Man can't believe he can't get a Suzuki Jimny in the UK so imports a whole fleet himself

A UK car YouTuber wanted the five-door Suzuki Jimny, only to find out you can’t officially buy one in the UK or EU.

Suzuki won’t sell the longer Jimny there because of emissions regulations, which means the only route is importing.

Mat Watson decided that if he was going to do it, he may as well do it properly, wiring more than $135,000 (£100,000) to bring a small fleet into the country.

What started as a workaround quickly turned into a six-figure gamble.

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He was already a Jimny importer but it wasn’t going to plan

Before this latest gamble, Watson had already been running a small side business importing Suzuki Jimnys through his dealership, Japanese Dream Machines.

However, he’d focused on the three-door models, and quickly realised the UK market was saturated. 

He describes them as feeling like ‘just another box on wheels’ in a crowded car park.

The five-door, on the other hand, was the one buyers kept asking about… and the one Suzuki refused to officially sell.

That refusal comes down to emissions. 

The engine in the five-door produces the same CO₂ output as far more powerful hot hatches, which made it difficult to keep on sale under UK and EU rules. 

So while demand was there, official supply wasn’t. 

For Watson, that gap looked less like a frustration and more like an opportunity.

He considered sourcing cars from India and South Africa before settling on Japan, even though that meant navigating long waiting lists. 

In some cases, buyers were facing waits of up to 24 months unless they paid over list price to jump the queue. 

Watson did exactly that, paying a premium and shipping the cars roll-on, roll-off into the UK.

All before he’d proven he could actually turn a profit on them.

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Getting them into Britain was where the chaos really started

Once the cars landed, the work only intensified. 

They needed UK-specific tweaks and Individual Vehicle Approval (IVA) testing before they could be registered. 

That meant swapping to a miles-per-hour speedometer, adjusting lighting, and ensuring the export certificates carried the correct specification numbers. 

At one stage, missing paperwork threatened to derail the entire batch.

Testing slots were booked weeks out, so he chased cancellations and transported cars across the country just to keep deals alive. 

Buyers placed deposits, then had to wait while DVLA registration crawled along. 

In one case, a customer took delivery before registration was complete, adding even more pressure to get everything processed quickly.

But despite the stress, the five-doors began to move. 

Cars that hadn’t officially been sold in the UK were now sitting on British driveways.

Deposits turned into full payments. 

And with demand clearly stronger than it had been for the three-doors, Watson did the opposite of retreat.

He ordered more.

As of now, the gamble hasn’t collapsed, but it hasn’t exploded into effortless success either. 

Mat’s still juggling paperwork, testing, and customer expectations. 

But he’s no longer sitting on unsold stock wondering what went wrong.

Instead, he’s turned the Jimny the UK can’t have into the backbone of a business, one shipment at a time.

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