I'm in the market for a new car.
The garage who service my current car have suggested a petrol hybrid.
The Toyota Prius 1.8 has caught my eye, zero road tax, ulez compliant, 70 + mpg.
BUT, I'm wary I have no idea about petrol hybrids, also they are automatic, I've never driven an automatic.
And on a final note there's one that a dealer have imported direct from Japan themselves and they mention by saying the speedo still reads KMs so you can see its genuine.
I know originally all cars are imported but I've never heard of 2nd hand ones being imported.
Should I be wary ?
I've never spent more than 4k on a car my budget is 8k for this one
Recalling from 20+ years ago but I remember talking to friends and work colleagues about "Grey imports"
As I recall at the time in Japan you couldn't drive a car once it was more than 3 years old so they used to export them to other countries, the UK was a good destination as we also drive on the left
I believe that most of the cars were put in storage in Japan until they were about 8 or 10 years old before being exported and typically had about 35K on the clock (M or KM I can't remember), the delay was to ensure it didn't impact too much on their new car exports as these models would then be slightly out of date however -
The good news is that the Jap specs were normally better than the UK specs to begin with and the Japs tended to go for lots of extras or the cars came with them on as standard, the term "Fully loaded" used to be used for them
I knew a couple of people who had 10 year old Jap imports and never had any issues with them
