Hi all,

I am new here, i would like to apologise for the long post.

Long story short, today I went to view an Honda stepwagon to a dealership in darwen (darwen motor company), and end up falling in love with a 2015 2.5 vellfire they had there.

However coming home and doing some research, i noticed that there are two recalls pending on the vellfire, will toyota uk honour these or shall i walk away? The forums says it will but i can't find what the process looks like.

https://toyota.jp/recall/2025/drawing/0122_2_1.html

https://toyota.jp/recall/2025/drawing/0122_2_2.html

The other thing i noticed, the dealership mentions to be bimta approved but i cant find them on the bimta website, is this normal? Has anyone here purchased a vehicle from them? Checking company house mentions they were incorporated only last year (maybe they changed name or something dunno)?

The dealership didn't have any CarVX on hand so they are ordering one, i have also ordered a Carshield check to see if more information comes through, i will return there to do a proper test drive and give it a good poke as my family insisted in coming this time.

The car looked mint with just the weird black matt wrap on the roof. Since the auction is rated 4, would they have spoted the wrap hiding anything? Would the wrap be mentioned on the auction sheet?

Also the car seems to come with an alpine radio connected to a screen in the middle row, which seems great but its in Japanese, should the dealership make modifications to it i hear that their fm waves are operate in a smaller range, can this modified, can the language on these alpines be changed to english (silly me forgot to take a model number), is it possible to plug a carplay adapter to these? I guess the satnav would be useless as these to only work in japan correct, is there an equivalent alpine radio for Europe?

What other things should look for on these when i go back?

If you got this far many thanks.

I have never seen a 30 series, but inferring from the 20 series...

Regarding recalls, I doubt Toyota UK will do anything, but you can check recall status of a Japanese vehicle here (use Google Translate) if you have the frame number (AGH30-xxxxxxx).

https://toyota.jp/recall/

I would guess that unless the recall is recent it has probably been done in Japan.

I expect the wrap should be mentioned in the auction sheet. From what I've seen the inspector may note obvious damage visible through the wrap but is not going to remove anything to look underneath.

On head units, some OEM ones can't be switched to English but a few minutes with a translate app on your phone (I use DeepL) and you can learn the basics. Most of it (satnav, phone book, TV) aren't useful anyway. Mostly it's Bluetooth, radio and video inputs that you care about.

Japanese FM bands are different but you can buy a band converter for £20 or so (Amazon, AliExpress). The Japanese FM band is smaller so the band shifter typically has a switch to switch upper or lower parts of the band (Japan is 76-95MHz, we're 87.5-108, so +10 gets you 86-105 and +20 gets 96-115). You could probably also use a separate FM radio to feed the stock head unit via Bluetooth or aux in. AM radio works fine on the stock head unit.

If you are fitting an Android head unit there are apps you can use with a DAB USB stick to get DAB.