Serving All of IrelandGuides
Importing from Japan is predictable once you know the sequence - which tax lands when, who sets the valuation, and where the money is actually saved. These are the answers we give customers on the phone, written down.
The dealer gets the car onto a ship. Everything after it docks is yours to arrange: the shipping agent, customs, import VAT, collection from the port and VRT. Here is the whole sequence, who you deal with at each step, and what every part costs.
It runs from ¥80,000 to ¥135,000 depending on which auction house the car comes from, and it rises with the winning bid. Here is the full rate card, band by band, and what sits inside it.
The wait on a Japanese import is not the ocean. It is the queue in front of it — and in the current market that queue is where the months go.
Two routes, and since February 2026 the tax arithmetic has stopped being close. The remaining case for Great Britain is real, but it is narrower than it was.
The honest answer turns on one question more than any other — whether you can wait. Here is the comparison without the sales pitch, including the third option most buyers never consider.
Three ways to pay, and one variable between them. Paying in full costs a flat €500 — the cheapest sourcing fee we know of in Ireland. Here is what each option costs, and how to choose if you cannot pay it all at once.
A longer voyage does not just cost you time. Because freight sits inside the customs value, every euro added to the shipping bill is taxed twice before the car reaches you.
You can do this yourself, and some people should. Here is what you take on in exchange, what it costs when a document is missing, and exactly what we charge.
Both routes end with a Japanese car on Irish plates. They differ in who carries the risk between here and there — and in whether the number you started with is the number you finish with.
Four separate charges, assessed by two different authorities at two different moments, each calculated on a different number. Once you see the order, the arithmetic stops being frightening.
Four charges land on a Japanese import, and one of them changed in February 2026. Here is the whole sequence in order, including the points where money is quietly lost.
Since January 2021 a car from England, Scotland or Wales is a third-country import. The question that decides the bill is not where you bought it — it is where it was built.
Import pricing with the protection of buying from a dealer here — including the right to walk away with your deposit after you have driven the car. Here is exactly how the two sliders set what you save.
On paper this is the cheapest route onto Irish plates: VRT only, no duty, no import VAT. Whether you actually get it rests on documents you need to see before you hand over money.
Handover is where most dealer relationships quietly end. It is the point at which ours starts costing us something — which is exactly why it is worth writing down.
Most of the work of importing is not buying. It is rejecting — sheet after sheet, car after car — and being willing to come home from an auction with nothing.
A Japanese auction sheet is the most honest condition report in the used car business, and it is still not the whole answer. Three things it does not tell you about a car, and what we do about them before we bid.
