My son wanted a kei truck. We found a 1994 Honda Acty in Japan for US$2,890. About three months and A$11,500 later, it was on the road in Queensland. Here’s what actually happened.
In 2023, my son Matt decided he wanted a Japanese kei truck.
He wasn’t particularly interested in any one make or model. He just wanted one of those tiny Japanese 660cc trucks.
So we started looking through Car From Japan.
Matt already had a car fund
I had actually been saving towards Matt’s first car since he started school.
I began by putting aside $5 a week, then increased the weekly amount by $1 each birthday.
I deliberately didn’t make extra deposits. The point wasn’t really to save for one particular car. I wanted to show Matt that if you put away a small amount of money every week, and keep doing it, you can eventually afford something you really want.
At the same time, I gave him the same amount each week as pocket money. That gave him two very different examples of what money could do. He could spend the pocket money on games, toys and other small things as he went along, while the matching amount I was putting away quietly accumulated in the background.
The money sat in a children’s savings account and earned bonus interest along the way. By the time Matt was almost 16, his car fund had grown to about $10,000.
So when he became interested in a kei truck, the lesson became very concrete. Spending money as you get it is one option. Saving the same small amount consistently can eventually buy something substantial.
The Acty became a very tangible example of the lesson I’d been trying to teach him for years.
What we still had to work out was how far that fund would go once we added the cost of getting a car from Japan to Australia and then onto Queensland roads.
There were plenty to choose from, but one kept catching my eye: a black 1994 Honda Acty Truck, manual, 2WD, with about 83,000 km.
It looked loved.
The body had been painted, the seats were in good condition, it had air conditioning and gold wheel trims, and we couldn’t see any obvious rust in the photos. Compared with many of the other kei trucks we looked at, this one just seemed as though somebody had cared about it.
We hadn’t set out to buy an Acty.
This was simply the kei truck that stood out.
I did my homework before buying
This was my first car import, but I didn’t buy it completely blind.
Before paying, I spent quite a bit of time researching how private vehicle importing worked in Australia: import approval, customs, quarantine, compliance, roadworthy requirements and registration.
The Car From Japan listing showed approximately:
Vehicle price: A$4,316
CIF to Brisbane: A$7,504
I knew the CIF price was not a drive-away price.
CIF — cost, insurance and freight — was the price of getting the vehicle from Japan to Brisbane port. From there I expected additional Australian costs for customs and GST, biosecurity, port processing, getting the vehicle away from the wharf, compliance, roadworthy and registration.
In fact, the day after buying the Acty I contacted AutoHub specifically asking for a quote for the Australian import processes only, because Car From Japan was already handling the Japanese export and shipping.
So the surprise wasn’t that there were costs after CIF.
The interesting part was seeing how my research compared with what actually happened.
Step 1: Check whether the car can actually be imported
Before becoming too attached to a Japanese listing, check whether Australia will actually allow you to import that particular vehicle.
Our Acty had been manufactured in 1994 and qualified under the concessional pathway for older vehicles.
I created a ROVER account and handled the Australian import approval myself.
My application was submitted on 25 April 2023. The department subsequently asked for more information through ROVER. I provided additional supporting material, and the application was approved on 3 May 2023.
My ROVER fee was $40.25.
So despite all the paperwork I had been anticipating, the federal approval itself was relatively quick.
What about now?
Australia still requires an import approval before a road vehicle is imported, with applications managed through ROVER. Vehicles originally manufactured at least 25 years before the application can potentially qualify under the older-vehicle concessional RAV pathway. Import approval does not guarantee state registration, so you should check your state or territory requirements before committing to a vehicle.
Step 2: Buy the car — and watch the payment method
The actual sale price recorded for our Acty was:
US$2,890
Once the Japanese-side costs, freight, marine insurance and pre-shipment inspection were included, the initial Car From Japan amount came to:
US$5,305
Then I chose to pay through PayPal.
That added a 7% online payment fee, taking the total payment to:
US$5,676
After currency conversion, I actually paid:
A$8,873.48
That was considerably more than the indicative A$7,504 CIF figure I had seen on the listing.
This wasn’t because I had mistaken CIF for an Australian drive-away price. It was because the transaction was actually denominated in US dollars, the exchange rate mattered, and my choice of PayPal added another 7%. I chose PayPal because it offers Buyer Protection.
What I learned
When comparing Japanese listings, the displayed AUD CIF figure can be a useful guide — but before paying, check the actual invoice currency, current exchange rate and payment-method charges.
Step 3: Wait for Japan to do its bit
Once my Australian approval was sorted, Car From Japan began the shipping process.
They had told me to allow roughly 30–45 days for the Japanese processing and securing a sailing.
By 29 May, the Acty had reached the Japanese port and was waiting for a vessel.
Eventually I received the shipping schedule:
Vessel: TANG HONG V-1
Departure: Yokohama
Scheduled departure: 10 June 2023
Destination: Brisbane
And off Matt’s tiny truck went across the ocean.
Step 4: Check the Bill of Lading
Car From Japan sent me a draft of the Bill of Lading before the originals were finalised.
This is one of those apparently boring steps that can become very expensive if you don’t pay attention.
I checked the consignee details, chassis number, destination and vehicle information.
Once everything was confirmed, the original documents were couriered to me.
My advice after doing this twice is simple:
Keep everything.
Invoices, payment receipts, export documents, import approval, shipping paperwork — all of it.
Different people will want different documents at different stages.
Step 5: Organise the Australian end while the car is still at sea
Car From Japan had recommended AutoHub to me, so very early in the process I contacted them for a quote for the Australian side of the import.
Then, once the Acty was on its way, AutoHub contacted me again saying they had received advice that my vehicle was arriving and asking for the documents needed for customs clearance.
At the time, my understanding was that Car From Japan and the shipping arrangements had effectively handed the Australian arrival process over to AutoHub. I had made the initial enquiry myself, but I didn’t have to remember to re-book them once the ship was approaching Australia — they came back to me with the shipment details.
AutoHub asked for documentation including the vehicle import approval, asbestos declaration, gas-related documentation, certificate of origin and authority for them to act.
They wanted the documentation sorted before the ship arrived so clearance could proceed without unnecessary delays and storage charges.
I didn’t appreciate quite how useful that hand-off was until I imported another car the following year and the Australian arrival worked differently.
This is one of the bits I’d emphasise to anybody importing for the first time:
Don’t assume somebody else is organising customs and biosecurity. Confirm who is doing it before the ship arrives.
If you are arranging it yourself, do it while the car is still floating towards Australia.
My research had made the wharf sound harder than it really was
This was one of my nicest surprises.
From what I had read online, I had expected that I would need to collect the Acty from the Brisbane wharf myself once it cleared.
In reality, AutoHub had already arranged for the car to be delivered to my house.
My original plan was then to take the Acty from home to Japan Imports for the compliance and registration stage.
But when I spoke to Japan Imports, they said, essentially: “Just have it delivered straight to us.”
That was much easier. Instead of the car coming to my house and then needing another trip to the workshop, I simply had the delivery destination changed so it went straight from the port to Japan Imports.
It was a good example of something that looked complicated in my online research turning out to be quite straightforward once I spoke to the people actually handling the next step.
Step 6: Customs and quarantine — and the bill was better than the quote
The original estimate I received for Australian clearance was fairly intimidating.
It included $250 customs clearance, a minimum $168 quarantine fee, $105 wharf used-vehicle handling, $150 quarantine attendance, $350 metro delivery, and potentially $500–$1,000 for quarantine cleaning if required. Government costs and GST were additional.
Fortunately, reality was considerably kinder.
| Australian arrival cost | Actual amount |
|---|---|
| Import GST | $777.69 |
| Quarantine processing | $63.00 |
| Declaration processing | $50.00 |
| Delivery | $200.00 |
| GST on delivery | $20.00 |
| Total | $1,110.69 |
The customs entry calculated a Value of Taxable Importation of $7,776.94, with GST of $777.69.
The Acty also attracted no customs duty under the applicable Japanese preferential tariff treatment.
And, importantly, it did not require quarantine cleaning.
I had budgeted for that possibility because my research told me it could be expensive.
This time, we got lucky.
Step 7: From the port straight to the compliance workshop
Once the Acty cleared customs and biosecurity, the delivery that had originally been arranged to my house was redirected straight to Japan Imports at their suggestion.
That saved an unnecessary extra leg in the journey. I didn’t have to take delivery at home and then work out the next move — the Acty simply went straight to the workshop that needed it.
The delivery charge on my AutoHub invoice was $200 plus GST.
This was one of the parts of importing that turned out to be much easier in reality than it had sounded online.
Step 8: One late mechanical surprise
The process wasn’t completely painless.
During the final compliance and roadworthy stage, a cracked engine mount was identified. The replacement wasn’t an easy part to find locally, so we started hunting for one ourselves.
After trying a specialist Australian kei-truck supplier, I eventually found the genuine Honda side engine mount through MonotaRO Singapore. My brother who knows his way around Hondas helped me replace it.
Once that was sorted, the Acty was ready to go.
A Japanese pre-shipment inspection is not an Australian roadworthy inspection.
And when you’re importing a car approaching 30 years old, keep a little time and money in reserve for mechanical surprises.
Even well-loved old cars are still old cars.
Step 9: Compliance and Queensland registration
My final Japan Imports invoice covered the compliance and registration side:
| Item | 2023 cost |
|---|---|
| 25-year compliance | $880.00 |
| Safety certificate | $88.00 |
| 6 months registration + government duty | $512.40 |
| Total | $1,480.40 |
These are our 2023 figures, not a current quote.
Anyone doing this now should check the current Queensland requirements and fees rather than budgeting from mine.
What did the Acty actually cost?
This is probably the number most people considering an import want to know.
| Stage | Actual cost |
|---|---|
| Payment to Car From Japan, including car, freight etc. and PayPal fee | $8,873.48 |
| ROVER application | $40.25 |
| Australian GST/customs processing/quarantine/delivery | $1,110.69 |
| Compliance, safety certificate and 6 months registration | $1,480.40 |
| Documented total | $11,504.82 AUD |
That excludes the later engine-mount repair and ongoing expenses such as insurance.
The useful distinction is:
US$2,890 was the price of the car itself in Japan.
The CIF price was the cost of buying it and getting it to Brisbane port.
And about A$11,505 is what my records show it took to get through the major import, clearance, compliance and registration stages in Queensland.
Those are three very different numbers.
How long did it take?
From my records, the broad timeline was:
25 April 2023 — paid for the car
3 May — import approval granted
4 May — Japanese shipping process underway
29 May — vehicle at the Japanese port
10 June — scheduled departure from Yokohama
July — arrival, customs and biosecurity
18 July — delivery into the compliance stage
Late July — final roadworthy/compliance/registration process
So from buying the Acty in Japan to having it on Queensland roads was roughly:
Three months.
For something travelling halfway around the world through two countries’ bureaucracies, I thought that was pretty good.
Then I got to pick Matt up from school in it
This was what the whole exercise had been for.
It had started with Matt wanting a kei truck.
Then came evenings scrolling through Japanese listings, choosing this slightly eccentric little Honda that looked as though somebody had loved it, sending money overseas, filling out government forms, watching shipping schedules, dealing with customs, organising compliance and hunting down an engine mount.
And then one afternoon I was picking him up from school in it.
That was a pretty good afternoon.
Kei trucks are even smaller than you think
One of the ongoing joys of owning an Acty is parking it next to almost anything designed for the Australian market.
It makes ordinary dual-cab utes look like mining equipment.
Insurance was harder to find than I expected
One thing that wasn’t straightforward was insurance.
I found that a number of insurers simply wouldn’t insure a 1994 imported Honda Acty.
Eventually I found that NRMA would cover it, and once I found them I thought their rates were very reasonable.
I wouldn’t quote our individual premium as a guide for somebody else’s policy because insurance prices depend heavily on the vehicle, location, drivers and cover selected.
But I would give a prospective importer this advice:
Start looking for insurance early.
Especially if you’re importing something unusual that was never officially sold here.
Would I import another JDM car myself?
Yes.
In fact, I did.
The Acty was my first JDM import.
My second one would teach me that having done it once does not mean the next one will throw exactly the same problems at you.
But that’s another story.
From Japan to driveway
This photograph pretty much explains the name of this website.
You start with a photograph of some strange little car sitting thousands of kilometres away in Japan.
You research.
You choose one.
You send money across the world.
You learn far more than you ever intended to know about Bills of Lading, ROVER, biosecurity and customs declarations.
You wait for a ship.
And eventually you walk outside and the car that used to exist only on a Japanese website is sitting in your driveway.
So, can an ordinary person import a JDM car themselves?
Based on my experience: yes.
I didn’t literally do every job myself. Car From Japan handled the Japanese export and shipping, AutoHub handled Australian customs/biosecurity and port logistics, and Japan Imports handled the compliance and registration stage.
But I organised the process myself rather than engaging an import agent to manage the whole thing from beginning to end.
The process was essentially:
research the car → check import eligibility → buy it → obtain import approval → ship it → organise Australian clearance before arrival → customs and biosecurity → direct delivery to the compliance workshop → compliance/roadworthy/registration → drive it home.
Once I understood who did what, it was considerably less mysterious than it had seemed at the beginning.
A note for anyone using this as a guide
This is a record of my own 2023 import, not a current quote or a promise that somebody else’s import will follow exactly the same path.
Rules, fees, exchange rates, shipping costs, biosecurity requirements and registration requirements change.
Before buying, check the current information from the Australian Government Department of Infrastructure, Australian Border Force, the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, and your state or territory registration authority.
Japan to Driveway shares personal experience and general information. It isn’t legal, customs, financial or mechanical advice.
About this article
I kept a slightly ridiculous amount of material from this import: handwritten notes, invoices, emails, screenshots, shipping documents and photographs.
Three years later, I gave the lot to Barry — my name for ChatGPT — and together we reconstructed the timeline, reconciled the numbers and checked my recollections against the original documents and emails.
Turns out keeping all that stuff was useful after all.
Japan to Driveway
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