Gary Duncan’s collection of more than 600 right-side driving Japanese classic market cars has made his Duncan Imports in Christiansburg the largest dealer of the diminutive rides in the U.S. Good news fans, he’ll sell you one.
Christiansburg sometimes languishes in the shadow of its New River Valley neighbor, Blacksburg.
That city makes the news when a team from Virginia Tech solves the problem of lead in the water supply in Flint, Michigan, and when students contend in national competitions for robots and autonomous cars and other wonders of the modern age.
But lately, people have been visiting Christiansburg, Blacksburg’s country cousin, from all over the nation, drawn by an importer of rare and exotic goods from the Far East that have been nigh impossible to get in the U.S. These are Japanese domestic market right-hand driving cars, shipped in and legalized for use in America by Christiansburg’s Duncan Imports & Classic Cars.
The warehouse storing Duncan’s 600 or more tiny cars, mini trucks, diminutive firetrucks and other assorted Japanese esoterica (plus about 270 conventional classic cars) sits in an industrial park behind Christiansburg’s bustling “motor mile,” the stretch of U.S. Route 11 that is also home to several of the Duncan family’s new car dealerships.
But you can’t get cars like the ones at Duncan Imports anywhere else. That’s why one customer flew in on his Cessna Citation business jet to take delivery of a 27-year-old Japanese economy car with the steering wheel on the wrong side.
“I can sell you a cool car for under $15,000 or under $10,000 and you can go to Cars & Coffee or a cruise-in and people are looking at you, and not at the $100,000 Porsche,” explains Gary Duncan, who helms the family-owned business. “They’re rolling art.”
The affable Duncan refers to this part of his automotive empire, which the family launched in 1955, as his “right-hand drive” business. Maybe it is no coincidence that he ended up gaining fame for selling cars from a small island nation where they drive on the other side of the road, because that’s really where he started. More on that later.
Duncan joined the family business by opening a dealership for Triumph sports cars when he was just 19 years old. Today, his family runs the Duncan Automotive empire, which sells cars from 11 brands and operates 14 dealerships throughout Southwest Virginia.
In the 1970s, Duncan’s next move was to expand into MG sports cars. Those British manufacturers built cars for the U.S. market with steering wheels on the left, but at heart, they were tiny right-hand drive machines, just like the Japanese ones Duncan sells now.
These Japanese minicars were never sold in the U.S., and because they were never made compliant with federal regulations, they weren’t legal to import. However, when a car reaches 25 years old, it becomes eligible to import on the basis that it has historical value. Battling through state and federal bureaucracies tends to discourage importation of these unique machines, but Duncan has persevered because he was inspired by the Nissan Figaro.
The 1991 Nissan Figaro is cuter than a box of YouTube kittens, and it has proven to be especially popular with women, Duncan says. (Nascar driver Joey Logano bought a Figaro for his wife.)
He first laid eyes on the car, which was styled to look like an Italian car of the 1950s, at the 1989 Tokyo Motor Show, when he hoped for a chance to sell them.
Now that they are officially designated classics, he can sell Figaros and other offbeat right-hand drive machines like the Nissan GTR, Honda Beat, Toyota Sera, Mazda AZ1 and others.
Duncan maintains what is surely the world’s largest inventory of the toy-like cars. Depending on condition, they range in price from less than $10,000 to more than $30,000.
Their accessible price, along with their looks, has fans beating a path to Christiansburg. Observes Duncan, wryly, “We’re kinda becomin’ a destination.”
This article originally appeared in our June 2018 issue.
