We got another SUPERIOR SELECTED feature for you here, and this time we mean to give you a little story on the pride we take upon ourselves each time someone hires us to FIND THEIR DREAMCAR IN JAPAN.
Its been everything from learning the ropes and buying cheap cars for myself, to helping others tap into the market- and finally the start of a long future legacy where our established name really means something.
Because you can’t go around calling yourself Superior Imports for nothing, right? True, and its been a long road with many sacrifices until we can honestly say that requests such as this car come around. Here comes a little story which is a testament of our quality control which I will tell with the aid of JALLEGRAPHICS pictures…
When Alexander contacted me, because he was in the market for a Series 8 (= 1999- year model FD3S RX-7). All he wanted was something that would separate from the crowd, but really valued that we also have a long history of tuning rotaries since early 2000’s; well before Superior Imports AB was conceived.
He had saved up a budget which we felt was good enough to get him a very nicely conditioned example, but he wouldn’t mind if it had some aftermarket parts either. Naturally, dipping into the market over there is dangerous if you are looking for quality.
I often say prices for a awesome car are much better then for the ”entry” kind of conditioned cars we at Superior still feel are worth importing. Why? Because there are so many of them, and everyone are looking for the cheapest possible!
Figure out the math yourselves, but we found ourselves out on thin ice very fast. Even venturing to have a go at a Veilside Fortune authentic Tokyo Auto Salon car which boggled our minds a bit, since it was a bit beat down and in shabby condition- but still eventually demanded around 40 000 Euro (!!!) to bring home.
And you thought Veilside was pretty hyped over there, son you don’t know just how extremely big they are there despite everyone hating down on them in the eastern world…
Moving on we got a little picky about it, and then found whats eventually this should I say… perfect RX-7. We did come across it once before, but it was sold way beyond our budget and we laughed off that you would need a fortune to buy it (which is true if you look at the market for a ”finished” car of this quality).
But then one day it was back on auction yet again, and I gave Alex a call knowing how much we had stretched his budget once. Why not talk him into trying it one more time just so we at least could bid over the minimum offer?
It was not hard to get the young man aboard the train, and we placed the bid… which led to another ”unsold” result. Oddly enough, our partners in Japan received a call from the broker handling the sale of the car at auctions (its complex), and did offer us a price which was well under the last sold price. It was still over our budget, even though Alex craved it more then anything.
Life had to go on, but a week or so later- it was up on auction yet again. Nothing new, cars can pop up weekly at some destinations and it doesn’t automatically mean they are sold cheaper.
Sometimes they are actually way more expensive since a bigger auction site did a little scalping on a small site; so they can make profit selling them in their market which has a lot more bidders.
But we went once again with what funds we had available, and we actually did an exception in letting Alex get some ”credit” just so we could up his bid. Normally this is a total no-no as you:
1. Want to keep customers orignal budget.
2. Its impossible to offer a good ”final price” of the import if we are to stake it in any monetary way.
Setting those principles aside to get something really unique, we went for it and… as you know reading this article and viewing the spectacular pictures taken by our already mentioned SUPERIOR SELECTED photographer Hjalmar van Hoek @ JALLEGRAPHICS (LIKE HIS FB!)… We got it!
The story has just started here, but after a few long months we have to fast-forward and just let the above pictures speak their distinct language. This is as good as it gets when looking in Japan. And I want to thank Alex for having confidence in that Superior is all about brokering your hard-earned cash on the best possible deal out there instead of giving ourselves a good pay-day and finding something ”just OK”.
[nggallery id=386]Lot more to tell about this beauty, but since it arrived so late and only had time to attend our Superior Meet before it went for winters rest- I can safely say 2012 will bring a lot of material worthy reading with this RE-Amemiya wide body winning RX-7 in the middle of it.
If you have any questions about the car or IMPORTS FROM JAPAN– don’t hesitate to comment below or CONTACT US right away!