Hello all. Owner of a 2010 import Toyota Corolla Axio X here

[Steffan]

I'm trying to keep my Japanse wife's Toyota Corolla Axio X on the road for as long as possible over here in the UK. So far so good! 

[Big_D]

Hi Steffan. Welcome. The more Toyotas on the road the better.

[FROSTYBALLS]

Hello Steffen - welcome to Toyota Owners Club.

[Bper]

Hi Steffen- welcome lots of good advice when you need it and always welcome when you give it. Have you had much to do to keep the car running.👍

[RUToyota]

welcome, Steffan

[Steffan]

Honestly, no the car has been absolutely no trouble. Its only done about 50K miles so the engine is quite new and we had the underside sprayed with some sort of coating when it was first imported and so we haven't suffered from any rust problems. I try and take care of the paintwork. So, 10 years on and still no problems. 

[Bper]

1 hour ago, Steffan said:

Honestly, no the car has been absolutely no trouble. Its only done about 50K miles so the engine is quite new and we had the underside sprayed with some sort of coating when it was first imported and so we haven't suffered from any rust problems. I try and take care of the paintwork. So, 10 years on and still no problems. 

Hi Steffan, was it expensive to import the car from Japan. I think others may be interested if they are looking at maybe importing a Toyota themselves. 👍

[Steffan]

Our experience may not be typical as we owned the car when we lived out there at the time and mostly did everything ourselves. 

So we had the car already, and after a bit of looking around we found someone on the Japanese side to come pick up the car and then put it on a car carrier ship and deregister the car on the Japan side (pickup/shipping was about £700 at the time back in 2010). 6 months later the car arrived in Avenmouth Docks and was deloaded along with thousands of other cars. I needed to show some documents at the docks (maybe an import license and proof of ownership?) so I could get the car. It was put on a small car transport our local garage had and driven back to the garage for UK adjustments to be road legal. 

The local garage then arranged for a Cat2 immobiliser to be installed and a fog light at the back. We also needed spray washers for the front headlights as it didn't have any. It may have also had some underseal of some sort at this point as I read somewhere that a Japanese car would rust quick on our salted roads. After that it was ready to be taken to the local VOSA inspection centre and certified as UK road legal. I can't remember how much the garage charged for the adaptions and the trip down to VOSA, it was a few thousand but maybe they helped out a bit because they were interested. Got some plates myself from eBay or some other place and just screwed them on.

Luckily, so far I haven't had any problems and no Japanese parts have ever been needed. Just servicing parts I get online.

I would consider doing it again, but this time spend a little more time on making sure the car I wanted could easily be adapted for UK road requirements. There are some differences which can be game breakers. Although Japanese second hand cars are cheap (at least over there they are) I wouldn't recommend it for a new driver trying to find a nice budget car as insurance was pricey for several years.

Also we've never had a fault so never been stung with getting parts from Japan... if anyone has experience sourcing parts it would be handy to know who you are just in case.