9:04 am, June 2, 2025
We’ve been waiting months for our container of Japanese imports to arrive – and last week, they finally turned up.
To say I was excited is probably an understatement. In the latest episode of our AI Car Dealership Project – now up on our YouTube channel or watch it above – we take delivery of the first batch of six cars we’ve bought directly from Japan.
We bought these back in February from the world’s largest car auction – a place that frankly blew our minds. Selling 18,000 cars in a day, the Tokyo site was a treasure trove of cars in pristine condition.
Looking back, I may have got a little excited at the sight and with some auction fever clouding my judgment, perhaps I didn’t think about the work needed this end when they finally got here.
I bought three Suzuki Jimnys, a VW Up, Polo GTI and a Volvo V40 while I was out there and now they’re all at Clever Car Collection HQ, the enormity of what’s needed to get them ready for sale is sinking in.
Our mechanic has a to do list as long as his arm. The cars younger than 10-years-old need IVA testing, which is quite tough and a pain to organise, while the speedos need converting to miles, and we’ve got to fit fog lights, stereos and sort out all the Japanese menus that no one can understand.
Even simple things – like wiring in a fog light – turned into fuse-blowing sagas.
The older stuff can simply go for an MOT before they are registered, but we still need to convert the clocks from kph to mph and tweak a few other things. The big issue here is we haven’t done it before so we’re trying to find new contacts.
Since this latest video went out on Friday I’ve had a few helpful phone calls from other dealers who have done it before with advice on where to start. They have been very welcome chats.
The good news is the cars are in great condition – low mileage, interesting spec, and very cool. We’re planning a full walkaround video of the imports soon, so keep an eye out for that.
New website
It’s not just the stock that’s arrived, though: Our brand new website is finally ready too.
Built by the team at 67 Degrees, it’s a huge upgrade and packed with clever tech. It will soon integrate with Impel for AI-powered lead handling, will run Google Vehicle Ads with the help of Localise (at last), and we’ve got call tracking built in. We haven’t played much with the last bit yet, but now the new site is live we’ll start collecting data.
The new website is a vast improvement and displays our cars better, autoplaying videos when customers click on them. We’ve now got proper analytics plugged in too and in the first few days of it being live I’ve been shocked at how many people use it.
In fact, I sold my first car from it on Saturday after a customer said they found us by googling ‘used car dealer Gosport’. That’s a big win in my book.
Most of our leads will soon be handled by AI, which will have the first conversation with the customer and then hand it over to us when a human is needed.
Auto Trader leads will still be managed manually, but everything else will run through the new system. It’s something I’ve wanted from the beginning of this project, and it’s exciting to finally see it come together.
I’ve even let AI help write some of the blog content for the new website. I recorded a few voice notes – one on why Japanese imports are great buys, and another on how we’re using AI in the business – and fed them into ChatGPT. What came back was impressive. As a journalist it feels strange, but for the dealership, it makes sense to create content as quickly as we can.
The important thing with this sort of content is still needs to be unique, but my theory is if you’re feeding it with the content in a voice note in the first place, then that does the job.
There are a few tweaks left to do on the website, notably on the pictures we created to make us look less like ghosts, but the team at 67 Degrees are working on that and it should be sorted tomorrow.
Elsewhere, after a slow start to the month, sales finally picked up. We had a bit of a run – including a Fiat 500, Ford KA+, a Dacia Sandero and even a grim Audi Allroad we bought for £600 as a part ex. That last one was only on Auto Trader for a couple of minutes before the phone rang. Probably our quickest ever sale.
We also had a couple of walk-in deals. One of them came from a local video subscriber who brought in a lovely BMW 3 Series, which I bought on the spot.
We’re also seeing the benefits of having a new team member on board. We’re getting him trained in all manner of aspects of the dealership life and have him insured on our trade policy.
It’s really helped having someone else who can go out there and pick up cars and take some of the stress away of collections.
Over the next few weeks we’ll be battling with getting these imports ready for sale. We’ve got lots of admin to do and many, many forms to fill in.
I think I totally underestimated the amount of work required to get these cars ready for sale when they hit our shores, but hopefully it will all be worth it.
Worst case scenario: I own three Jimnys…
If you haven’t already, check out the latest video on our YouTube channel or watch it at the top of this post.
