The Abandoned Car Problem in Japan 

Austin rover was a British car company and the symbol is a Viking long boat 🇬🇧

Sammit "you like ghosts" Daiki "yeah I like girls" 😂

That 560 benz is rare, worth rescuing

that old rover 400 would be a VERY rare sight in england in 2024 , to see one in japan is mind blowing , it must have been imported from england in the 90's , shame someone destroyed it

The headlights on those Mercedes R107 coupes are worth $2k in the US. The small Euro bumpers another $1-2k. That's $6-8k USD in parts alone between just those two. The headlights on the W108/109 sedan are probably $500-800.

it seems so strange a country with such strong documentational behavior culture that abandoned cars would be tolerated to this degree, compared to other places

I literally got a PS1 when friends got a PS2. Found out later in life my older siblings bought me it because my parents couldn't afford it. Love the nostalgia Sam!!!

I think seeing that rover 400 tourer is even more painful as i have been looking for one for a couple of years now. They are just beautiful cars

that Mercedes 560S AMG Coupe was insanely rare. probably a 100K car current market

i love it when sammit does abandoned cars videos, i rewatch them all the time

As an Aussie, it is hard to believe that Sammit wasn't aware of the Rover brand!

That very first Mercedes is not only a Mercedes. It is a 6.0L AMG V8 also very rare car .

Rover are an old English car the one you've seen is basically a Honda from when they owned Rover

Thanks for the free Windows 98 product key lol 😂 Edit: Hey it's working!

I’m surprised Sam hasn’t heard of Rover. It was one of the best known British manufacturers for almost 150 years. Originally making bicycles but then moved into motorcycles and automobiles. Eventually becoming Rover, Land Rover and the short lived Alvis brand. Later merged into British Layland and eventually purchased and absorbed into BMW.

That AE100 is actually a dream spec for me. So sad to see one absolutely destroyed

The laws in the US are very different. With a knowledgeable lawyer, you can basically possess a car that has parked on your property for long enough. I almost had to do this when I bought a house that someone left a car on, but legally, I believe they have to inform them, and in my case the owner came within a couple days and rolled the car away.

For them people that are selling cars without paperwork if it's not stolen. Could you just drift it legally and keep it off the roadway?

Rovers in that era were from when they had a tie up with Honda. Basically the cars were Honda Civics and Accords mechanicals but with their own K series engines.

There's couple of pretty expensive mercedes there. Might been some yakuza cars and the owner "went missing"

Picked the cedric straight up from the front badge another one that would be awesome to rebuild but as mentioned its near impossible unfortunately

Someone please Save the mercs, that pre merger amg is a rare bird in any part of the world the rover wagon isn’t something you see everyday especially on that market an that poor old sil CA I mean c’mon 🙌🏽💯

Sam, you may not have had the coolest computer back in school, but you definitely have the coolest cars now.

It's sad to see these cars just rotting away

Natsuki will tell ya that all older Japanese men love Mercedes Benz cars

This looks like a job for Daniel O'Grady. 🚗🧑‍🔧🚐

That 560 doesn’t need a JZ swap, it’s a v8. You put a pair of turbos and it’s perfect

Sammit, see if you can locate the owner and do a deal on the cars you want. I don’t know how it is in Japan with titles, but you should be able to run the vin numbers off them and see which ones are stolen or not and also see if your allowed to do rebuilt title like in the US. It’s a shame that cars are abandoned all over the world!!!

Mate, in the UK those Rovers are sought after

theres a mk4 supra in this kind of condition in my home town in New Zealand. overgrown and abandoned

Hey @Sammit, Rover used to be an English brand, back in the end of the nineties they were OEM rebranding Honda Civics and Accords. (Before Tatra took over, and it been rebranded to Rowe when a Chinese brand took over) The 560 Mercedes was indeed a gem. It would mean that it was a 5.6 liter engines. What was more interesting though, was that it was AMG badged. This more or less is the Mercedes version of BMW M sports.

Is that a Seafoam S13? mega sad

The SL looks like a amg, if its a genuine amg its extremelly rare and worth a lot, its so sad seeing It like that

Them Mercedes need saving, what a crying shame.

1:45 I dont get it, how is it stolen tail lights if the car is literally abandoned. If i adopt an abandoned dog on the street, did i steal it? The tail lights got adopted by someone :)

It's actually pretty common for cars to be left with houses of the previously deceased in Japan; usually papers are stored in a safe somewhere in a deposit box or the first of kin/immediate family doesnt want to reregister the car anymore and do not want to spend any money for storage fees. Cars are usually dumped this way because of the peculair law they have

You definitely should go wasabi hunting with Daniel /wasabi cars

It baffles me how someone can make car content for a living but has never heard of a Rover before.

Those mercedes had to be someone's collection that had been dumped.

Sammit, you are correct. Japan needs to fix some laws so these cars can be disposed of or "adopted" if abandoned. I cannot pay the automobile tax on behalf of a friend's vehicle unless I have the actual tax bill slip. I call the tax office and they say the actual owner needs to appear. They didn't even want to accept a power of attorney.

Looks like the album said "freestyle fellowship"

S 13 tail lights are at upgarage .

The Kei van is a Subaru Sambar. it was sold in Europe as a Subaru Libero. a friend here in the Netherlands owned 3 at some point.

Broooo I'm dead you're like The Steve Erwin of finding cars in the wild

Rover was common in the UK a long time ago

If you lose the paperwork for a car and can't legally sell it........why not break it down and sell it off as parts ? at least you would make some cash out of it !

Yes same its a ae100 corolla with a 4afe

5:07 my dad had a corolla in that exact same colour and rear light style years ago. It pains me to see one abandoned like this

Another sad thing everyone of those cars has a long complicated and likely very sad story attached to all of them 😢

Sammit enjoy these vids of you and Daiki exploring your guys excitement gets me excited but it's a shame to see all these priceless cars going to waste though 😢

The top of the record said FREESTYLE FELLOWSHIP Sam idk wtf you were reading bro ? Dang your getting so bad you cant read English now and getting better at Japanese ! Cool bro !

"...it's just kids being kids". It's just kids who haven't been brought up properly!

I need so many parts off that s13 😭

Did the financial crisis, Tsunamis and Earthquakes make it to this area? It unforunately could be what you said with the owners no longer being with us for any number of reasons. It's the only thing I can think of for those vehicles to be in such a state and left for so long other than just being stolen.

That album cover is FREESTYLE FELLOWSHIP old rap group from the early 90s so that definitely belongs to that toyota

Could possibly something along the lines of people abandoning their project cars at a dealership or car repair shop, then the shop catching on and eventually just dropping it in this random lot? That kind of sounds like the only logical explanation in my mind. Then again, when you talked about the laws regarding other people's cars and how they can't be moved after they are abandoned I don't know why a dealership would dump a car here randomly.

Ooof seeing that Cedric hurt, NZ got lots of them as well as the Laurels/Cefiros/Luces but the 90s gobbled most of them up.

Can't these cars be exported or do they need to be unregistered

The Rover Sam is British made and were very popular on the roads in the 80's. So strange to find one in Japan. So sad to car's just abandoned like this.

japan got the rover coupe Tomcat which i dont think we got in the uk. well we did but was just called a coupe the Japanese version was turbo!

Strip them and sell parts... Don't need paperwork for parts... 🤷🏽‍♂️Lol

Hey Sam even tho they are non paper titles are you still able to take them and turn them into drift builds?

History on that rover. It was British. When Honda owned them . Or part owned can't really remember. But yeah when Honda took over that model. It was made as rover and a Honda. Weird but true.

Odd seeing a British 🇬🇧 Rover in Japan must be rare

My first computer was a Tandy 1000 running MS dos at 12 and rover is a UK company they originally made the mini

The weird mirror on the wheelarch instead of on the door is actually a factory solution for the A pillar blocking the mirror on the passenger side when they tried putting it on the door.

That sl560 is worth a house today. And it doesnt even look that bad

Micro cleaning you can classify it but that purple coffee can looks pretty cool actually and the sun hasn't destroyed the color which is amazing

15:00 - Rover old British make. Honda used to be partner with Rover. There’s nothing more expensive than a cheap Mercedes. - That 560SL is good for parts, not worth fixing it. Unless you’re willing fixit yourself and spend more money then a New Mercedes .

I still have a PC that's running Windows 2000 for off-line use only. It'll do tasks of which XP and up have been set up to not do. XP and up also won't recognize my scanner

Sam when are you going to work on the abandoned S15

Rover is a British automotive brand that was used for over a century, from 1904 to 2005. It was launched as a bicycle maker called Rover Company in 1878, before starting to manufacture autocars in 1904. The brand used the Viking longship as its logo. The rights to the brand are currently part of Jaguar Land Rover, which continues to produce Land Rovers, but no Rover automobiles are currently in production and the brand is considered dormant.

I used to live in Osaka and there was a patch of land where there was some very old vintage cool trucks and vans rotting away , they got all moved and scrapped eventually.

My 96 Honda accord lxi manual has a rover 600 interior because that and the engine bay is exactly the same. The parts are interchangeable. Rover was a British company that no longer exists. Alot of vehicle manufacturers outsourced parts which is my Mazda Eunos presso mx3 v6 had so many Ford and Mitsubishi parts on it. The Ford suspension components were the same but of a higher quality and the Ecu and distributor from Mitsubishi were alot more efficient and reliable. That's the beautiful thing about cars, not one is exactly the same especially as they get older.

The older the car the more tax you have to pay to drive them on the the road in Japan, people don't want to pay and they dump them instead of paying to get them recycled

All those Benz's are worth good money screw the laws someone should take all those overseas and restore them there

the 2 tones s13 makes me so sad, im glad I have mine in the garage

Rovers are British:) My guess is all of them are broken down / worthless and they been dumped.

dont feel bad about not knowing what a rover is. They are a manufacturer of complete shitboxes. FYI Honda Legend used a Rover 5 cylinder engine and the headbolts hold the crank main caps on aswell. Top tier fuckwittery.

I was born in 81. Begged my parents for the og NES. They got me an Atari 2600 instead. I was sad. Now I wish I still had it. 25:22

Is that a pre-merger AMG? The rims sure look it.

Sam, I agree theft is wrong, but if the car has sat on public property long enough to rust into the dirt and have trees grow around it, I’d assume the owner would have come back before it got to that shape, if not they must be either deceased, or moved out of the country. I try to get vins ran before I do anything to make sure there not stolen, having said that, I’ve found old trucks off in the woods and retrieved, heads, trim, headlights, tails, etc…

That Rover, is an English car. It's actually a rebadged ,Honda Accord

Post pandemic jdm cars are flooding the uk. No salt specials

its funny how unfamiliar sammit is to a lot of cars especially when hes australian and does this stuff for a living lmao especially that corolla and rover

Austin rover British car and very weird them being in Japan I remember my dad owning one but in green

Why is the graffiti in English and not in Japanese?

It's a Rover, the engine wont turn over. It's a Rover

A friend of mine had a Mercedes 280 s just like the one in the video with a RB26 swap in it. Someone on drugs lit his whole shop on fire and burnt down all his cars including the Mercedes and his work truck

Thank you for explaining WHY the abandoned car issue is even an issue. From my view, not a difficult problem to solve if the gov't makes the effort.

Can't you turn them into a drift missile? Who's ganna know.

I don’t understand why they don’t have some sort of magic database out there with all the title info. I mean you have to register these cars, don’t you? The police can easily check who the car belongs to. I had one guy find a car that had been abandoned, and for $2, was able to do a title lookup, which showed who the car belonged to… …my fathers company. The person my dad sold the car to never registered it, or retitled it, just abandoned it at some mechanic shop. I was able to apply for a lost title, which is where they simply reprint the exact title from before, so it doesn’t devalue it at all. There are bonded titles, in the event you can’t do a lookup, usually because the car is too old to be in some sort of system. It does devalue the car, but after three years, you can apply to have the bond removed, and you end up with clean title.

I swear you said that you didn’t have a ton of money growing up a ton of times what is a ton anyways?

New drinking game... take a shot everytime Sammit says "CRAZY".

Yo I need parts of that corolla because I cant get the part anywhere here

That 560 Merc has the 20 INCH AMG RIMS which js worth a lot alone

Also just found that The Innercity Griots by Freestyle Fellowship came in year 93 which is crazy

U should start checking license plates for missing persons reports ❤

i saw on instagram an abandoned red evo 4 somewhere in shibuya, but i havent found it yet

nice rover with a k series engine good old British car