GREGGYG

iTrader: (2)

I have owned 7 Impreza's, all newage, never owned a Classic, and recently thought about maybe buying something special, like a Version 5 sti type r or ra. Looked on Autotrader last night, typed in £4000-£8000 and there were 127 cars........Bar 2 or 3, none of them had any service history from Japan, neither the all important Japanese auction certificate which I would have thought in anyone's common sense opinion would be the number 1 selling point, as the aution certificate does not lie, but unscrupulous UK dealer/importers do lie, unfortunately. There is one particular dealer who has a list of classics for sale, all with added Inovit wheels and fake roof vents. But no history or auction certificate on any of their cars, not one of them.

All I can reasonably conclude is this, that sadly the cars for sale are graded 'R' which means they have been crash repaired and sold very cheaply, hence the dealer 'loses' the auction certificate.

What makes this situation a lot worse are the people here in the UK are stupid enough to actually buy one of these high performace cars without any history, without any knowledge of whether the car has been a complete write off or lightly damaged.........who really knows?

'Look at me geezer, me got a tasty Impreza, its well wicked, does 0-60 in 4 seconds man, innit' Does it have full history my friend? No? Why not?

Do any of you people on here know of a reputable dealer who sells nice Classic STi's WITH Japanese auction certificates and service history? Do such dealers exist in this country? Thanks.

EddScott

Would they be after gold and frankensense?

If so I went to look at a Lancia Integrale which when seen in the flesh was a horrendous mess - it is now for sale somewhere very similar which I have also visited and seen equally poor cars.

The problem with auction sheets is that they can be forged or altered so even with the production of the sheet you don't really know. I imported a GTIR way back in 2000 and got the auction sheet faxed to me before I agreed for the chap to bid on the car - he could have just scrawled a 4 onto the grade sheet.

Another thing to remember with imports of a certain age/condition they are here because they would cost too much to keep in Japan - is that not the case with the Ska'ken thing.

Bodge the buggers back together and shipped them to blighty - they'll buy 'em

I've got a couple of cars in mind right now (Black Prodrive Bugeye or V5 STI RA) I feel more confident buying the bug then the RA and have seen some shocking STI RAs in the past. I feel the import is such a gamble.

eggy790

iTrader: (20)

shame this i know what you mean, which is why im looking at getting another classic off the site, but it has to be something that wows me with all its reciepts and history and also other members vouching for the owner

.:mike:.

Would you have happened to be looking on the website for a certain dealer in Keighley per chance?

eggy790

iTrader: (20)

by the sounds of it.. where he said inovit wheels, sounds like mir motors?

Pete

I know what you,re saying, i looked high & low to find one and nothing, then luckily i find mine on Pistonheads already with a great spec too..

£6200 you can have mine..

GazTheHat

It was not knowing whether i'd find a decent one, that led me to spend a bit more and get a newage a few years back. Now it's even more of a minefield.

Peanuts

iTrader: (15)

you typed in too much money buddy.
Try again but from £2000 - 4000

EddScott

Gaz - thats partly my feeling.

Theres a V5 STI RA on ebay which I like the look of although I have questions about some parts of it - stains on the blue seats (headrests) I bought blue seats for my Sonic Blue UK turbo and got the stain off as it was just hair gel. And velcro on the centre bit by the gearstick - could be extra *** sockets for whatever japanese people feel they need in their car to survive or for boost controllers that have been stuffing 2 bar through the turbo.

Theres also a V5 Type R that fits the bill although I'd need to see the price come down.

OR

I really like black Prodrive bugeyes. For 6K I could get a reasonable mileage car, more car for the money as new ages are bigger than classics, an extra gear but more importantly I've got more of a chance of buying a decent car thats not about to pop on me.

I'm also watching the price of an RB5 on ebay with a knackered engine. If it went cheap enough I could organise moving the car to whoever to get it repaired, hand over 4K for a decent engine rebuild and job done but with the added bonus of a warrantied engine - if only for say 12 months.

jonboy0373

Hi what does the jap auction cert look like, any pics ? i have a peice of paperwork thats not the reg cert and is double sided and has a red square stamp in the middle box at bottom.

GC8

...to be continued...

GC8

Because everyone agues with me when I say this, I will qulaify my opinion first... I have imported many, many cars from japan and I have looked at thousands upon thousands of direct auction listings before bidding on cars. I looked at hundreds a day, if not thousands and I did this for five days a week for over three years. Every vehcile that had any service books with it at all had this notified in the appraisal and in my considerable experience less than 1 in 100 but probably more than 1 in 1,000 cars sold at auction in Japan had books. Remember too that theres nop private market in Japan and virtually all dealer sold vehicles are sourced at auction, so these arent lesser cars. I wont bore you with why there isnt a paper serveice record for most cars, now why this doesnt affect their value (briefly, even if Japs werent the type of people to service cars, no parking space = Kei car only, no service = no part exchange so youre stuck as you cant own a car without a police inspected parking space). That establishes whether cars commonly have service records and why not and whether it affects their value. Whenever Ive said this on SN before Ive always had people argue that their car did have a filled in service book, so I was mistaken. Unfortunately for them Im not: it can happen,but its so rare its untrue. The 'supplier' has two options: they can have a genuine service record completed by the servicing dealers, hard work even if your agent it prepared to spend a day or more running around, or two: they print one up to satisfy the English buyers who presume that the Japanese car market is like the British one (it could not be more different)..... I know what I think has happened in most cases.....

When you say 'auction certifiate' I think that you mean a copy of the grading appraisal, which is stuck to the windscreen. Here I agree with you fully and when importing was still common, I used to urge people to ask to see this constantly. Dealers wil come up with all sorts of reasons as to why they dont have it and in some cases people will have bought in Japan and have either cleaned-up (good) or tarted-up (bad) the car. The real reason usually though, that most dealers dont have it, is because they bought their cars from a docks auction and didnt actually import the car themselves. Despite what they say the majority couldnt even point out Japan on a map, let alone buy, transport, de-register and ship out cars. The cars sold at docks auctions are usually the dregs of Japanese auctions bought for little (and shipped over in slack space) and tarted up (given a 'haircut' in popular parlance) before being sold to dealers here... Many will have had tatty repair history grades, but theyre are several, some bad, some not: many other cars will simply be Grade3s or even 2s!...

Simon

172sport

iTrader: (6)

What do you expect? classics are at the bottom of the market now and can be had for £1000 or less. There are that many of them you will just have to trawl through the trash to find the odd good one.

wrx287

iTrader: (8)

Id look on Pistonheads. Lot of nice stuff popping up on there at the minute.

Pete

Like he said....^^^^^

GREGGYG

iTrader: (2)

Thanks for all your replies, much appreciated.

chrispy200+

iTrader: (2)

I was lucky with my version 5 type r, has a fully stamped up history book and info from japan, made a nice change finding all that. I used to import cars myself and think only one ever came over with a full history

Ianm1983

thats why I bought a UK one, from a dude known in the scene locally and with a full history

people may turn theyre noses up at it coz its not an import or an sti but end of the day I can tell you when and where every service its had was done and where the only other 2 owners lived and I can be confident its not been tracked, crashed or thrashed to within an inch of its life.

and its still 270BHP which is still pretty quick on the grand scale of things.

Wouldnt go near an import without a history and certificate and even then itd be geting all the belts oils and filters done the day I got it.

coops1

iTrader: (5)

Well if you are interested I have an v3 STi ra with ARP head studs, gas flowed heads, 20g turbo, fmic, headers, de-cat bla bla bla that I would sell for the right price. It has so so much paperwork with it I wouldn't know where to start..

DazW

iTrader: (1)

Another one of the lucky 'few'...

http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w...04917_1280.jpg

http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w...04918_1280.jpg

But to be honest, anyone buying a car ...any car, including a UK & trusting a service history booklet is a mug ...as it's not exactly hard to fake (that's why a bundle of service receipts & a call to the dealer is worth far more imo)

shaggy6

iTrader: (2)

I looked at around 5 type-r's and all didnt feel right..until i found mine which had full sevice history and loadssss of uk history and recipt.. sometimes you get a good one but its pot luck really