Impartiality to the Import: getting some transparency in the UAE's automotive import market.

I've an addiction to automotive classified sites and so much so I spent a good 10+ years enjoying a rewarding career working for some the world's biggest names in classified's in automotive.

There's arguably no more interesting market in terms of the automotive landscape than the UAE.

High disposable income, lower fuel prices (well than the EU etc currently) and generally a vast selection of every marketed brand of automobile ever made all residing in a fairly accessible network of car markets here.

In total, the UAE has around 3.5 million cars on the road, 40% of which drive around in Dubai.

Notably, the percentage of SUV’s in the UAE is relatively high compared to other countries in the world, at 43%.

Over half of all cars (53%) are seven years or older. Which allows them to start to fall into the "young timer" category (strictly speaking that's 1990's and early 2000's cars but grey hairs are grey hairs).

This is where it gets more interesting:

• Approximately 12% of all used cars in the UAE are Imported from overseas*?
• Approximately 45% of the imported cars have previously been declared as Total Loss, i.e. Salvage, Junk, Crushed, Flooded etc.**

For me I had an affiliation with all things Mercedes Benz and started off my UAE automotive ownership here with a lovely W124 500e (featured here).

For years I'd spent months chasing rare AMG imported classics from Japan up in the car market here called Al Awir, more importantly the Dubai Cars & Automotive Zone (DUCAMZ) - more on that in the future - watch this space.

There you'd stumble across rare gems such as W124 E500 LTDs, W210 E60 AMG's and all sorts of big M120 V12 AMG's all fresh off the boat in Jebel Ali port.

The only issue was 99% of the time their history, true history, from their past lives in the far east was unknown. When landed here they all seemed to have suspiciously low km's combined with high wear on touch points along with incredulously reassurances of "clean car, good bhest" made buying anything from there a total minefield.

I heard of a pal using a history checker specifically aimed at Japanese imported cars for all brands called https://autocheck.jp/.

I'd been a huge advocate of car history checkers in the past like https://carreport.com/AE and brought that to the market and instilled that into anyone who would listen to use it. Ensure much "phew I almost bought that car, 14 registered accidents" etc.

Autocheck.jp took that one step further by uncovering things like the real km's, auction final price (where available) and then any photos of the car auction side as well as the actual auction report paper (which seemed to frequently to have been misplaced when asked for at any dealer here).

In general it's helped me buy several really cool young timer Mercedes Benz's which I collect and actively look for here. From a mint 1991 W140 600SE (aka "Shorty") to checking the km's on some rare super desirable BMW's and AMG Japan built cars I'd been offered. For want of a better word it's completely disrupted how I view and buy cars now from that market.

So here's to adding more transparency to the world's most interesting automotive market and look forward to hearing from anyone else in the search of rare 1990's young time shrapnel.

If you want help navigating the exciting but challenging UAE rare/collector car market feel free to message me here or at 00971567445310.