We were all stunned three years ago when a fairly nondescript, but beautifully preserved light-blue Toyota Corona sedan sold for a whopping $16,000 at the Silver Auction in Fort McDowell, Arizona. The same car sold again this May for $36,000 at the Mecum Indy sale, as part of a collection owned by the estate of a Toyota dealer. All of the cars in the collection did quite well. New all-Japanese car shows are regularly popping up, mostly in California. At Hagerty's Cars That Matter, we continue to add vintage Japanese cars to the price guide. As far as we know, we're the first to index the trend in this "emerging market" and what we see looks pretty good. Although down a bit of late, the blue chip Toyota 2000GT is still way up from its 2006 value. We've broken that out in a separate index to better show how the more affordable Toyotas and Datsuns weathered the economic storm quite well with overall values up 10-15 percent from 2006. We’ll be keeping our eye on early cars from the Land of the Rising Sun.

-Dave Kinney, October 2009, Publisher of Hagerty’s Cars that Matter.