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

[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.