In Japan, all of the vehicles I see appear to be made no earlier than 1990. Why aren't the Japanese as fond of keeping older vehicles as Americans are?
by 
Egao No Genki
ANSWERS: 3
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I'm not sure just what the exact point is, I think it's something like a max of 50,000 miles and the car has to come off of the road. They want their fleet to be newer for more rapid emission reduction and safety improvements of the fleet in general I believe. Cars are junked, the front clip is removed, crated and shipped to the US. Here the front clips are sold to kids here with rice-burner hot rods with beer-fart mufflers as JDM, Japanese Domestic Market.
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Japanese emission standards, as I understand it, make ours look foolish. They are so strict vehicles no longer pass inspection after a short time. That would account for the lack of older vehicles.
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The price of the mandatory safety inspection for cars in Japan can be over 1000 dollars US. The law used to be that cars over 10 years must be inspected yearly, therefore it was just cheaper to trade an older car in for a new one when your car got around that old. It seems like a scam that the Japanese government and auto manufacturers thought up but recently the law has been revised since the "quality" of cars have improved.
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