Southern Africa is where all the used Japanese vehicles go to die.

[randomness]

I've seen a remarkable number of vans, minibuses, and trucks with Japanese writing on them here in Zambia, and to a lesser extent in Mozambique.

It makes sense, as both Japan and Southern Africa drive on the left side of the road, but it is surreal to see an Isuzu truck with the markings from some Japanese delivery company written in kanji and hiragana on the side, bouncing on down a dusty side street in Livingstone, Zambia.

I'm told the strict Japanese vehicle inspection regime gets harder and harder to pass as vehicles age. I'm sure an intended side-effect is to force people to buy new cars. Perhaps an unintended one is to create a huge supply of somewhat used left-hand drive vehicles at low prices. I imagine some middleman is making a killing selling all these Japanese vehicles down here in Africa.

Comments

[totient]

I am told that a fair fraction of them end up in Afghanistan, where it's not so much that people drive on the left as that the roads don't really support the concept of keeping to one side or the other.

[mangosteen]

Not only does shaken (Japanese vehicle inspection) get harder to pass, but it's quite expensive ($500-700 each time), and is scheduled more frequently, once the car gets older.

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

Actually, a lot of the used cars are sold in New Zealand, as well.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Sounds about right. Japanese yearly inspections are actually a required inspection/tuneup/preventive maintenance/registration renewal that costs hundreds of dollars and requires you to leave the vehicle at the shop a few days once a year so they can do it all and sign the paperwork.

We did the math and figured out that for Peter Johnson's car to pass inspection in Japan it costs maybe a little more than my registration/inspection fees and my preventive maintenance cost per year. It's just that I choose when to get stuff replaced and can cut corners, and he has to do it all at once for the inspection. So yeah, if you can't cut corners on an old vehicle, a new one makes sense after a while.

I think the inspection system creates jobs, just like their incredibly difficult driver training and testing system creates jobs. Japan would drive the libertarian in me batty (heck, even NJ law does), but I'm impressed by a lot of the systems they've set up.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Wow, it's more frequent for older cars? Hmm, that makes sense. Nevermind, y'all know more about this than I do.

Theory Behind it

[mryt-maat.livejournal.com]

Not to be insufficiently cynical here, but rigorous inspection and emissions standards are really good for the public health. Asthma is up in the US because of our lax air quality policies- and large part of that is vehicle exhaust. The Japanese have even more people crammed in per square mile yet manage to maintain a fair level of general health partly due to "global" prevention methods like this. When the government is paying for your health care, it cares a lot more about root causes and eliminating them.

[elthar.livejournal.com]

Some of those used Japanese cars end up in Bolivia, where they move the steering wheel and pedals over to the left -- but leave the gauges over on the right -- and deploy them as taxis. Who needs a speedometer?

cutting corners

[frotz.livejournal.com]

In some ways, I like the Japanese system. My (perhaps slightly pejorative) view of the US system is that most people buy a car, new or used, and drive it (fixing minor things, and letting major things slide) until it falls apart. Too expensive to fix, they say? Of course it's too expensive to fix, you've been ignoring maintenance for the last 10-15 years, and driving a shitbox with real safety problems for at least the last five.

The US model for aircraft is fairly similar to the Japanese system for cars (broadly speaking, there's an annual inspection, and everything has to work when you're done), and aircraft in the US pretty much last forever barring mishap. No reason cars can't do the same.

In both cases (cars and aircraft), the one really big killer (and sometime exception to the "anything can last forever if you maintain it" rule) is corrosion. I'm just starting to shop for someone to deal with major rust problems with T.B.'s Honda; not looking forward to it at all. (Construction techniques of many older cars are more amenable to structural repair; I've seen a *total* rustbucket of a SAAB 96 taken to showroom-new body condition for under $2k of labor. If the Honda is that cheap, I'll be surprised and happy.)

Re: cutting corners

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yah, if you find someone good to do this work on the Honda I'd definitely be interested in hearing because of course there's that Honda I have kicking around...

Minor correction.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I got another look at the truck. It's in katakana and kanji, not hiragana. :)