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G'day everyone, I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce myself and also give a quick bit of feedback about how I found my Mini, I'd like to give a huge thanks to J-Spec Imports who were awesome and also help people avoid a few pitfalls themselves.
Mine is a 1999 Rover Mini 40th Anniversary I imported from Japan a while back. I initially contacted J-Spec Imports and spoke to Ben who is a Mini enthusiast himself and he's recently imported a Rover Mini BSCC as his own car so he knows them well. I went through what I wanted with them and the main things that they said were that good condition examples with minimal rust are hard to come by and are fetching high prices, and that the models with the fender flares and 13" wheels which is what I wanted are also a bit rare and more expensive. They were happy to help but just warned me that it might take some time to find the right car, there were plenty of bad condition Minis out there but the good ones don't come up every week and those are the only cars they suggested I consider since the cheaper ones really aren't worth it.
So I signed up with them and they started searching for a car and everything was great. About 3 months passed (I had to hold off the search for 2 of those as something else came up that needed my money!) but during the month I had them searching they did show me a couple of cars that they wanted to bring to my attention with photos just to see what a lot of them were like, but these were not vehicles that were good enough that they'd recommend them. All was great, but like a fool I was getting impatient, so I went to see a dealer by the name of Company X in Sydney who had a few imported Rover Minis for sale just to look at other options.
What a huge mistake! Company X were absolutely as dodgy as they come, and I can't recommend enough that people avoid them! One of the cars they had there I recognized as one of the ones that J-Spec had showed me early on while it was still in Japan at auction but recommended against. This car had all sorts of problems including bad rust in the doors, rust at the front, bad rust under the rear bumper, it had been in a front accident, a whole bunch of other problems, and it had done high k's. It was so bad that I remember thinking when I saw the photos "who would ever want to buy this?". Company X had done some cheap paint repairs to the rust and they'd missed spots on the doors hadn't actually repaired the rust so it would just bubble though in 12 months. They'd tried to hide but not fix several problems, and for anyone who knows anything about cars you could see it had just been really hastily detailed to hide all of the bad stuff. The salesman I spoke to basically lied to me about everything... they told me they only buy the best cars in Japan (remember, I had photos of what it was like when they originally bought it), they insisted it had no accident history though it obviously had at the front, and that this was a really mint and original car that they paid top dollar for at auction. Since I had all of the info from before I know this was all untrue. Company X was asking $23k and I know that they paid about $4k for it, so even counting all of the import costs and really cheap, nasty cover ups they did that their profit margin must have been huge. I checked the photos and chassis number for this car in my email that J-Spec sent when I got home, and it was definitely the same vehicle and those guys had been totally dishonest about everything. It was such a bad vehicle anyone with an interest in good cars wouldn't have touched it in the first place.
I'm not sure what the forum rules here allow so I won't mention some parts about my experience with Company X unless people say it's ok, but let's just say there were some things of a numerical nature which didn't add up as well. The other Mini they had also looked good if you don't know what you're looking at, but 2 minutes looking at it if you knew what to look for showed that was also a really shabby car that had major problems.
Anyway, I started to realize that J-Spec weren't wrong that finding a good car wasn't easy, and a few weeks later the car I eventually bought came up... a really nice 40th Anniversary with the aluminium dash, fender flares, 13" wheels, aircon, airbag, perfect! A very good car that just needed some stickers replaced, a new shift knob, 2 suspension bushes and a good clean. It was also missing the carpet mat in the boot which we knew about that I've since replaced.
The import process was pretty simple, the compliance place was near Newcastle which wasn't so convenient but I could live with it and everything was pretty painless. I'm glad I went for a later model Rover in the end even though the cost was higher, I can see it's never going to really drop much in value and the extra refinement compared with some older Minis I test drove is night and day. I ADORE this car and it's everything I wanted in a Mini so it was well worth it and I can't recommend J-Spec enough for people who do want to import a later model Rover. I wanted my first post here to be to share some info to other members rather than just be a taker (I'll have plenty of questions later!), and my contribution is to just be very careful about who you buy from as my experience with at least this one dealer says there are some real dishonest players out there! I hope this info helps someone here from ending up buying a real dog.
Moderator Edit: Original company name replaced by Company X. Contact Richie by PM if you want more information.
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