Japanese Cars... importing and other costs.

Ran across this by accident while searching for possibly Mitsubishi Mirage's for sale, and parts to find out how much my 'pie in the sky pipe dream' engine would cost.

Japan Partner, Ltd.

Surprisingly easy to navigate (aside from their penchant for NOT filtering out sold cars from their results) and very up-front on costs, including shipping costs to and from other countries and listing prices in various currencies right on each search page instead of forcing you to use an external currency-converter.

Hell, they don't focus on the uber-profitable stuff either. They'll even sell you a bus if you want it. Or a tow-truck or crane-truck. They're not focussed on the 'import ricer' market so their prices look reasonable to me. Something for you folks out there in case it's useful to anyone. :-)

Why I don't believe in 'car alarms' anymore.

They just plain don't work, and give insurance companies a reason to deny your claim if you get your car swiped.

News flash: Honda's not the only company that stuffs handbrake-and-ignition codes into their cars. Just about all newer cars have these sorts of funky 'codes' to disable or enable various features such as stability control, or in this case, a VIN-specific code to bypass the built-in key-ID system. One that I'm willing to bet isn't highly unique and that someone with some brains could reverse-engineer or find a pattern in pretty easilly.

But this is all another reason why I look at car security as pointless once someone is inside your vehicle. You might as well just remove the ignition key entirely and replace it with a simple kill switch under the dash and a push-button wired to the starter. Nothing you can do will deter a criminal once they're inside your car.