USS Tokyo Auction

Hi everyone. Here is JPC’s Mail Magazine #6.

Thursday is the day when USS Tokyo, the largest used car auction in Japan is on. This Thursday they had approximately 15,000 cars listed. You know, they sell the whole lot within a day! They have 10 lanes from A to J in 5 different categories. (In each category, they auction 2 cars at the same time, one is in the even numbered lanes and the other one is in the odd numbered lanes.) It starts at 9:30am and goes on all day without a break. The last auction finishes around 10:00pm.

Our staff leave the office at 7:30 in the morning to get there at 9:00 and start checking all the cars. This Thursday, we started with a BMW320i for a client in Japan. It has headlights called “Squid Rings” because of the shape, and the Xenon lights help your visibility in the dark. The rings make the car look cool & very special. The condition of the car was excellent. It has only been 3 years since it was first registered. We told the client about the condition and set the maximum bid. We got the car JPY100,000 lower than that. I think we were just lucky because the seller had not set the reserve price too high, and because it was so early in the morning, there were not so many bidders around. That was lucky and was a great start.

Next one was a Fit. It was the request from a client in Russia. It was manufactured in 2005 and they are called “JAZZ” and very popular in Europe for low-fuel consumption and user friendliness. There is nothing is particularly special about them but they do not have any faults either. It is a great car to drive. It is ideal for a housewife who just wants something small to do her daily chores. Yes, we won this one too.

We kept bidding for a Toyota Supra for a client from the UK, Estima for another one from Malaysia, Skyline, Silvia, Grand Cherokee, MR-S, Mercedes Benz, etc, etc… We won more than 10 auctions. We bid for around 30 cars, so the success rate was around 30%.

Moving from car to car, we had mixed result, some successful and some unsuccessful. Compared to last year, we seem to be buying cars around their market prices. Especially imported cars, they have been getting less popular from around last month because of their high fuel consumption. (We lost in a lot of auctions last year when we bid for imported vehicles.) This might be a reflection of the high oil cost. So if you want any used Mercedes Benz, BMW or American import, now is the chance. However, more buyers go for left-hand drive models, so if you do not mind right-hand drive ones, please give it a go. You might be surprised!

Why don’t you have a look at our auction database at http://jpctrade.com/auction/japaneseusedcarauctiondealdatabase.html

Spending all day at USS Tokyo, our staff looked exhausted. I decided to go home earlier today. Bye for now.


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(Editor)
JPC TRADE CO.,LTD.
Kato building 4F, 1-1-2 Furuishiba, Koto-ku, Tokyo
Japan Used Motor Vehicle Exporters Association (JUMVEA)
TEL : +81-3-5245-7731
FAX : +81-3-3643-4955