I have heard that the Japanese have a law that requires cars (or at least their engines) to be replaced when they reach 30,000 miles. This has been used to explain the large number of businesses in the U.S. that sell “low-mileage Japanese engines”.
Is there really such a law? (If so, I’d like a cite.) Or is it a myth?
This isn’t an answer to your question, but what I can say is that if it is a myth, it’s a widespread one, because the same sort of businesses operate here too.
This isn’t an answer to your question, but what I can say is that if it is a myth, it’s a widespread one, because the same sort of businesses operate here too.
I have no cites, but I asked a friend who lived in Japan for several years as a travel journalist for the English language press there. He never mentioned any kind of law that is responsible for feeding the lower mileage engines sold in the US. Rather, the engines are either yanked from vehicles involved in accidents or from used vehicles. Many of the vehicles are involved in quite minor accidents that don’t affect the engine at all–it is just that many Japanese like to turnover material stuff more quickly than Americans and a minor accident is a damn fine excuse to get a new vehicle.
He would walk down the alleys of the Tokyo area the night prior to garbage pickup and marvel at the wonderful technology being tossed–merely because it was last year’s model.
Never heard of such a law. I know for a fact that my father’s Volvo has 100,000 miles and never had an engine overhaul, let alone an engine replacement.
However it is expensive to own an older car in Japan. It used to be that annual inspection/registration was required for any car over 10 years old. Now it’s every two years but it’s still a big expense, typically over $1000 each time including registration fees and any maintenance/repair needed to pass the inspection. I’d guess many functional cars are junked because the owner chose to replace the car rather than go through another inspection.
A lot of Japanese second-hand cars are shipped to Australia and New Zealand for resale, rather than being junked. I hadn’t heard of any mileage law in Japan though, perhaps the registration requirements scr4 refers to above are the source of this rumour.
Disclaimer: I don’t own a car.
scr4 beat me to it. The high cost of the inspections is a big incentive to dump your old car and buy a new one. I’d thought, however, that inspections became yearly after five years, rather than ten.
I could be way off base on this, but another factor may be the way annual excise taxes are calculated. In the US, it’s related to the resale value of the car, and so decreases as the car gets older. In Japan, so I’ve been told, the tax is based on the size of the car’s engine, and so never changes.
Basically, there aren’t any laws requiring drivers to buy new cars, but there are a lot of disincentives to hanging on to old ones.