Where do grey imports come from and how do they get here?
In a word, Japan. In Japan, as vehicles age, they become progressively more expensive to re-register. As a result of this, enormous numbers of otherwise perfectly serviceable cars, vans and bikes end up in warehouses and open-air holding yards, victims of a masively oversupplied used-vehicle market. 250cc (and 400cc, incidentally) sportsbikes were further made irrelevant by changes in Japanese motorcycle licensing and registration laws which came through in the mid 1990’s and made it easier for people to own and ride bigger bikes. To a large extent, bikes like the CBR250, ZXR250 and FZR250 were created for the large numbers of Japanese riders who wanted something flash, but were unable or unwilling to go through the onerous process required to be able to own a CBR600, a ZXR750 or an FZR1000. When the laws changed, demand for 250 sportsbikes vanished overnight. The factories ceased producting them, and piles of them wound up in holding yards. These holding yards now serve as strip-mines
