For decades, American enthusiasts dreamed about the cars Japan kept for itself. The JDM mystique was real, Tokyo got the good stuff, and the US got whatever crossed safety regulations and emissions tests without too much trouble. That era is not exactly over, but something has shifted. Japan is now importing cars built in America. Toyota cars. Built in American factories.
Three models are making the trip: the Camry, the Highlander, and the Tundra. The Camry left the Japanese market in 2023, barely enough time to be missed. The Highlander, known in Japan as the Kluger, disappeared from local dealerships in 2007. Nearly twenty years later, it’s coming back wearing American license plate holes and, in most cases, a right-hand drive conversion performed stateside. The Tundra, meanwhile, will reportedly land with left-hand drive intact.
The legal groundwork is already in place. A joint framework agreement between Japan and the United States now allows American-built vehicles to enter the Japanese market without going through local safety certification. Both countries aligned their standards, removed the bottleneck, and opened the gate. Whether this was diplomacy or just good business is a question worth asking.
Toyota isn’t alone. Nissan is bringing the Murano back to Japan, built in the US and sold, apparently, with the steering wheel on the wrong side by Japanese standards. Honda is joining the party with the Acura Integra Type S and the Passport TrailSport Elite, both of which generated serious buzz at Tokyo Auto Salon 2026 and Osaka Auto Messe 2026.
Here’s the part that deserves a slow clap. While Japan ships its beloved ’90s sports cars westward, now fully eligible under the 25-year import rule and fetching high prices among American collectors, it receives modern, practical, American-assembled vehicles in return. The US gets the Skylines and Supras it spent a generation obsessing over.
