Why Japanese car prices have risen so much...

It's scary to see how much the prices of high end Japanese cars have risen over the last few years.

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I mean, just look back six years, you could pick up a Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R for a measly $3000 to $11,000 USD. Nowadays you can't find one for less than $12,000 USD and depending on the condition can go all the way up to $35,000 for a limited edition model!

So why has the price gone up?

Well I'd say this is mainly due to the United States being able to import these cars legally since they have a draconian law where you cannot import a Japanese car till it hits 25 years of age.

I'd personally prefer to have this law instead of my "collectors item" law here in South Africa, whereby a committee (probably a lot of collusion involved) sets a certain few vehicles as a collectible. The problem with this is the list is small and only includes a few cars that I'd actually want. For example, the Toyota Supra MKIV and Nissan Silvia S15 are NOT on the list!

Anyway, this isn't the only reason why Japanese sports and supercars have increased in value so much.

What's the other cause you ask? Well quite simply, the internet has made a lot of these famous. Do you remember seeing the Toyota Supra from Hell? Or the Skyline R34 from Hell? Yes? Well these kind of cemented themselves into our brains made us all lust for these cars. YouTubers and Instagram posers (Yes, I'm one of these) buy these cars, modify them and post 1001 photographs hyping up these vehicles even more.

Honestly, there's a lot of good tech, mechanical greatness and loads of war stories involved with most of these Japanese legends so it's easy to hype them up with little to no effort.

Will the prices ever go down?

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I doubt it, the numbers are going to decrease due to kiddies and tuners bastardizing and destroying these vehicles so the numbers are going to be scarce in a couple of years.

Is it too late to get one at a decent price?

Not at all, if you follow my Japanese car auctions you will see that there are many many deals to be had, I do however recommend you act fast before these are all snapped up by the States :)

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What's the cheapest R32 GT-R I can buy now?

So remember I said you could pick one up for as little as $3000 - $11,000 USD a couple of years ago well I just took a quick look on the only retail space in Japan and found the cheapest one there for a whopping $14,000 USD! Mileage is average at 128,000km but it's an early spec 1991 which means possible oil pump drive issues due to a smaller oil collar. This was resolved on early 1993 models. This particular model (go check it out for yourself in below link) has major rust spots and paint issue, sadly prices are through the roof in the retail space. I'm so glad I bought mine back in 2014!

Link to R32 GT-R on Tradecarview

Hope you enjoyed this little piece, it's a little different to what I usually do.

Let me know in the comments section how much your JDM cars are selling for in your respective countries..