What is Yanase and why is this sticker often seen on recond cars?

If you have been shopping around for a recond car from Japan, you would have come across cars with the Yanase sticker pasted on its rear windscreen. The Yanase sticker is especially common on recond BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche models from Japan.

Yanase is as you would have guessed it, a car dealer in Japan. It is however, not just any car dealer.

Yanase is one of the oldest car dealers in Japan, tracing its history back to 1915, founded by Jiro Yanase. Before the practice of car manufacturers establishing their wholly-owned overseas national sales office took hold in Japan, Yanase was Japan’s biggest car importer.

Today, it is still Japan’s largest dealer network for imported cars. Most of the brands represented by Yanase are premium German brands, but Yanase also sells more mainstream Western brands like Volkswagen and Chevrolet.

In 2004, founder Jiro Yanase was inducted into the USA’s Automotive Hall of Fame, the only non-American dealer to be given the award. The award said “Jiro Yanase has provided American and European manufacturers the initial entrance — and the most successful means of selling cars — to the Japanese market."

Unlike other car importers however, Yanase has a reputation of being very organized, and every little detail of cars sold by the company is catalogued to the best of its ability.

This, combined with its long history, makes Yanase one of Japan’s most trusted place for wealthy owners to restore their classic imported cars.

Yanase’s library of documents related to classic cars rival those of the manufacturers themselves.

In some cases, Yanase dealers will sell a restored classic car from their new car dealership, complete with warranty. Business was good enough for Yanase to setup a new classic car division in 2018, the Yanase Classic Car Centre.

All classic cars are restored back to its original factory specifications using reference materials from the company’s archives, which include not just technical details, but also photos of the car when it was new.

Yanase’s Master technicians can restore these cars, rebuild the engine and transmission (including automatic transmissions), using period-correct tools to match the classic cars.

So does this mean that a recond car with a Yanase sticker is valued higher? No, not at all. In the case of recond cars imported into Malaysia’s, having a Yanase sticker on it doesn’t mean anything, other than the first owner had bought it from Yanase.

The Yanase sticker is no different from Toyopet or Netz stickers that are sometimes see on recond Toyota Alphards and Vellfires.

By the way, Toyota has since rationalized its 4 dealer channels – Toyota, Corolla, Toyopet, and Netz – into one unified Toyota Mobility Store, so these stickers will soon be a thing of the past.

Starting May 2020, these separate dealer channels will transition into the unified Toyota Mobility Store branding in stages.