Honey, I Bought A Car! 5 words you never want to hear from your significant other as the world goes into a bear market.
It wasn't a complete surprise though. My wife and I had been talking about getting a car for about a year. Our business was to a point where we needed a car to drive to the mineral shows we do all over Japan. Additionally the trains will only get you to certain places, so it was time I guess. That and she used our business as the buyer.
The car she bought is a Corolla Cross. Corolla is Toyota, but in Japan the Corolla's are only sold under the Corolla dealerships. BTW, Corolla in latin means "Small crown" which is a reference to Toyota's flagship, grade up vehicle, the Toyota Crown.
The car is a cross over SUV, between a sedan and SUV, so basically a wagon lol? While it is available in the USA, I haven't seen one on the roads yet. Believe me, I've been looking. Model wise it is in between a RAV4 and CH-R.
The car is all gas, no hybrid. This was my wish, even though it's a lease, as I have grown up on all gas cars I know how they work and can work on them. Hybrids & all electric add additional complications to cars and despite their better "gas milage" her uncle recently had to replace the battery in his hybrid. The repair shop wanted $10,000 so he sold the car instead and bought a new one.
Buying a car in Japan is a real headache. I wanted her to actually buy the car rather than lease it, but get this, if she was to buy the car there was an over 1 year waiting period. I wrote that right, over 1 year. Even leasing it, once approved, she had to wait 3 months, so she chose the lease. In addition to the wait, when you buy a car in Japan, or at least in Tokyo, you must have an authorized parking spot for it. In our case it is our landlord's parking lot for our building. There were some other hurdles she had to jump through and weeks of back and forth paperwork, but she did it. In the USA you can walk into a dealer and walk out with your car the same day.
Out the door it was zero down on a 7 year lease. No worries, it's a Toyota. Payment is just under $400 in yen. That includes insurance though so it works out.
Now, unfortunately the car was delivered 1 week after I flew back to the US so I haven't had a chance to drive it. She loves it though and said it was a bit like the Corolla we owned back in the US.
I asked her what her favorite thing about the car is and she just said everything. I asked her to elaborate and she said size is not too big, not too small, handles great and freedom to go anywhere. Then I asked what about the stereo? She said it's great too! I'll be the judge of that though since blasting my music while racing down the highway is my most important feature in a car.
So, I'll be heading back home in November and I'm looking forward to driving my wife's new car. I know some roads up in the mountains we can do some drifting on. I'll report back then on how it handles and if the stereo is any good.
Thanks for reading!
I didn't realise it's so complicated to buy a care in Japan, so you can't buy one if you can't prove you got a parking spot, like park on the roads? Is that just in Tokyo and the big cities?
I think due to chip shortages, there's a very long waiting list for new cars, certainly that's the case for UK, so second hand cars have become a bit more expensive now
Japan's bureaucracy is legendary. Paperwork like you wouldn't believe. Sometimes it's smooth, other times it's ridiculous. I'm not sure if the parking requirement is only for Tokyo. @boxcarblue might be able to chime in.
It could be related to the chip shortage, who knows. It doesn't seem like cars are selling that much in Japan though due to the downturn.
I recently bought a used car and had to prove that I had a space to park it as well. I’m pretty sure that’s standard all over Japan. It was funny, actually. I had to draw a picture of my house and the parking space in front of it with written estimates for the size of the space and the width of the road in front of my house. Having not been raised with the metric system, it was a lot harder than I thought it would be to estimate the dimensions.
I gave some thought to leasing a car because I liked that the bi-annual (up to $1,000) car inspection price is factored into the monthly cost, but my wife wasn’t interested in that route.
We also talked a little about buying a new car, but I just didn’t think it made sense to. Plus, there is the wait. We were told three times six months, but that was back in June, I think, so the wait may have gotten worse.
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