For over seven years and just under 100,000km, we have driven our Noah hybrid like the unflashy workhorse Toyota intended it to be. The exterior of this five-door minivan bears the scars of country scrapes and urban dings, while its interior is a rich collage of smears and spills.
Ordinarily, the trade-in value of our weary but operationally rock-solid friend would be something close to worthless. In Japan, the costs of meeting the country’s rigorous shaken test — the 60-part roadworthiness checks carried out by government-authorised inspectors every two years — can ratchet into the thousands of dollars beyond a car’s seventh year (a deliberate policy to increase new car sales). So a vehicle’s appeal on the local second-hand market plummets.
