cool no?

 

Yup Definitely cool.

 

Whoa! Is that a factory build?

 

Apparently, "Blow" does all kinds of strange reproductions:

 

Ya they seem to do some neat stuff aimed directly at the Japanese love for classic North American Iron. A cool way to work around the very restrictive certification/saftey motor vehicle inspections Japan has in place yet retain the the look of classic American iron..

 

The school bus is cool too. But I think the Monkey Face wins the prize.

 

Saw one at a local car show here - have a picture of it somewhere - it was an early-vintage VW van replica made by these guys. It was beautiful, and built way better than VW ever managed back then.

 

I remember reading years ago, it more or less takes vehicles more than 5 or 6 years old off the road permanently. Something about all hoses and everything needs replaced, it is not cost effective. They cut the engines and transmissions out and sell them here in the states, if you're wondering where all those perfectly good used Toyota engines come from.

 

That is rather neat, kind of looks like they started to crash a classic and stopped mid way after they realized what they had...lol

 

Yup pretty close. Their yearly inspection regime is strict like you would not believe. I have a close bud in Vancouver that exports/Imports vehicles (Cars to heavy trucks) from Japan to Canada, Russia, the Caribbean south east Asia Europe etc etc.

We are are lucky here as we can put right hand drive Japanese cars (or any vehicle from any where for that matter) on the the road once they reach 15 years of age.


He explained the whole reason why you see Japanese market vehicles all over the planet and why they are so strict with inspections.

The inspection processes is set up to fail vehicles, he has acquired stuff that has failed cause the seat attachment bolts had spots of surface corrosion on them.
Supposedly the inspection process is set up to keep people buying new cars to support domestic auto production. Once a vehicle has failed it has to be brought back in to compliance using OEM parts installed by a certified shop. You can't do the repairs your self. So many vehicles once they fail are just sold by the owners.

So this leaves a pile of perfectly good vehicles that can no longer be put on the road in the Japan. In years past these vehicles were just scrapped. Now when some one does not want to spend the dollars to bring a vehicle back in to compliance more often than not it is sold to an Exporter for what amounts to pennies on the dollar in terms of value and they are exported all over the planet.

The Vehicles that you generally get from Japan are in amazing condition. I had him bring me over a 94 diesel C250 ( a model never sold in the western hemisphere) in 09 and the car looked like it was 2 years old it was basically mint inside and out. This one failed inspection due to a wire harness that had started to degrade (insulation was cracked). The one issue with Japanese market vehicles can be parts.
But mine being a Mercedes you can parts for any Mercedes sold in any market in the world at any dealership on the planet.

Too bad the EPA is so restrictive with this stuff in the states cause it is a way to get to get some pretty cool stuff you would not other wise get to see.

 

Neat looking vehicles! Also about the Japanese inspections, Very interesting. Amazing the stuff you can learn on FTE!!! Good stuff...

 

This also applies to the U.S. Honda service departments. I have a friend in a Honda service department that said they had a new vehicle come in for an inoperative electric seat. After his inspection he found the motor was bad. Honda ordered a complete new seat assembly ( not the motor) and they said they would have to send the entire seat assembly back to the factory for inspection of the defect

 

This bus with the monkey face would be very cool.