Toyota Chaser JZX90 for Sale in Japan: Prices & How to Buy One (2026)

A Toyota Chaser JZX90 is close to unpriceable at Japanese retail. When we counted every priced listing on Goo-net on 21 September 2026 for Market Check #3, there were 4 JZX90 Chasers in the whole country, asking ¥0.98M, ¥1.33M, ¥2.83M and ¥3.86M, a median of ¥2.08M. They were the same four unsold cars in July and August. You can still buy one from overseas, but it will almost certainly come through a Japanese trade auction or a private sale inside the drift community rather than a classified ad. Everything below was checked on 14 October 2026.

What is a JZX90 Chaser?

The X90 is the fifth-generation Chaser, one of three sister cars (Chaser, Mark II, Cresta) that Toyota remodelled together in October 1992. Toyota’s lineage page dates the launch to 29 October 1992: a four-door pillared hardtop, rear-wheel drive, on a newly developed four-wheel double-wishbone suspension. The X100 replaced it on 5 September 1996, the month Wikipedia gives for the end of X90 production. So the run is October 1992 to September 1996.

This generation is where Toyota first split the Chaser into the sporty Tourer and the luxurious Avante lines. JZX90 is the chassis code for the 2.5-litre cars; JZX91 is the 3.0, GX90 the 2.0, SX90 the 1.8. Japanese sellers also split the run into zenki (early, pre-facelift) and kouki (late, facelift) cars.

Toyota’s page states that the 280 PS twin-turbo was available only on the Tourer V, and that TEMS suspension, ABS, traction control and a Torsen limited-slip differential were standard or optional depending on grade. On gearboxes, Toyota’s page says nothing. Wikipedia lists the R154 five-speed manual, the W57 manual and the A340E four-speed automatic, and states that manuals were optional across the engine range, so a factory manual Tourer V exists. The share built that way is not stated anywhere we could verify, so treat it as TBC.

How much does a JZX90 cost in Japan?

Honest answer: the retail market is too thin to give you a price band, and we will not invent one. Here is the ladder as it stands.

For scale, the next generation is a normal retail car: our JZX100 Chaser buyer’s guide is built on 66 priced JZX100s at a ¥4.38M median (August 2026 census). Sixty-six cars give you a distribution. Four give you four asking prices. What Goo-net shows today, including whether any of the four has finally sold, is on our drift cars for sale in Japan page, refreshed every morning.

Why are there only four JZX90s at retail?

Because the ones worth having never reach a classified. A Tourer V that a Japanese drifter is done with goes to the next drifter in the paddock, or to a trade auction where a tuning shop or exporter buys it the same week. The four cars sitting on Goo-net for three months are the ones that market passed on.

The chassis is still in use. The official 2026 D1 Lights ranking, read on 14 October 2026, lists Mitsunori Ito (#90, Team Ito Auto) in 7th place on 67 points in a car entered as ZX90, and Jun Kitazawa (#6, illusion YTS VL) in a JZX90. Our census of every car in D1’s 2026 rankings sets that against the S-chassis majority. To watch a 90 in tsuiso (twin, door-to-door drifting) before you buy one, the D1 Lights dates are on our drift calendar.

Can you import a JZX90?

United States. The 25-year exemption counts from the month of manufacture, not the model year. The newest X90 Chaser is a September 1996 car, so the last of them cleared the mark in September 2021 and every JZX90 is eligible as of 14 October 2026. The build plate on the specific car still goes on the HS-7, and a swapped engine can complicate the separate EPA exemption; our 25-year rule guide and the US import process article cover both.

Canada uses a 15-year rule, so the JZX90 has been open for years. Australia, the UK and the rest are in Importing a drift car to Australia, the UK and Canada, and the EU’s duty-and-VAT path is in Importing a drift car from Japan to the EU.

What to check on a 30-year-old turbo Toyota

The newest JZX90 turned 30 in September 2026. The checks are the usual ones for any 1JZ-GTE car of this age:

• Auto-to-manual conversions. The Tourer V came as an automatic as well as a manual, and converted automatics are common in drift circles. A good conversion uses the R154 and the correct pedal box, flywheel and ECU changes. An undocumented one is a question mark. Used R154 prices in Japan, if you end up doing it yourself, are in our used JDM engine and gearbox price index.
• Rust. Rear arches, sills, the boot floor and the front chassis rails behind the bumper. Japanese winters with road salt in the north do the same thing they do everywhere.
• Twin-turbo wear. Shaft play, cold-start smoke and oil in the intercooler piping on a pair of 30-year-old turbos. Many cars have been converted to a single turbo; that is fine if it is tidy and tuned.
• Drift history. Clip impacts live in the rear quarters and the front rails. Look for mismatched paint, bent rails and wiring hacked for a standalone ECU.

You cannot check any of that from a listing photo, and you do not have to. We inspect the car in Japan and send you an underside, frame-rail and engine-bay walkthrough plus a genuinely cold start on video before you decide.

Retail is the ceiling, not the floor

The four asking prices in our census are Japanese dealer retail: a car bought at auction, reconditioned, given a warranty and a margin, and then not sold for three months. That is the top of the market, and for the JZX90 it is nearly all of the visible market.

The real supply is underneath it. The same chassis moves through the Japanese trade auction halls every week, and through private sales in the drift community before it ever reaches a listing site. Here is the step that stops overseas buyers: the trade auction halls do not admit private overseas buyers, because membership needs a Japanese business and guarantors, and the drift-community private market runs in Japanese, by word of mouth, at the paddock.

Buying at that layer means giving up the showroom prep. For a chassis with four cars at retail, it is also the only realistic way in.