How I wanted to buy an AE86 in 2017, 2020 and finally ended up buying and importing one from Japan to Germany in 2022 and make it road legal.【2】
The last and third attempt, which was finally successful started in late summer 2021. I had a job that paid out pretty good, was in the dire need of something to spend my time on and still had not done the step to do something new, which I really wanted to do. So again, I started browsing the auctions and after a lot of looking up stuff of any kind, I reached out to an export and auction agent, which had quite decent offers and transparent policy and set up my contract to finally get hold of a Trueno. I had calculated a decent max budget of 2,8 million Yen for the car itself to make the car not to become a financial disaster. After I finally was able to bid on auctions, I took me around 1 month and 2 (luckily) unsuccessful bids to grab hold of a white top notch Kouki hatchback (even a GT APEX grade, which is actually the most expensive grade due to some Anime called Initial D) which had nearly no rust and a few things that could have been minor or if unfortunate pretty bad (the auction sheet said oil leaks from engine and transmission). I had serious interest in especially that specific Trueno because it came with a lot of history, documentation, it had done white repaint from the original red and it was originally AT and converted to MT, which meant that the owners before probably didn’t abuse it (because Toyota didn’t manufactured too many of the AT 86s) and those owners wouldn’t have used it for drifting or racing or just acting like Bousouzoku. The only downers were the leakage of oil and the aftermarket exhaust and suspension parts (which I knew had to be taken out because of Germanys laws) and replaced by OEM ones. But in general the issues on the auction sheet were pretty minor, like trunk struts don’t hold up or tonneau cover missing but nothing really bad. So I decided to bid (pretty close to my max budget) on exactly this vehicle and I won only because my agent was really in the mood to throw an extra bid after my max has been passed. And he had luck, the other bidder didn’t rose it anymore.
So there I went, knowing that I own an AE86 from now on but still in Japan.
My agent organized the transport (from Sapporo) and finally to the vessel, where he had his job done.
This took around 6 weeks, because there is always one RoRo per month reaching Europe. After the vessel took off from the port it took around 7 weeks again to arrive in Bremerhaven; time which I used to find a good customs agent and logistics partner to be not in the need of doing the transport on my own. My agent was actually really kind and the documentation and certificates, that I needed to organize everything arrived in the morning of the 24th of December. To be honest, I never thought it would be so much documentation. There was full history of owners from Heisei 3 (1991) onwards, and inspection sheets for quite a few years beginning in 2002. In fact I am really lucky, that I learned quite a bit of Japanese in the couple of years before (also because I still pursue another personal goal for the future) that I was able to translate a lot of the sheets. With all the sheets, I would also potentially be able to contact the previous owners (the previous one I bought it from at least has a Facebook profile, were I still found pictures of his two AE86s).