Even though there are die-hard advocates of American cars, these people usually focus on the big three, which unfortunately aren’t so big anymore. Perhaps they forget that most so-called Japanese cars on the road today are also American cars, proudly built in such places as Georgia and Tennessee.
All the Nissan engines used in the complete lineup of Nissan and Infiniti vehicles are built in the USA and they have been since 1977. Nissan have a tremendous investment in the US, certainly more than enough to classify as one of the premier automobile manufacturers in the country.
Nissan is justifiably proud of their products on both sides of the Pacific but there is one major difference between Nissans built for the Japanese domestic market and those built in The US for the American market, the length of time the car is kept.
Japan has implemented rules that make it difficult to keep a car on the road once it hits three or four years old. The owners are either forced into paying high fees for continuing to use the car or they are scrapped. It’s hard for us to believe that after four years a car is of no further use, in many cases it isn’t even paid for yet.
The cars in Japan that are scrapped are not really scrapped in the true sense of the word, in most cases the vehicles are either exported whole to developing countries where new cars are literally unknown or the vehicles are dismantled for parts, the parts are then exported worldwide for repair and replacement purposes. In the US one of the major imports are used Nissan engines that perhaps have less than 20,000 miles on them, hardly broken in.
Cars in the US are driven for as long as the owner wants to drive them, and even at that there are no rules that tell the owner that it has reached the end of its life. Cars in the US can go through a number of owners until they are really nothing more than scrap. During this extended time period things go wrong, even with Nissans. It is not unknown for an engine to fail when it hits a couple hundred thousand miles but the rest of the car is still in good condition. When this happens, the choice for the owner is either to attempt a repair or to buy a used engine; this is where the exported Japanese domestic market engines find a natural home. They have few miles on them and they are priced reasonably.
Used JDM engines are a far better deal than buying a replacement engine from the local junk yard, that engine may have as many miles on it as the one that failed. With the engines that are brought in from Japan, thoroughly tested both in Japan before they are shipped and then again when they hit the US the chances of failure are almost zero.
