I bought this little Honda s660 from an auction in Japan I paid the equivalent of £ 6,600 for it which seems like a bit of a barging when you see the price of them online but as we'll find out there are a lot of extra cost that you need to add on and so I'm not entirely sure whether I'd have just been better off trying to buy one here in the UK rather than importing myself the bigger the car gets the more expensive the shipping cost becomes there's also certain things you need to know and Hoops you have to jump through in order to be able to legally register and drive an imported car in the United Kingdom so then gav I take it it's passed uh unfortunately not Mt I'm not even sure that this car that I bought is a good one or a bad one because I only had a few minutes to look at it before I bid on it in the auction in Japan so this will be the first time I get it on the ramp so there is one problem M notor I haven't even driven it or any hondt s660 for that matter so I don't know if I'm even going to like it this doesn't feel like a particularly Quick Car well it is only 64 brake horsepower I'm a little bit worried that buying this car might a bit of a [Music] mistake a few months ago I went to Japan and while I was there I wanted to check out a Japanese car auction so I got in touch with a chat called Aman from autocom Japan which exports cars from Japan all around the world anyway I got a bit carried away and bid on this L Honda s660 and ended up buying it autocom Japan managed everything from transporting it to the port in Japan to shipping it to the UK I'll break down the cost and how they handle the whole process so you don't even need to go to Japan yourself later in the video but what happens once your car arrives in the UK I've come to my car Import in darbishire now they're the largest processor of privately imported vehicles in the UK they do 3,000 Vehicles a year and they're going to be getting my car Road ready so I can drive it legally in the UK this is Gavin Huard the workshop manager at my car import he'll be responsible for getting my s660 road registered but first we need to see if the car I have bought is is a Mina or a Lemon Let's get it on the ramp to me it looks almost like it's new not like it's been 60,000 M no it's absolutely uh perfect to be honest what about these bolts I mean look they're all like even all the subframe everything about it the steering wrap boots even down to the brake calipers themselves and a lot of cars that come in from Japan they all normally have brand new suspension on them even though it doesn't need it that's just the way they do things out there I feel like I've bought a great car but you're saying to me that this is normal for a jack car this is normal the rubbers like on here are really good you know 100,000 km but every bit of rubber just looks great it will be yeah I mean all these brake pins these have been removed and regreased in the UK you don't get to see these things it's servicing levels are a little bit different as well so again it's nice to see and these pipes here these the um they're all your air conditioning pipes onion on them at all absolutely nothing and the belts look the belts like new and are the Japanese really fastidious with their servicing as well they love it and this is one of the great things about importing a car from Japan is that really the condition is going to be better than the equivalent in the UK correct yes so there is one problem about that I'd like to tell you about is the undal on the car nothing too major as you can see there is Stone chip on the floor pan but that's normally about the only place that they put it everywhere else is normally exposed as you can see just up here there isn't any it's yes it's coated with a little bit of paint but as you can see right on the corner Edge just say it's just starting to get a little bit of service corrosion again nothing major but if you catch it now get it under sealed you're good because otherwise if I drive this in the UK over winter yeah it's not going to look like this won nothing no won't look nothing like that Japanese cars don't often have as much undal as European ones from the factory reason being in Japan they don't salt their roads like we do in Europe and salt causes corrosion no salt less need for underseal and it's why when I bought my Suzuki jimy I chose to add some extra underseal to it so I you it would be more likely to rust than an equivalent European model anyway maybe I'll do the same treatment to my s660 but as the car is looking good so far let's see if it's actually safe to use on the road one of the key things I need to be able to drive this car on the road in the UK is anot Unfortunately they can doots here at my car import so we're going to put it through the test and hopefully fingers crossed it'll pass theot is an annual vehicle safety roadworthiness and Emissions inspection required for most Vehicles over 3 years old when you're buying a used car in the UK it's always worthwhile going on the government website and checking the past mot history you can look at reasons for if it's failed in the past find any advisories so things that need to get fixed that you know you probably want to look into and you can also look at the past mileage for each mot that was carried out so you can use that to vouch the car's current mileage really really handy so this is the past mot history for my Porsche 911 996 unfortunately there isn't a similar history for the Honda s660 for me to check because obviously it's fresh off the boat that doesn't mean though that it hasn't got a similar history in Japan the similar test is called the shaken and it's done every 2 years it's actually much stricter with testers checking almost every nut and bolt on the car unfortunately there's no centralized online system for the shanken like there is with theot so even if I understood Japanese it would be very hard for me to check all the past history of the shens for my s660 hopefully everything will be okay so what we going to do now G so basically what we're going to do this part theot is testing the suspension and the steering basically here at my cor Port we use the ATL which means that we don't need a second man inside the vehicle waggling steering wheel waging steering wheels yeah that's the thing of the past for us everything's automated all on the remote to do the suspension checking all the bushes ball joints everything like that press that button which switches the motor on and then we press this button where you can see side to side motion all we're looking out for there is any excess movement that obviously shouldn't be there and then the second one that we do is then for the steering all the steering joints so that one we press this button now as you can see it's moving the steering so now I can check everything there so what I'll do is go underneath it now let's find out if it's all [Music] [Applause] [Music] good how's it looking in all honesty absolutely perfect exactly as I expected it to be and there's no pling any of the joint honestly it is lightning result gav got on with the rest of the test the brakes were spot on the were amazing and all the lights worked as they should and were properly aligned the car appeared to be flying through its mot so then gav I take it it's passed uh unfortunately not Mt what it was doing really well what's going on to be honest I could have told you it' failed before I even bought it in there's no fog light fited to the vehicles that come from Japan oh let's have a look so we've got no switch on the in the dashboard yeah and obviously on the back you'd normally be a location somewhere for a fog light now fog light in the UK has to be either Central or to the off side which is the right hand side of the vehicle we have a reflector not a problem but normally we'll have a fog light somewhere located around here but don't they have fog in Japan well they have fog around the world but no they don't need fog lights as standard and why do I need to fit this with a fog light now what what's what's the reason well the reason being is if we put this through for an Iva now it will fail for not having a fog light fitted we got to fit one we're going to fit one the Iva test or individual vehicle approval is for imported cars not sold in Europe and it ensures they meet UK standards un likee theot which checks for roadworthiness the Iva focuses on compliance with UK and EU laws for example with theot you check the tread depth and condition of the tires whereas for the Iva the tester is merely looking for an e mar on the tires to make sure they meet UK regulations right let's check the tires then gav so yeah so what we're looking for map is one of three stampings on the on the tire one is a do one is a E mark and the other one is a JIS s Mark either one of them three will do the job so this corner as you can see you've got a dot mark there so this tire is absolutely fine good again we look around circumference of the tire so we've got an e marking and we've got a DOT marking so we've got both on this side they're the same they're exactly the same brand exactly the same Tire everything's the same okay but it's good that's a double pass that's all good so onto the offside front yeah we've got an e marking on this one but we haven't got a DOT marking but it doesn't matter we've got the E doesn't matter we've got the E good so that's all good so what we got on this one so then on this one what we're looking for same same three yeah um I don't know if I can't see it properly but is wait there isn't one so some we've got two some we've got one and this one we've got none none zero it's the same bluming Tire I don't it's exactly the same tire so unfortunately this one will fail the ibaa unless we change it gav said this sometimes happens with cars from Japan there's Tire sellers there sometimes have access to tires which are e marked for export to places which don't require e markings I actually didn't know what tires were on the the car and I didn't check them before I bought it so I thought I bet play it safe and order some in advance and obviously I thought I should get some Japanese tires for my Japanese car so went for some yokoh Hamas I've actually had yokoh Hamas on my Mazda MX5 really like them so I thought they'd be great for the Honda fly enough it's actually got yoka haras on it right now but it's a really good job that I have these tires with the all important markings to get it through the Iva we were about to get the new tires fitted and then something happened what we're going to do now is remove the tire we're going to fit the new ones I'm actually going to have a goic I've never done it before and I thought it'd be a bit of fun the main time we need to remove first get that one done and um might put the new ones on as well all right found e marking what it's the first time I've ever seen it on the inside this is perfectly compliant so the Iva test will always look on both the outer and the inner side of the tire absolute Madness should we put it back on then cuz these tires actually look pretty good it seems like a bit of a waste not to use them they are yeah that's absolutely fine there you go so with decided to put the old tire back on and I returned the other new ones to save some money and then we cracked on with the one change we definitely had to do installing the fog lamp hopefully it would be a simple job so go how do we go about fitting the fog lamp well on this vehicle we've got three options the first one is to use the headlamp fuse which we'll test in a moment to see if we've got a nice 12volt signal there that doesn't work on side lights and will only work on the dip beam and the main beam now if that doesn't work we can use front fog lights cuzz that's perfectly okay with the i VA manual correct we haven't got any on your vehicle that's a no go that's a no-o straight away third option is to go into the cbell system now this is where you don't want to go really unless you really really have to mainly because the feed that goes down to there isn't a constant feed it's more of a signal so the control module inside the vehicle will send a signal down to the headlamp the headlamp will go yes brilliant I'll switch the headlamp on nightmare you don't want to touch it so are there any cars that you've worked on that have that problem where you have to do it through the canus it is Toyota prees so we're going to test yours in a moment and let's hope we don't have to go down that route first we needed to locate the main headlamp View and check the voltage there should be no voltage when the lights are off or just on side lights however you do want voltage when the lights are on dipped or main beam since that's when the fog light should operate will the Honda work as we hope so we've got side lights okay no it hasn't changed dip that's perfect and then Main and I want that voltage to stay there as well stay voltage perfect does that mean that we can do the easy cheap system that's the easy cheap system result next gav measured a wire longer than the car and threaded it through the bulkhead with a tube being careful not to damage the W Loom or the dash he then added a piggyback fuse for the fog lamp into the headlamp fuse slot he secured the wiring with cable ties and fitted us surround to make sure it's protected from the elements for the Iva test he needs to fix the wiring every 30 cm to prevent it rubbing and then shaing as that's a common cause for car fires and there were a few more rules he needed to follow as well right so basically for the iv8 switch has to be visible from the driver's position luckily on this one we've got a trash control button down here I've also got a blank here which I've already removed oh that's the which I've taken off so because I can see it from the driver's view then that's okay to fit these two you do have to drill into the dashboard but we're not doing that today we uh can fit one of these ones I mean this one will need to be trimmed down a touch Ah that's not bad we can make that one work okay good gav trimmed the switch fitted it into the dash panel and wired it up after connecting an earth and testing it he ran the output wire to the back hiding it under the interior trim he carefully worked it through the rear bulkhead following the car's wiring route to keep it tidy for the Iva test a few cable ties later it was ready for the fog lamp so we've got the all important fog lamp fitted so what will the Iva test to be looking for with this the correct markings e marking and then an F Mark or a B Mark is that why we didn't put a light in here or in here because while I can see some e marks there's no FBS that's right yeah and also the fog light has to be more than 100 mm away from the lighting surface of a brake light so even if the brake light bulb is here and it emits light around this part of the L unit it has to be still more than 100 mm away from that lighted the lit surface however I'm not going to lie to you that doesn't look great so when the vehicle's registered yeah you can make things more aesthetically pleasing as long as it emits for theot the correct amount of Light which is normally in conjunction with the brightness of a brake light and that's the kind of brightness that anot tester was looking for so once you've done the Iva and it's passed that forget about that it's box ticked all you have to think about is passing anot then it is yes that's Madness all we had to do now was test it right in gav let's see if you fit it correctly so Adam's going to tell us if the light comes on first thing I'm going to do is just turn on the switch we have the ignition on and now I just need to rotate the light switch ready so it shouldn't come on with the side lights on no it's not on good and now it should come on with the headlights on no it's not on well let me just put full beam no it's not on you lying it's not on it's actually it's not on what the hell have we got a faulty switch you tested the switch L yeah we did all that this is not supposed to happen thankfully because gav had previously checked the circuit at the switch he could identify the issue as being the fog lamp itself are you going to fit a new light no what somebody's gone and done is they've put the wireing on the wrong way around I know exactly what they've done now so yeah somebody's used the live is the earth that'll be The Apprentice after a bit more work rewiring it was time to try again okay take two so once again got the ignition on I'll just turn the switch on lamps off so it should be off it's off side lights should be off off and the fog lamp should come on now with the headlights on no well let me try main Beam not on you you are definitely lying this time classic Adam we got it working good so that's that done then isn't it and now we're got to move on to the next thing Speedo Speedo Japanese cars use km an hour but we need miles per hour for the UK with analog DARS this switch is simple you just replace the clock face with one showing mph like these for Land Rover Evoke however it gets more complicated with a digital Speedo like on this Honda so there's two options now the first and cheapest is to have a little digital display which is wired into the OBD Port sits up there on the dash and it'll read your speed in miles an hour however you'll have your clock showing kilm an hour and your odometer will be in kilom as well a better and more expensive solution is to have this special box here which can convert the feed from the can bus from kilometers an hour into miles an hour but you then have to have it married up to the clocks which have to be sort of reprogrammed and rewired to accept this feed so that they'll actually display the speed in miles an hour though you do have to add a little sticker to say that you are looking at mph the beauty of this as well as being able to use the normal clocks the odometer will be in Miles car is uh just over 100,000 km so when we turn it on and water it up it should actually read about 60,000 M or so let's find out if it works gav spliced in the converter box to the canvas and then refitted the speed up before screwing in the rest of the instruments around we needed to check it worked hopefully it would right in gav Moment of Truth we've got yes 62,000 miles but we do have a check engine light the dashboard's been now okay okay good all right let's build it up and then take it for a little road test okay then it was just a case of replacing the last bits of trim and testing the Dos read the speed correctly the Iva testers could ask to put the car on a rolling road to check it if they sense it's not been done right okay we're in the car and we're going to test this Speedo out so I've got an app on my phone which uses GPS to measure the car speed in miles an hour gav you're going to drive down here at about 10 20 mph see if that agrees to that away you go yeah 12 saying 11 so that is about 1 mph over this which is what you want isn't it for the test it's about what you'd expect to be honest it will never be 100% obviously picking up the GPS so uh but yeah more than happy with that now isn't it the case if the speed on the speedometer is exactly the same as the actual speed then it's a failure yeah there is a discrepancy in the speed and on the speed rollers that we will put it through on the test the RVA test will be able to see what the actual speed is to what the speed speed rollers are saying speaking of speed tell you the truth this doesn't feel like a particularly Quick Car well it is only 64 brake horsepower with a car motd and now ready for its Iva test the last thing to do was a quick oil and filter change I asked gav to take an oil sample so I could send it away for analysis to make sure the engine is in good condition now I'll be getting the results later in the video we did that oil and filter change just as a matter of caution don't know whether we needed to however I have found these stickers here inside the co which have some information and some kind of kilometers written on them and they relate to oils and stuff I'm actually going to speak to someone who might know what all this means and see how well I can fit this roof guess I've got to learn it's so not in there there's probably a better technique like rolling it across but it's easy can't believe that's the roof done like there needs to be Central bit what's this no there is is it what is this what was there you feel like there's something that goes there that's not right a few moments later there's something it's not got a Honda written on anything but that's anything it look about right YY we have the part that's better now it's done wasn't as easy as I thought e right then that's all the bits back together again we've done all the mods we need to for the Iva correct yeah and so we're going to get it tested on Monday brilliant can we film that not allowed to unfortunately a government thing then right okay so you can get that done and then we're going to get the car delivered to me and then we'll have to wait for a bit to get all the paperwork yeah it's normally around 2 weeks normal plates get allocated and all the paperwork sorted and it's UK road legal and then I can get and drive it so I'm actually going to have a couple of other things done to it so look out for that it's coming shortly in the video but for now gav thank you very much all your hard work really appreciate it I left the s660 with my car import for its Iva test and contacted a man from autocom Japan which helped me buy the car because we' noticed there was something missing normally when you buy a car in the UK we'll have the manual with it and you'll look to have like service history but I didn't find any of that in the car when they put their cars into the auction they remove all this belongings they will ship it later I got some manual books and some papers for you which I will be sending them to you very soon well that's interesting cuz I did notice a sticker looks like something to do with like servicing the white one is about the transmission oil the owner changed the transmission oil at around 95,000 km previous owner was changing every 40,000 km usually done at 880,000 km so he was keeping it better condition and the second sticker is about engine oil change done at 999,000 km I actually noticed when I was looking around the car all the parts seem to be like genuine Honda parts I found out that this guy went to the Honda shop he had the full package servicing and had everything done at Honda every 12 months sometimes more regularly they keep it wellmaintained in good shape in such good condition I'm really really pleased with it actually so do you know anything else about the other owners of the car there were three previous owners first purchase was done in 2016 November next owners were after 2022 one of the things that I find interesting is that you do it all pretty much online so you're not going to see the cars how can you tell the quality of the car that you're bidding on Japanese aut auctions are known for their reliability we read through the auction report of the car we make sure that whatever customer gets is the in best condition so that's very different to like a UK auction UK auction you go along you have a look at the car and it's basically on you whereas in Japan you have like experts going over the cars and giving you a full Rapport so thorough that you can just trust that and it's all good there's an important point to be able to access all this Japanese Auto Auctions you must be a company registered in Japan they don't have access to this all auctions they must go through reliable company like aom Japan so that they will be able to browse and choose cars from all auctions you don't have to come to Japan just sit in your armchair in UK and just pick the car and we will handle the rest we have exported More Than 940,000 Cars overseas shipping cars anywhere in the world so apart from our main markets like Kenya mozambik Tanzania Zambia Jamaica we are also sending tons of cars to USA Canada Australia UK Ireland Malta cypers I was quite surprised at the cost for my my car it was like just 400 quid this is all due to the our big amount we are handling every month regarding the shipping the bigger the car gets the more expensive the shipping cost becomes mine was quite a small car so I think mine was £700 and that's for shipping it from the port in Japan to the poor in the UK and that's all of that stuff there is one problem with all of this am man and I think you've probably made it far too easy for me to import some other cars from Japan because a quite fancy a Toyota Century maybe that's for the time now listen if you're thinking about importing a car from Japan check out autocom Japan okay I'll put a link in the description to this video and the pin comments alternatively just scan the QR code there using mobile phone it'll take you directly there and I've also got a link in the pop out Banner listen man thank you very much for all your help getting the s660 and for sorting out all the information on it as well really enjoyed it a few days later I got a message on my phone that my s660 had passed its Iva test all I had to do now was wait for the registration paperwork to come through the post in the mean time my car import delivered the car to me and I was pleased to see some cool changes let me show you this it's a bit silly but it's also a bit of fun so I've got myself a personalized number plate and it works really well with the square Japanese plate here's Matt another thing I need to show you is this so if I go in here and I turn on the lights all the way on remember go down here turn on that fog lamp what we have now is a fog lamp that is hidden look so it's in there shines brightly through that Gap so we replace the reversing light bulb got that bulb in there so we don't have to have the exposed fog lamp here at the back just looks a lot neater and that should pass theot which is good news I tell you what else is good news so I had that oil sample back there I took and it's all clear so the car is in good condition don't need to worry about that also I don't need to worry so much about the salty roads in the UK because gav did me a favor and undersealed the car which is really handy however there is one small problem my registration papers still hadn't come through on the car yet so I can't actually drive on the road that'll be for another video so make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out finally though let's find out how much this little Honda s66 has cost me in total and will it work out cheaper than buying one that's already here in the UK you know I said at the beginning of the video this car cost me £ 6,600 got that wrong cuz I used the wrong exchange rate it actually came to £ 6,358 then there was autocom Japan's fee of £44 shipping that was £700 that and import Duty that was £ 1,542 there finally My Car Imports fee which includes everything from them picking it up from the port getting it converted for UK Road use put it through the Iva theot and getting it Road registered plus 6 months Road tax came to £ 1,833 that means the total cost of my little Honda s660 is £ 10,837 so was it worth it well this car is so rare there only a few online but most are automatics which I didn't want the only manual I saw it's more expensive so then not only did I make a decent saving by personally importing this little Honda s660 myself I also had more choice you see there's 50 of them up for auction every single day in Japan and half of those are manuals so I was able to find the right car to meet my needs and my budget and I'll tell you what I'm just so happy with it it's cute and unique I hope you enjoyed the video if you did give it a like if you'd like me to import another car from Japan give me some suggestions in the comments I'll read through them and it'll give me inspiration because you know what I think I've got the bug for it now speaking of which huge thanks to autocom Japan and my car import for making this all possible and if you haven't done so already make sure you subscribe to this channel because very shortly I'm going to upload a full in-depth video review and row test of my little Honda s660 and there'll probably be another video in the future as well about me tuning it anyway thanks for watching