easy. I just choose the car I want and they handle everything else in Japan. There’s getting transportation for the car to the port, booking a spot on a ship, handling the vehicle’s exportation from the country, third-party inspections, working with the auction houses, and more. Japan Car Direct, like other auction agents and importers, handles all of that so I don’t have to.
I’ve yet to find an equivalent in Europe. If you know of one, please drop it down in the comments or an email. Anyway, onto the car.
The MGF was initially developed starting in 1991 by Rover Group under its final years of ownership by British Aerospace. When introduced in 1995 it was touted as the first all-new MG since 1962. The fresh MGF had some tricks up its sleeve. The 1.8-liter four making 120 HP was moved back to a mid-rear arrangement, the car rode on a Hydragas suspension and it even featured electric power steering.
What is a Hydragas suspension? Instead of separate springs and dampers, you get space-saving displacers filled with an inert gas. It’s a successor to the Hydrolastic suspension designed by British engineer Alex Moulton. In this system, conventional springs and shock absorbers are replaced with a liquid-based suspension system meant to reduce pitch and keep a vehicle level on bumps.
Each unit consists of a damper unit and a Hydragas displacer, an integral spring that uses compressed nitrogen as the springing medium. As a reader once explained, the main difference between the Hydrolastic system and Hydragas is that the Hydrolastic system used displacers featuring a rubber spring.
In other words, this system attempts to fix far simpler springs and dampers and can fail catastrophically, which means it’s perfect for me.
While I’ve seen these for as much as $15,000 here in America, I’m finding them for around $5,000 in auctions for examples with decent grades.
It Pays To Get An Inspection
Of course, I’m not limiting myself to these two. I’m also looking at Honda Lifes as well and I’m just blown away by how cheap they are. Even low-mileage examples with high condition grades sell for like $700. That’s not a typo, you’ll pay more for shipping than you did for the car!
As I’ve advised in the past at the old site, if you’re looking to bid in Japanese auctions, you can learn how to read auction inspection sheets. Even if the sheet fits your fancy, it pays to get a third-party inspection to look things over. Many importers and auction agents can read the sheets for you and arrange inspections, so it can be super easy on your end.
Sometimes you’ll find that a car gets a low grade like “R” (repaired accident damage) for imperfections that are easy to fix, if you even care to fix them. For example, my Honda Beat was given a grade of “RA,” which generally means minor accident damage that has been repaired. According to the notes written by the inspector, what earned my Beat the RA grade was a “dented core support,” but the pictures showed no such thing. When I received the car and saw it with my own eyes, the core support was perfect with no signs of damage. It was later that I found that one of the car’s recovery hooks, which appears to attach to the structure with the core support, was bent.
What I’m getting at here is that if you have a dream JDM car, contact an importer or an auction agent and start prowling the auctions. I’ve used Japan Car Direct and The Import Guys to great success. Your dream car may be cheaper than you think!
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Just buy one that has already been imported and save yourself a lot of hassle and you get to see it in person and how much rust it has, because they all have rust. As for the one pictured, a hard pass for me, you can’t have a Century w/o the required JDM seat doilies. Like this one https://sodo-moto.com/listings/toyota-century-3/
This is the car at the top of my “Importing a Car” List. First I have to find some place to put it, but when I do, this or a hot trim of Nissan Gloria.
I’m not going to have a productive day at work now, looking at auctions. A blessing and a curse. Thanks, Mercedes!
There’s a gentleman in Earl, NC that has a number of recently-imported MGFs. His marketing skills aren’t the greatest, but he seems to have the goods.
Having had 2 JDM imports in the past, and also wanting to try for a UK one, I took the leap last year. I bought a Peugeot 306 GTi-6 from the UK. I found the car in the UK via pistonheads.com, and negotiated the purchase price and some repairs and all that directly with the seller, then used UK car exporters who figured out all the logistics of getting it picked up from the seller and on a boat and sent me all the paperwork I needed to get it registered. It was very simple and I highly recommend them if you want to get a UK car. They also provide inspections and I wired them the money and they gave the seller a deposit until the car was picked up and transferred the rest of the money after. If you have any questions or want to talk more about it feel free to contact me. My correspondence with the exporter amounted to over 100 emails and several phone call as I asked all the questions imaginable and they were super patient with my ignorance.
I would LOVE to do this but see no way to smog it here in California
That’s the only reason I don’t have a couple of them already.
However, if you convert it to electric and then register it, that may be a path around the emissions compliance inspection headaches.
@Mercedes you should check out the long wheelbase Century limo that John Ludwick Jr. had in New Hampshire for a couple years. It is epic.
https://s3mag.com/long-wheelbase-century/
The one thing cooler than a V12 Toyota? A Toyota Hemi V8
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/build-projects-and-project-cars/litlphant-the-baby-hemi-from-japan/151728/page1/
The 244ci of rip snorting V8 Hemi power was found in the Toyota Crown, the precursor to the Toyota Century.
Edit-that-isn’t-really-an-edit-cause-I-don’t-have-an-edit-button: Sorry, the V8 was first used in the crown, but stayed in the Century till the late 90s.
strangely a while back if not still the fifties American car culture as well as big motorcycles became fashionable in Japan in certain areas, I have to wonder if big square long lamented limos of the malaise era will become fashionable in japan the way the old Kei’s and now Crowns are here?
Just like with an R-R, the issue with the Century is the “experience” of owning one will come from being in the backseat, not the driver’s seat. So if you buy the Century, start recruiting someone to drive you around in it.
If you’re willing to try importing from the UK, you can get an MGF pretty damn cheap. I just checked Autotrader and there are a few 97’s for sale and several 98’s. There was one as cheap as £800, but this one looks like the best deal at just under £2k with only 2 owners and 55k miles. It’s fairly close to where I live, so happy to check it out if you’re interested.
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202302074033395?advertising-location=at_cars&atmobcid=soc5&include-delivery-option=on&make=MG&model=MGF&sort=year-asc&year-to=2000
If votes count the Century seems to be the people’s choice. No pressure.
Yup. I can’t afford one, for lo, I am too poor to run a V12, but I can live vicariously through Mercedes buying one.
(One day though. One day…)
I need a Life in my life…
Get the Century. Dooo iiit!
Once acquired, you’ll have to make sure that the curtains & pillow doilies are presentable. AND the obligatory Kleenex box with a cozy on it. I loved that shit decades ago in Japan: knowing these Boss Cars had serious iron under the hood, but the lace in the back was the cherry on top of the tasteful excess.
Does anybody know of a state-by-state guide to getting stuff like this registered and titled? It’s all very tempting, but I think some New England states have banned Kei vehicles and maybe all gray-market imports? I certainly haven’t found any information or advice that seems legitimate and well-researched for my home state of Nevada.
MGFs are great fun to drive – great handling and comfortable ride at the same time. They compare very well against contemporary MX5s for smiles per mile. Hydragas is a non-issue – it’s reliable and if it comes to it exchange units are relatively cheap and readily available albeit needing to be flown in from the U.K. The Achilles Heel is the K series engine’s head gasket, so monitor coolant levels. There are metal head gasket kits available that are meant to be the ‘ultimate fix’.
My 1997 S1 Elise had a 160bhp k-series. For nine years I waited for the inevitable head gasket failure, but it never happened. I loved that car.
If I wasn’t a moron I’d have kept that car until now, when I could sell it for a vastly inflated price to someone in the US. Instead I just sold it for three time what I paid for it to a guy in Italy.
I’ve not driven an MGF, but people I know who have say a mk3 MR2 is more fun, and you don’t feel like you’re sitting on top of it like you do in an MGF.
The century has been on my radar for awhile. That thing probably floats down the road. Wonder what the mpg figure is. Can’t be worse than my land cruiser right?
My BMW 850 with the V12 gets 17.5 MPG. It is lighter though
I have a 91 Beat and a 96 STEPWGN as a daily. I’ve warned my wife that we could end up with a Century. The kids are all about it for sure. I’ll need to sell one of my other cars to make room or I’ll be sleeping on the couch though.
I was looking at auctions and saw a century with 637000 CONFIRMED kilometers on it. The paint and interior definitely showed it but it wasn’t torn apart like you’d expect. Though I’m importing a 94 Aristo 3.0v twin turbo that’ll arrive next month and i can’t wait 🙂
That Century interior is INCREDIBLE!
Do what your heart tells you to do, Mercedes, but for me, the Century would be the only choice. Even with leather seats, there’s simply nothing like it on the roads here in the USA. Nothing else remotely affordable will provide the kind of style, comfort and opulence that the Century does. Just imagine how wonderful it would be to take that beautiful beast on long road trips.
I’m just going to come out and say this. If you buy a Century that does not have the wool upholstery, you are dead to me.
I once stayed in a hotel in Singapore that had one, or maybe more of these as a courtesy vehicle. 30+ degree Celsius outside before even considering the insane humidity, get in the Century with industrial AC and every touch surface covered in nice ethereal wool. That’s how you do it. Leather, even fine leather, is like being transported in a scrotum compared to that.
I apologize for nothing XD
$700 for the Honda Life? How much did that chump Torch pay for the Chang-Li?
The Century feels like the type of car where you need a driver and ask strangers if they have any Grey Poupon. Alternatively, the strangers may be asking if you have any Grey Poupon. Irregardless, the only answer is “But of course.”
The owner of a Toyota Century would never use something as plebian as Grey Poupon. They would have freshly grated Wasabi from a wooden chest stored in the boot.
Yes to all of that, although I wish you hadn’t made people aware of the Honda Life as I have been thinking of getting one and I don’t want the prices to shoot up, dangit!
The good news is that Honda made A TON of those things, which might be part of why they’re so cheap. Oh, and kei trucks remain dirt cheap in auctions, too.
They were cheap new, they’re cheap used, and the demand is going down not up.
Why? One, Kei vehicles are of extremely limited utility to begin with. Two, since 2014 the tax benefit of Keis – which was the main driver for sales – has been eliminated. And made them beyond unappealing.
Case in point, take your grade 4CC Honda Life there. $700 to buy outright, “wow, that’s insane.” No, what’s insane is that the owner of this car kept it this long. They’ve been obligated to pay more than $800 per year for Jidosha Zei, Shaken, and other fees. Not including repairs. For the past 10 years.
That’s also why Centuries are cheap as shit. Because Jidosha Zei is age and displacement calculated, that 5.0L V12 is near the absolute top. $300 weight tax, $800 displacement tax, $500 Shaken annually plus repairs, parking spot, and prefecture taxes and fees which can easily exceed another $1000. That’s every single year.
Which means that the owner of a 1997 Toyota Century has spent more than $27,000 just in taxes and registration, just in the past 13 years alone.
Yeah. The numbers are genuinely staggering.
??
Kei car demand might have gone down from its peak, but they still dominate the small passenger car market, especially outside cities. The tax advantage was reduced, not eliminated, they are still cheaper to insure and highway fees are lower. Also, any no-claims insurance bonus you might have built up owning kei cars goes back to zero if you “graduate” to a white-number car, another hurdle to making the step up.
Daihatsu and Suzuki almost exclusively sell kei cars in Japan, and Honda dealers would be in big trouble without kei car sales. Not to mention the farmers’ workhorse, kei trucks, which are everywhere in the countryside.
And shaken for all unmodified passenger cars is every two years, and a lot cheaper than the depreciation on a new car.
No, they don’t. Kei-style cars do. But not Kei-class. The tax difference between a 660cc class and a 1.0L is zero. And the tax advantage was reduced by over 50%.
And in the used market – especially anything over 13 years – demand doesn’t exist. Because remember, at 13 years, it’s more expensive than a white number. Much more expensive. Remember, it’s already on annual Shaken, year 13 sees it jump 20%, year 15 jumps it another 50%.
Then, at current rates, for a passenger car? New Kei is ¥13,200 versus passenger at ¥12,600 per tonne.
What this means is that you pay LESS for a Toyota Yaris with the 1.0 because it’s under 1000cc, under 1 tonne. Or ironically, a Town Box Wide, which is the “not a Kei” version of the Kei. And because keeping a car on the road past 6 years is already a major disadvantage, well…
I would rather have and Autozam AZ-1, but I suppose any Kei in the USA is cute/cool these days
Those fender mirrors… I say go for the Century as long as everything checks out… It’s a Toyota, so with some TLC it should be good for another 25 years too. If you do get it, you should put it on a dyno to see if the 276hp figure is an understatement. Most cars of that era that listed at 276hp had WAY more when tested.