Cars seem to be very generational, observes Duncan. His something-for-everyone approach applies to buyers. 2018 Honda Accord Turbo first drive: With 252 hp and a stick shift, you'll never miss the V6.I want to be a little bit of everything,” he says. This approach sets him apart from other JDM dealers, who tend to focus on one particular niche, like sports cars, and then recondition or even restore their offerings before listing them for sale. “Keep them as pure as we bought ’em.” He means it: Popping open a hatch on one of his firetrucks reveals, along with first-aid supplies, some Japanese first responder’s empty plastic bottle of Ito En-brand green tea. “Our philosophy has been to bring them in, check the fluids and wash them,” Duncan says. If he finds a model he likes, one his experience and intuition tell him has collectible potential, he’ll buy as many as he can and sell them with minimal markup. But a look at the whole Figaro inventory, with prices starting at under $6,000 and topping $30,000, gives a good indication of what he’s been going for: a wide range of offerings, honestly presented and offered at attainable prices. “There’s one out there with 700 (kilometers), and one with 4,000 kilometers … they’ve got to be the best in the world.” They’re stored under plastic. Duncan jumped he now has roughly 100 of the highly sought cars, including what may be the nicest two examples in private ownership. For the Figaro, which rolled out in 1991 and was instantly snapped up by Japanese buyers, that moment came last year. United States law permits the importation of vehicles not originally certified for sale here once those vehicles reach 25 years of age. 13th annual Japanese Classic Car Show: Japanese cars continue their crawl to collectibility.They only made 20,000 of them when they’re gone, they’re gone.” “I knew they were going to be a hit, and I wanted them as soon as I could buy them, and I wanted to buy as many as I could. “I saw them the first time at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1989,” says Duncan of the pint-size cabriolets his stature as a Honda dealer scored him the trip to Japan. And it started with what has become the closest thing Duncan Imports has to a signature vehicle: the almost unbearably cute, retro-styled 1991 Nissan Figaro. But in another, it’s been a long time coming. So in one sense, everything here is the overnight result of some mysterious purpose. Again, I don’t know if it’s divine intervention, but I do feel God has a hand in it.” Before all this, he says: “If you’d have told me I’d have bought a right-hand-drive car, I’d have told you you were out of your mind-especially that I was going to buy 700 of them. Since then, Duncan has bought an astounding 700-plus vehicles and counting. My first Japanese purchase landed in Newport News (Virginia) in April of 2016.” “Every night, we start looking for what’s for sale in Japan, and we started buying cars. Within weeks, he’d bought 10 firetrucks from that man’s contact in Washington. It’s on your way would you like to stop by?’ So we go by there and he’s got a little red Japanese firetruck and a Nissan S-Cargo (an adorable, snail-shaped delivery van). “We’re getting ready to leave and he says: ‘By the way, I have another garage. In December 2015, Duncan visited a local man selling older Hondas- Del Sols, S2000s, Preludes. “Trust me-I’m not this good.”Ĭall it what you will, but something did seem to guide him down this path.Ī super-clean (American-market) Acura NSX behind two ornate Japanese hearses, one built on a Toyota, the other on a Mercedes-Benz. We’re sitting in his office collector-car magazines, price guides and free-for-the-taking Christian literature surround us. “I believe in divine intervention,” Duncan proclaims, not a few minutes after we’ve met. He’s an established, second-generation new-car dealer who has assembled one of the largest and most eclectic collections of Japanese domestic market (JDM) vehicles in once place anywhere on the planet. But Duncan isn’t crazy, and he isn’t a hoarder. No, we’re talking everything: minitrucks and firetrucks, space-age four-wheel-drive vans and sport coupes, convertibles and dignified luxury sedans, even a handful of incredible hearses-intricately carved gilded pagodas plopped on the back of somber black Toyotas …Īdd a few cop cars into the mix, and Duncan would be able singlehandedly to meet the personal, commercial, municipal and mortuary vehicular needs of a small Japanese town. How else do you explain the sudden accumulation, in an industrial park on the fringes of Christiansburg, Virginia, of 700 or so vintage Japanese-market vehicles? And not just the ones you’d expect-the coveted Nissan Skylines, Honda Beat convertibles and the like. The whole scene would almost make more sense if Gary Duncan were certifiably nuts.
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