Originally posted by OldSkoolCadillac
alot of those vehicle may be built in the states and shipped over there. the japanese are willing to pay ridiculous sums of money for these things
i remember reading an article in a magazine about a wealthy business man that near payed $75000 US for a primer black 59 coupe deville lowrider and having put in a crate and sent over seas
I dont beleive thats true, you know i have a chapter in japan as a matter of fact takuji my president just left last night, we took him to vegas.
Anyways, my guys over there always tell me that japanese minitruckers are just like us, struggling to pay for things, also everything is more expensive over there. I firestone air compressor is $300.00 bucks, a smc 3/8 silanoid is $100 bucks for one. I know cause i send them parts because of the outrageous cost. A standard single color paint job thats good is about $7000 and up.Most guys over there stay with stock colors because they cant afford to paint there trucks, and the guys that go into primer stay in primer for a very long time. Very rarely do they pick up trucks from here and when they do they buy stock ones. Gogi from the tint shop in japan...look them up there awesome, there a fabricating shop was just here last week, he bought 4 tacomas and a frontier, and he wouldnt buy anything expensive or bagged already, he stayed here three weeks looking for the best deals and wouldnt look at anything bagged.
Two weeks ago Makato (mark) from truck trends magazine was here doing on interview and a story on and we had many conversations where he told me how broke minitruckers are in japan and that its a misconception that they all have the money and desire to buy finished trucks. He tells me there passion is building them themselves and i beleive it since my guys in japan are that way. And let me tell you they are not ballers by far and they are a small minority. There biggest show draws about 500 vehicles and of those only about 250-300 are minitrucks, they also have fullsizes, el caminos, vans, and some cars that are minitruck style.
the feature on SO CAL...will be in the september issue of truck trends which you cant buy here in the states but you can google search there site and find it...its pretty bad ass.
One more thing Lowlife Video will be in japan very soon to cover truck masters in november actually so look for an early next year up coming issue with all that and more.
http://www.trucktrendsweb.com/ heres the link to the truck trends site...and as you can see they have forums but who the hell knows what they say i sure dont.