Japan Partner Inc is excited to announce a launch of a free service for our members where they can check manufacture year and in most cases manufacture month for Japan made vehicles. One of the largest challenges with importing a car into one of 190 countries is dealing with import regulations which differ from country to country and where most of them are related to a year of manufacture. As you may know in Japan, no manufacture year is written on an export deregistration certificate (Yushutsu Mashho) or Car Registration Certificate (shakensho), but YEAR OF FIRST REGISTRATION. Year of first registration indicates the month and the year when the car was registered for the first time in Japan. Please note that IT DOES NOT indicate when the car has been manufactured and represents a significant problem for making sure that the car matches import regulation for a specific 'year of manufacture' requirement.
Basic rule for 'first year of registration' it is in many cases not the same month as your vehicle month of manufacture. For popular models, it is usually 1-2 months after the car was manufactured. Let's say the month of the first registration for your 'Toyota Land Cruiser Prado' is July, 1997 in this case it is likely that the actual month of manufacture for this car is JUNE or MAY, 1997. For models which turned out not too be popular in Japan, the difference in manufacture month and the first registration month can be even longer than that.
As a result we had numerous requests both from our members and buyers from other companies to help them to determine manufacture month so they can be confident that their vehicles is good for import into desired country. Japan Partner Inc applied its best efforts to obtain such a database while working with various custom institutions that will allow our members to cope with this challenge effectively and now we are proud to announce the launch of the service 'CHECK MANUFACTURE DATE' that is offered for you at no cost.
To check your vechicle's manufacture month, choose the 'MAKER' and type or paste your vechicle's chassis number and then press 'GO' button and you will have it!
Please note that this database is only for reference purpose and if you have any doubts you will need directly to contact manufacture and get confirmation directly. Also it is possible that models of 2012 year will not be displayed correctly since the complete database for that year does not exist yet. Please note that we offer it as a free service and we are not responsible for any discrepancies.
If the difference between manufacture year and the first registration year is considerable for domestic Japanese models, it is recommended you check seat belts for year of manufacture. (In particular we recommend to check seat belts for Honda models)