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Auction Finds: Toyota Century - Japanese Exective Meets Zil
Not the most beautiful car in the world, the Toyota Century. In fact, it would not looked out of place parked in front of the Kremlin in the bad old days of the Cold War.
Its one redeeming feature is that, as far as I know, it is the only Japanese production car with a V12 engine, although it only puts out a lazy 276 horsepower. I just wonder what would happen if Japan had a cottage sports car industry like you find in the UK. I’m sure some bright spark would find a way to add a couple of turbos and shoe-horn this into a light chassis for some real fun. In the end, though, it must be one of the most frustrated engines in the world - doomed to spend its days trundling around in a glorified taxi.
Toyota Century
Japanese Taxi
You can expect to pick up a late-model 2006 grade 4 for about 4 million Yen in the auctions here. If you are interested in Japanese car auctions, or you are interested in getting a Century for yourself, please contact us.
Categories:
auction finds, toyota
Toyota iQ 130G
Toyota is upgrading its range of iQ city cars by adding a larger 1.3 liter engine to the current 1 liter class that has been available here since late 2008. The 1NR-FE engine may be larger, but it gets a class-leading 23 KM per liter in the most economical mode on its CVT transmission.
The question is whether customers will think they need a larger engine in such a small car. After all, there are many kei cars in Japan that have 660 cc engines, which are more than acceptable for trundling around town (and spending a lot of time sitting at lights - which is what “motoring” generally is over here). The one liter model is clearly (and not very subtly) aimed at the similarly-engined Smart. Whether there will really be demand for a larger engine than this is yet to be seen.
If you are interested in the older 1 liter 100G models, you can pick very nice low mileage ones up at the auctions for 1.1 or 1.2 million Yen. Click this link to find out more about our Japanese car auctions where we can get these for you and export them around the world.
Categories:
toyota
Insight or Prius… or Leaf?
The Honda Insight stole a march (not a March) on the latest Toyota Prius when it arrived in Japan in early 2009. I remember seeing a TV news report here at the time implying that the Insight was not only selling better than Honda’s expectations but that, in fact, it was pretty much the only Honda model that was making it out of the showroom at all.
(Honda were not the only one struggling at that time: In the depths of winter when the prospect of a second Depression seemed very real, we heard that Lexus dealers in Kyoto had managed to sell just one single car in a whole month. Perhaps it was just a rumor, but it seemed very believable at the time.)
Anyway, it seems that the Insight has had its moment of glory: As soon as the new Prius came out, the spotlight shifted. Now it is Toyota who are beating their sales forecasts and the (cheaper) Insight is left languishing. Part of this is probably due to the Prius’ carefully-cultivated brand image. “Hybrid” and “Prius” are almost synomymous, after all. It does not help that it is also seen as an inferior car - however good its fuel economy. Apparently, Honda is working frantically on upgrades, but there are also some tuners out there who are coming up with their own as well. OK, so it might not go faster, ride better or have better economy - but it beats the pants of the standard version when it comes to looks.
The difference in the two brands can also be seen in the sold prices in the Japanese car auctions. I had a look at sold prices for the Prius S and Insight G. Taking sold price results from the last 3 months, the outcome was quite surprising:
- Prius S list price = 2.2 million Yen.
- Prius S average auction price * = 2.38 million Yen
- Honda Insight G list price = 1.89 million Yen
- Honda Insight G average auction price * = 1.75 million Yen
(* This is the average price for cars with delivery mileage only in perfect new condition. Obviously cars with greater mileage would be cheaper. If you want to explore the Japanese car auctions for yourself, click here.)
Whoah! Wait a minute. Let’s look at those Prius prices again. The auction price is higher than the new list price? What is going on there? To be honest I am really not sure, but there are a couple of guesses I will throw out there. First of all, it could be caused by demand. If you have customers beating down your door for a new Prius and Toyota can’t crank them out quickly enough, you need to get your hands on a basically new one to keep up. Another possibility would be that that maybe Toyota customers specify a whole raft of optional equipment on their Priuses which means that these ones at auction were actually worth quite a bit more than the base model to start with. But surely some of the Honda’s would also fit that pattern and yet they show depreciation.
This is all well and good, but what I am wondering is whether in the longer term both of these companies are going to be leapfrogged by Nissan, who seem to be bypassing the hybrid model almost completely and are aiming at having a range of all-electric cars. I can see how Toyota’s lead in hybrid technology would easily become a hiderance. Japanese firms are notorious for clinging to technology they have pioneered long after it has become obsolete. The MiniDisc player is a classic example of this. So Toyota wins the battle, but who will win the technology war?
Categories:
EV, auctions, hybrid, nissan, toyota