Big used car brothers: Sharjah and Dubai - Gulf News

Dubai is fast becoming the world's second largest right-hand used car market after Japan.

Keeping pace on a parallel track is Sharjah, which has earned its name as the top left-hand drive used vehicle market.

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Traders in Sharjah import mainly left-hand cars from Japan, but now the trend is fast changing as the United States has emerged as the major sourcing market.

Mohammad Ali, a leading used car dealer, said, "We used to get only European and American left-hand used cars from Japan, which also imports these cars from abroad for local use," he said.

Customers in the UAE, he noted, are reluctant to buy European or American used cars imported from Japan. "They like to buy Japanese cars and that is why we are importing them from the United States, which uses left-hand cars," he said.

A bit confusing, but it appears that what is being in said is that the source of most used cars had been Japan, for both left-hand drive cars (these tended to be US and European cars originally shipped new to Japan) and right-hand drive cars (these tended to be primarily car made in Japan).

Now the source of left-hand drive cars has beome the United States, but the cars that are being imported are Japanese brands which originally sold new in the U.S. I presume many of these could even have been Toyotas and Hondas made in the U.S.

The article doesn't say the route used to ship these cars coming from the U.S. But Japanese cars sold in the western U.S. tend to have come from Japan. Japanese cars sold in the eastern U.S. tend to have been made in the U.S.