My potential Hiace (its on the boat)

I am considering buying this Hiace, as it is already being shipped, and will be picked up from california and brought to Santa Fe, New Mexico by the importer, which happens to be near me. It seems like a nice change of events, being that I don't have to deal with any of the paperwork!

I wasn't sure if this was the right forum since it is not mine yet, but I have the option to get my deposit refunded on the vehicle at any point, and I wanted to see if anyone had some advice. The 'seller' or rather the importer has also not seen it in person yet, but has shared with me the very small pictures that were sent from Japan. The only noticeable rust is a spot just below the slide rail for the door, and then there is a scuff on the back bumper. I am wondering if this is a horrible place for rust? Not bad? Or am I likely to find lots of hidden rust if there is rust there? Otherwise, its a 94, has sonar/electric curtains and various other things that apparently all work. Sadly there is no kettle and hot/cold box which makes me a little sad haha, but can't win them all.   116,000 miles.

I will likely have it for about 13,500 usd, is that a good price? Or should I run away from the rust?

If you're willing to do the work up front you can save a lot of money importing a van yourself. I brought my van over using Pacific Coast Auto (the company your importer is working with, based on the photos) and a US-based customs broker, and to my front door I spent $5,700 USD.

I had a similar spot of rust on the other side of my van, which I got dealt with asap, hopefully yours isn't too deep. If you do purchase the van, you'll just need to remove the interior panel so a body shop can see the inside of the panel. While they are at it, have them spray cavity wax everywhere they can as a rust inhibitor. There a lots of little ports with plastic covers on the bottom of the panels that can be popped off for spraying.

Keep in mind that you may have to do a lot of engine work once you get it, so hopefully you are budgeting for that. Since you often get no service history, it's a good idea to have an experienced mechanic go through the whole engine before putting it into service. Right out of the gate I spent several thousand dollars getting all belts (including timing)/fluids/coolant hoses/engine mounts replaced. Throw in paint work, suspension lift, new tires, wheel bearings, front-end alignment, new stereo speakers, roof rack, starting battery, adding accessories, etc. and I've spent about $12,000 on mine. But, I now know it inside and out having done some of the work myself and have 100% confidence that it is going to get me where I want to go, and back home.

For $13,500 I would hope that the dealer is going to do a bunch of service to the van before selling it to you (hopefully at least the belts/fluids/hoses). I looked at recent auctions in Japan and that model van is selling for 496,000 yen at most, which is ~USD$4,600. I paid about $2,500 for my van at auction, then all the broker fees and shipping pushed it up to ~$5,700. So as it stands your dealer is set to make about $5,000-7,000 if they just hand over the keys to you. It would be good to know if the dealer is going to do any services prior to selling you the vehicle.

So it's up to you, you can go through the time and effort of working with Pacific Coast Auto to help you find the right van, bid and hopefully win, then file the paperwork with US Customs and your local DMV (not too complicated, the customs broker can do 95% of it, and you get instructions on what forms to present to whom), and arrange transport to your location. Or, you can let the dealer do it, and pay whatever markup they are asking to cover their costs/time/margin.

It all comes down to your comfort level, how involved you want to be in the process, and how much work you are willing to take on. For me, I couldn't afford my local dealer's prices, so I had to take on the work if I wanted to own one of these vans, and it has been satisfying to learn how to work on my van so I'm less reliant on a mechanic if something goes wrong, and can troubleshoot issues before they become catastrophic failures.

Btw, my van didn't comes with the kettle/hot/cold box either, but I am so happy I have the extra storage space in the center console that I don't miss it.


EDIT:

I actually just found your van on the 'sold' section of Pacific Coast Auto's website and this van's grade is a 'R' meaning that is has either been in an accident or has some kind of significant damage that the auction inspection team detected. For that price, I would be concerned about going with this one. Derek, the owner of Pacific Coast Auto regularly says that he does not advise their clients to purchase 'R' graded vehicles. As an R grade, I bet that they didn't pay more than $2,000 for this van, too bad the selling price isn't listed, sometimes that happens depending on the auction house.

Please see their auction information page for more info: https://www.pacificcoastjdm.com/auction-information

Wow, that is amazing that you found that. Hmm. I see that it is listed as 1995, whereas mine is supposedly the 1994 model, but the mileage lines up too perfectly. The shots from the pacific coast street by the JDM tree say 187535, and this sheet says 187505, so that is probably too close to be a coincidence. I think I may have to get my refund.

When you did your purchase, how long did it take to get from pacific coast's shop to the US? Just curious how long I am looking at waiting. It definitely seems like a better deal, and more money left to spend on keeping it alive. Hell, for this price I could buy a Toyota Coaster motorhome I saw on there hahaha, but thats not my goal.

Do you have any suggestions on which auction sites you used to find yours?


Thanks again, that was extremely helpful information!

I created my account with Pacific Coast Auto and placed my deposit in Feb 2018. I won my van at auction in August 2018, after getting outbid a number of times. Once I won the auction it took about two months for the vehicle to be de-registered, loaded onto the ship, and arrive at the port in Tacoma. I wouldn't worry about how long it took me to win a van, I was looking for something very specific (LH107W), and there were fewer examples going around then compared to the amount of KZH106W's going through right now.

You can always log on to Pacific Coast Auto's auction site (link below) using their guest account to start browsing vans, then you can decide later to contact them and set up your own account and put down a deposit.

Login: guest

Password: pacificcoast

http://auction.pacificcoastjdm.com/auctions/?p=project/searchform&searchtype=max&s&ld

Either way you go, this forum is an incredible resource, with lots of very friendly, helpful people. Good luck!

Wow @djathens what an awesome thing you did, looks like you have saved @SuperSloth a lot of money and trouble. Kudos to you!

Yes, that was definitely awesome of you. I went on there and was just looking for it to figure out how the listings work, and it took me quite a bit of fiddling to get it to appear! So I very much appreciate you taking the time to do that! Thats a pretty cool resource. I think my plan is to focus on selling my mx32 Cressida before diving in to the auction world, but I intend to be back here when I get another one on the boat!

I talked to the seller a bit when I was asking for the refund. He was trying to tell me that the nice ones get through the auctions at 10k a lot of the time and that the sold prices on that site are misleading. I am not sure what could be misleading about them exactly. But I got the refund so nothing shady, and no paypal disputes had to be initiated. My Cressida has been in a tiny town where nobody wanted to buy such a thing, but once I have it in civilization in about a week I will likely sell it pretty quick and get back to searching for a nice Hiace.

Thank you again djathens!

That's a great outcome.
Don't go away though, there's a lot of really good info to be had here so keep reading in the meantime.

There are some nuances to the auction completion prices. Some auction houses don't publish the sale prices, other times if an auction doesn't meet the reserve, the seller and the highest bidder can negotiate a price, and if that happens you don't get to see the final sale price either.

That being said, during the six months I was searching the auction listings (looking every day), I only saw a two vans approach USD$10k, and those were ones that were in immaculate condition (grade 4) and had less than 30k kms on the clock. More typically, you would see them selling for USD$2-4k, for grade 3 & 3.5 with between 30k and 150k kms.

The nice thing about the KZH1xx models is that Toyota sold them for a decade (1993.08 - 2004.08), so there will be a lot to choose from, which will help with the price, and parts availability.

The only downsides, IMO, are that they aren't part-time 4x4 and the engine seems more prone to little bugs, as the ECU and rubber/plastic engine bits age. This forum though provides an excellent guide to troubleshooting those issues, so fear not!

Also bear in mind that there will be the perfect older van out there, ready to pop up at any moment!

I used Car From Japan, I chose a model that had a lot of photos and was rust free, because that is the most difficult to fix!

That van at USD13,500 is about twice what it should be for one in TOP condition. Crazy.

Keep in mind that for us USA buyers, it costs about USD$3000 just to get all the export/import paperwork done and the van shipped to a port. And, if you aren't close enough to a port, paying $$$ for transport costs to bring it to your door.

A van in top condition in Japan (grade 4 B/B) would probably end up costing ~USD$8k-9k minimum to our front door, and that's before going through the engine and drivetrain to bring maintenance current. I've seen Japanese auctions alone reach USD$7k.