Sharjah still has the reputation of a major used car market, but now primarily for left-hand cars.
The traders dealing in right-hand used cars are now operating from Dubai.
Sharjah recovered rapidly after 2000, when more than 120 major used car traders shifted to Dubai, leaving behind only a skeletal presence.
There are now more than 300 showrooms.
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.
"We are importing the majority of the cars from the United States," confirmed Kazim Wazir of Toba Motors.
"The trend started about a year ago, but it really picked up some six months back with around 1,000 cars being imported every month from the United States to Sharjah."
He said that almost a similar number of left-hand cars is being imported from Japan every month by traders both in Sharjah and Dubai. This brings the total number of left-hand used cars imported to Dubai and Sharjah to around 25,000 per year.
For Sharjah, he said, the major re-export market is Saudi Arabia, followed by the other GCC countries.
Mohammad Ashfaq from S.K. Motors said that some 40 per cent of the left-hand imported used cars are sold in the domestic market and the rest are re-exported, mainly to the GCC countries.
Gulf News
