Subaru began selling four-wheel-drive-equipped Leone station wagons in the United States as 1975 models, and each passing year after that saw more American car shoppers deciding that they wanted cars—not trucks, cars—with power going to all four wheels. Toyota got into that game with the Tercel 4WD wagon, sold here for the 1983 through 1988 model years, and I’ve found one of those cars in its final parking space in Denver.

The very affordable Tercel first went on sale in the United States as a 1980 model, badged as the Corolla Tercel at first (in order to take advantage of the name recognition for the unrelated Corolla, which had been a strong seller since its American debut in 1966).

The original Tercel had an interesting powertrain layout, with a longitudinally-mounted engine driving the front wheels via a V-drive-style transmission that sent power to a differential assembly mounted below the engine. This resulted in an awkward-looking high hood but also meant that sending power to a rear drive axle was just a matter of adding a rear-facing output shaft to the transmission.

Making a four-wheel-drive Tercel wasn’t difficult with that rig plus a few off-the-shelf parts, and Toyota decided to add a wagon version of the Tercel at the same time. This was the Sprinter Carib, which debuted in Japan as a 1982 model. The Tercel 4WD Wagon (as it was known in North America) hit American Toyota showrooms as a 1983 model.

A front-wheel-drive version of the Tercel Wagon was also available in the United States, though not in Japan; most of the Tercel Wagons I find during my junkyard travels are four-wheel-drive versions.

This car has four-wheel-drive, not all-wheel-drive (as we understand the terms today), which means that the driver had to manually select front-wheel-drive for use on dry pavement. Failure to do so would result in damage to the tires or worse. American Motors began selling the all-wheel-drive Eagle as a 1980 model, with Audi following a year later with its Quattro AWD system, while Toyota didn’t begin selling true AWD cars in the United States until its All-Trac system debuted in the 1988 model year.

The Tercel 4WD Wagon sold very well in snowy regions of North America, despite strong competition from Subaru as well as from the 4WD-equipped wagons offered by Honda, Nissan, and Mitsubishi.

This one is a top-of-the-Tercel-range SR5 model with just about every possible option. While the base 1986 Tercel FWD hatchback started at a miserly $5448 ($15,586 in today’s dollars), the MSRP for a 1986 Tercel SR5 4WD wagon was $8898 ($25,456 after inflation).

One of the coolest features of the SR5 version of the ’86 Tercel 4WD Wagon was the six-speed manual transmission, with its “Extra Low” gear. If you’re a Tercel 4WD Wagon enthusiast (many are), this is the transmission you want for your car!

The SR5’s plaid seat upholstery looked great, as an added bonus.

These cars were reasonably capable off-road, though the lack of power made them quite slow on any surface. This is a 1.5-liter 3A-C SOHC straight-four, rated at 62 horsepower and 76 pound-feet (probably more like 55 horsepower at Denver’s elevation).

The curb weight of this car was a wispy 2290 pounds and so it wasn’t nearly as pokey as, say, a Rabbit Diesel, but I’ve owned several 1983-1988 Tercel Wagons and I can say from personal experience that they require a great deal of patience on freeway on-ramps.

I can also say from experience that the Tercel Wagon obliterates every one of its anywhere-near-similarly-priced competitors in the reliability and build-quality departments. This one made it to a pretty good 232,503 miles during its career, and I’ve found a junkyard ’88 with well over 400,000 miles on its odometer.

The air conditioning added $655 to the price tag, or $1874 in today’s dollars. This one has an aftermarket radio, but SR5 4WD Wagon buyers for 1986 got a pretty decent AM/FM radio with four speakers as standard equipment. If you wanted to play cassettes, that was $186 more ($532 now).

The Tercel went to a third generation during the 1988 model year (both the second- and third-generation Tercels were sold in the United States as 1988 models), becoming a cousin of the Japanese-market Starlet and getting an ordinary engine orientation in the process. The 4WD Wagon went away, to be replaced by the Corolla All-Trac Wagon. The 1996 Tercel ended up being the last new car available in the United States with a four-speed manual transmission, by the way.

These cars make fun projects today, though finding rust-free examples can be a challenge.

***

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Call it a cyclecar or a microcar, the Suminoe Engineering Works Flying Feather was the right car at the right time for war-ravaged Japan of the 1940s. The driving force behind the car was Yutaka Katayama, now known as the father of the Datsun 240Z and the man who brought Nissan to the United States. However, his imaginative design met with a quick demise after only 200 examples were ever produced. The Flying Feather has become a forgotten car that should be held to much loftier status.

“Mr. K” was a Nissan man. Since 1935, he had worked for the auto manufacturer doing advertising and promotional work. After Nissan restarted production following WWII with its prewar Austin 7 DA and DB variants, plans were afoot to dive deeper into the Austin portfolio to bring more up-market sedans to Japan. Nissan was eyeing Austin’s A40 and A50, both larger cars than the ancient Austin 7.

But in 1947, Japan was struggling with ramping up production of even the most basic products. Raw materials, supply chain issues, a collapsed economy, and generally dismal working and living conditions didn’t translate to eager buyers of large English sedans. Katayama knew this, and felt that a bare-bones economy car was the way to kick off not only the rebirth of Nissan but also that of Japan. It was the same rationale that produced Germany’s Beetle and France’s 2CV. Both vehicles would begin production in 1947, the same year in which Katayama began envisioning their Japanese counterpart.

Nissan designer Ryuichi Tomiya was of a like mind with Katayama. Well-known throughout Japan for his various automotive and industrial designs, the future director of the Tomiya Research Institute would go on to design several important cars including the Fuji Cabin three-wheeler. Back in the 1940s, he was not up for rehashing Austins even though Nissan was dead set on going upmarket with the larger Austin A40 sedan.

Tomiya and Katayama hatched a plan to break from Nissan and start their own automobile company, focusing on affordable but sprightly commuter cars. They settled on a design they called the Flying Feather: An extremely simple, lightweight, two-seater with the presence of a peculiar yet sporting coupe. Yes, it would run motorcycle wheels and tires. And, yes, power would come from a puny one-cylinder air-cooled Nissan engine, located in the rear of the car, no less. But since the vehicle would not be much more than two motorcycles stitched together, it would be simple to repair, easy to build, and peppy enough to satisfy those who needed basic transportation.

By 1950 Katayama was able to produce his first prototype, a doorless convertible somewhat like a stylized Jeep on motorcycle wheels. His first problem was getting the prototype out of the second-story shop it was built in, but once Nissan saw the elegant little doorless convertible, executives were impressed, and they agreed to produce the Flying Feather. Nissan was ready to produce its own version of Austin’s A40, and the Flying Feather would broaden the company’s portfolio by providing a smaller, cheaper option.

What appeared to be a solid production plan quickly fell apart after Katayama brought food to workers who were striking at a Nissan assembly plant to protest poor working conditions and constant interruptions for lack of materials. Nissan quickly parted ways with Mr. K—and his Flying Feather.

Undeterred, Katayama and Tomiya struck out on their own. A second, more stylish prototype would be the basis for the production-spec Flying Feather. Bug-eye headlights blended nicely into the hood, or frunk. A tapering body incorporated flares covering the front tires, with the body moving out as it flowed to the rear. The design ended with tall air vents chopped off at an angle. With large wheel openings for those big motorcycle wheels, it presented impressive overall proportions, adding to its diminutive though sporting look.

The refined prototype now had doors, independent front and rear suspension, and an air-cooled 350cc V-twin engine offering 12.5 hp. In this final form, the Flying Feather weighed 935 pounds. It was light as a proverbial feather, with better performance than the first design.

The windows swung up on hinges, rather than rolling up and down, and no radio or heater was offered. There were friction shocks to suppress jounce, and brakes only at the rear. The interior was spartan: The frames of the seats were exposed—from the side, you can see the springs—and covered with a fabric pad that served as upholstery.

After shopping the car around to suppliers, Katayama landed at Suminoe Engineering Works. It produced interiors and small bits to Nissan and agreed to produce the Flying Feather. Adding additional air beneath the wings of Katayama’s project, the Japan Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) agreed to help nurture Japan’s own “people’s car.”

A production version of the Flying Feather—the “smallest, cheapest, and most economical practical car in the world”—was the highlight of the 1954 Tokyo Auto Show. Unfortunately, things quickly fell apart.

The MITI support never materialized. Then, Suminoe lost its contract to supply interiors to Nissan, which bankrupted the supplier and pretty much ended any possibility of producing more Flying Feathers. In the end, only around 200 were made. Very few have survived, and only a handful of restored examples exist today.

Though Katayama’s dream of an affordable car for Japan was gone, he wasn’t done with ambitious projects. He mended fences with Nissan, starting as team manager for Datsun’s two 210 entries in the 1958 Mobilgas trials in Australia. In 1960, Nissan sent him to America to oversee the launch of the Datsun brand. Though strained in these early years, Katayama’s efforts as the first president of Nissan of America laid the foundation for the expansion of the company. The Datsun 510, the 1600 and 2000 sports cars, the successful racing alliance with Peter Brock’s BRE Racing in the late 1960s and 1970s, and the development of the 240Z all happened under the stewardship of Mr. K.

In 2009, at 100 years old, Katayama remained immersed in the machinations of the car industry, offering his take on the impact of the Mazda Miata as the 240Z’s successor. He died at the age of 105, his reputation as a leader in the development of the Japanese and American automotive landscape well established. And while the Flying Feather is but a sidenote of his illustrious career, it really was a milestone in the reemergence of Japan and its burgeoning automotive industry.

***

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In this installment of Reputation Management, we go beyond North American markets for a new story. It’s still about the complex world of automotive retail, but now the situation gets rather seedy in the F&I (finance and insurance) department of a chain of used car dealerships. Even worse, this company has been a household name in Japan since 1976.

In general terms, experiences in the F&I department are generally the worst part for customers on their journey to buying a vehicle. This is because you’ve already agreed on a price with the salesperson, but now have to pay/finance the vehicle, insure it, and add various warranties to minimize future cash outlays. Some items can be necessary (road hazard warranties for 20+ inch wheels) but most take us back to the F&I scene from the movie Fargo.

Transparency is almost impossible to find in an F&I office, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is currently having a hard time changing that for American consumers. The same truths apply to one of the largest used car retailers in Japan, a company that you can think of as parallel to Carmax here in the United States.

This particular Japanese F&I scandal stems from the unmitigated greed of senior management and collusion with a very large insurance provider. The former centers around damaging and/or padding the repair bill of vehicles with a warranty policy. While some insurance companies balked at the charges, one of them was seemingly okay with this troubling behavior. In return, the F&I departments agreed to only sell warranties from this particular insurance company. The end result was a massive fraud, and Japanese citizens were the victims, as they ultimately paid the tab via higher premiums.

The insurance provider in question has a CEO who is resigning by the end of this month, while the retailer’s nepotistic management team said sayōnara back in 2023. These changes happened for good reason, as Japan’s Fair Trade Commission (also FTC!) reportedly noted “violations on an unheard-of scale” by the auto retailer.

After this informative video hit YouTube, there was news this company might have a brighter future in the long term. Considering its decades of history with Japanese consumers, perhaps the relationship is salvageable.

For now, we can read the reviews like tea leaves to evaluate the short-term prospects of the company. So let’s scan Google Maps and learn a thing or two about poor retailing practices from the land of some of the world’s most trusted automotive brands.

Sakuras in Plain Sight

The word “sakura” means cherry blossom, which is the flower that even we Yanks appreciate around the country come springtime. But it is also a slang term for a fake customer who blends in with the general public. Sakuras are a bad sign, perhaps even worse than this high-pressure tactic to get a would-be customer into the F&I department to close the deal.

The world of online reviews can be harsh when sakuras are spotted. This might be a revenge review (my own term I just made up) to the widespread (seemingly global) practice of paying for good reviews. Doing so improves your ranking on Google Maps, and gives customers more trust in your business. The sakura industry is so big there are websites boldly proclaiming to produce good ratings for your business, but as the YouTube video above explains, this company’s sakuras were likely created in-house.

That is absolutely not strange, as fake reviews are usually from singular accounts made by employees, friends, family, etc. This retailer was in the news when this review was published, so this reviewer is clearly being sarcastic. I wonder if Google Translate softened the blow when it comes to the original tone of this review.

Tree Controversy

At the alleged behest of the CEO’s son, this company poisoned trees so motorists could see its inventory on the lot. See below—there are now tiny bushes where the stumps lie, and just a single tree stands next to the showroom.

This is why being a store manager (a general manager in the U.S.) is a tough gig: You need free advertising to ensure that everyone knows you both exist and that you have cars that people want. But do you kill trees to make it happen?

A seasoned general manager knows that their store’s actions can raise the ire of locals, and killing trees gets the media and the government involved (usually in that order). Apparently that’s not an issue for this company, because they’ve blurred the lines between right and wrong elsewhere. Why not commit a little herbicide in the process?

About That F&I Fraud

Here’s an example of the counterpoint to a sakura: a revenge review that may or may not have any grounding in an actual experience at the dealership.

This comment about the fraud points to a harsh reality about the car business. No matter how sketchy the operation may be, people still need to search locally for car dealerships in their area. And a company with such a storied (as it were) history is still marketing its vehicles to locals, dangling a lure that is both tempting and necessary for many citizens.

One Bad Apple?

A vehicle is a necessity for many citizens, indeed. Being in a hurry to buy a new car is a recipe for getting a bad deal, because there’s a level of urgency that hurts your negotiation strategy.

But it’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax when your salesperson shows up at your workplace, expressing appreciation for your buying a car that was likely headed to auction. Hopefully this salesperson was at least a good tipper at the karaoke bar.

Hey, it’s the same salesperson in the previous review! Looks like the F&I fraud, stemming from overcharging an insurance company for repairs, has now manifested itself in poorly installed (or poor quality?) aftermarket coilover shocks on one of their vehicles in inventory. I suspect aftermarket parts are the bane of any insurer, so this was likely an easy rug to pull out from underneath any insurance company … not just the one you’re getting a quid pro quo from.

The Whole Thing Stinks

The YouTube explainer video above suggests that employee turnover was high because of aggressive goals set by the company. You can expect that seasoned automotive retailers will take jobs with better car dealers, or find sales positions in another industry. I suspect I’m not the first person to tell you that younger, inexperienced employees put up with more rubbish from senior management than older, tenured staff. The same truth applies to this dealership.

Premium car dealerships often task staff members with the sole purpose of customer support. That’s unlikely for cheaper brands, or for a used-car dealership like this one. The last sentence is also telling, as who wouldn’t want a free oil change just for leaving a Google review? That’s technically not the same as planting a sakura, but it accomplishes the same thing for the cost of oil, filter, and a little bit of labor.

The age of this review is telling, as sloppy accounting for these repairs happened well before this company’s chickens came home to roost.

Not every customer is desperate, unsophisticated, or technically ignorant of the differences between a good and a bad purchase experience. This individual is clearly one of those lucky customers. But we don’t all get to buy from a Lexus dealership or even a reputable Chevrolet one. And we can’t all buy a one-price Tesla or anything we want from Carvana, though avoiding the tech company business model might be a good thing. (For reasons here, here, and here.)

Those who grew up in a family with no other alternatives than the buy-here-pay-here lots may not know any better. It’s a sad reality I learned head-on when I volunteered at a local high school, and when I taught middle-school-aged kids about F&I for a fintech startup company. I have no knowledge of automotive retailing in Japan, but I assume a similar issue swirls above Japanese society and this embattled automotive retailer.

No matter your circumstances, getting scammed by a sales or service department should never be allowed. Profit is one thing, but doing so at the expense of society is another. While that’s generally a gray area, this episode of Reputation Management suggests that fraud can also be crystal-clear.

***

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The post Reputation Management: Sayōnara to Sakuras and Scammers appeared first on Hagerty Media.

In Colorado, where I live, four-wheel-drive Subarus have been beloved ever since the first 4WD Leone-based models appeared in showrooms in the mid-’70s. Because of their popularity in the Centennial State for nearly 50 years, the car graveyards along the I-25 corridor amount to museums of the history of the Pleiades-badged brand in America. Today we’ll take a look at an absolutely loaded Subaru wagon, found in a boneyard just outside of Denver.

When we talk about U.S.-market Subarus of the 1970s and 1980s, we need to first discuss the way that Fuji Heavy Industries named their cars on this side of the Pacific. The Leone, as it was known in Pacific markets, debuted in the United States as a 1972 model, but that name was never used here. At first, they were designated by their engine displacements, but soon each model was pitched as, simply, “the Subaru” with the trim levels (DL and GL were the best-known) used as de facto model names. The exception to this system was the Brat pickup, which first showed up as a 1978 model. Things in the American Subaru naming world became even more confusing when the non-Leone-derived XT appeared as a 1985 model followed by the Justy two years later, and the Leone finally became the Loyale here for its final years (1990-1994).

The Leone began its American career as a seriously cheap economy car, mocked in popular culture for its small size (but still getting a shout-out from Debbie Harry). Sponsorship of the U.S. Olympic Ski Team and gradual addition of size and features allowed Subaru to sell the higher-end Leone models for decent money as the 1980s went on.

In 1987, the absolute cheapest member of the Leone family in the United States was the base front-wheel-drive three-door-hatchback, coming in at an MSRP of $5857 (about $16,345 in 2024 dollars). Known to Subaru dealers as the STD, it was disappointingly never badged as such.

At the very top of the 1987 U.S.-market Leone ziggurat stood today’s Final Parking Space subject: the GL-10 Turbo 4WD Wagon. Its price started at an impressive $14,688, which comes to a cool $40,990 after inflation. A naturally-aspirated 1987 GL 4WD Wagon could be had for $10,767 ($30,047 in today’s money). In fact, the only way to spend more on a new 1987 Subaru (before options) was to forget about the Leone and buy an XT GL-10 Turbo 4WD at $15,648 ($43,669 now).

There weren’t many options you’d need on the feature-stuffed GL-10, but this car’s original buyer decided it was worth paying an additional $955 ($2665 in today’s bucks) for the automatic transmission. That pushed its out-the-door cost to within spitting distance of the price of admission for a new Volkswagen Quantum Syncro Wagon and its $17,320 ($48,335 in 2024) price.

Subaru was an early adopter of turbocharging for U.S.-market cars, with the first turbocharged Leone coupes and wagons appearing here in 1983. This car has a 1.8-liter SOHC boxer-four rated at 115 horsepower and 134 pound-feet, pretty good power in its time for a vehicle that scaled in at just 2,530 pounds (that’s about 700 fewer pounds than a new Impreza hatchback, to give you a sense of how much bulkier the current crop of new “small” cars is).

Subaru was just in the process of introducing a true all-wheel-drive system as we understand the term today in its U.S.-market vehicles when this car was built, and both 4WD and AWD systems were installed in Subarus sold here from the 1987 through 1994 model years. (Beginning with the 1996 model year, all new Subarus sold in the United States were equipped with AWD.) Subaru fudged the definition on its badging for a while by using a character that could be read as either a 4 or an A, as seen in the photo above.

I’ve documented a discarded 1987 GL-10 Turbo 4WD Coupe that had genuine AWD (called “full-time four-wheel-drive” by Subaru and some other manufacturers at the time), and it had prominent “FULL-TIME 4WD” badging and a differential-lock switch. This car just has the 4WD switch on the gearshift lever, like earlier 4WD Subarus with automatics, so I am reasonably sure that it has a 4WD system that requires the driver to switch to front-wheel-drive on dry pavement in order to avoid damage to tires or worse. But even as the current owner of two Subarus and a longtime chronicler of junked Fuji Heavy Equipment hardware, I cannot say for certain about the weird 1987 model year. Please help us out in the comments if you know for sure!

This car has the sort of science-fiction-grade digital dash that was so popular among manufacturers (particularly Japanese ones) during the middle 1980s.

It also has what a 1987 car shopper would have considered a serious factory audio system, with cassette track detection and a trip computer thrown in for good measure. This stuff was standard on the GL-10 that year, and you needed that righteous radio to fully appreciate the popular music of the time.

The odometer shows just over 120,000 miles, and the interior wasn’t too thrashed, so why was one of the coolest Subaru wagons of the 1980s residing in this place? First of all, there’s a glut of project Leones available in Colorado’s Front Range at any given moment. Second, all of the most devoted enthusiasts of these cars in this region already have hoards stables of a dozen with no space for more; I let my many friends who love these cars know about this one and they plucked at least a few parts from it before it got crushed (sorry, I shot these photos last summer and this car has already had its date with the crusher).

So, if you’re a vintage Subaru aficionado living where the Rust Monster stands 100 feet tall, head to the region between Cheyenne and Colorado Springs and find yourself a project Leone to bring home. We’ve got plenty here!

***

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Upon its 1996 introduction, you would have been forgiven for confusing the Nissan Stagea with any other practical, marginally sporty midsize family wagon on Japanese roads. It did, however, benefit from a mash-up of parts borrowed from both the staid Laurel sedan and the decidedly more exciting Skyline. And, as a competitor to the Subaru Legacy and Toyota Caldina wagons, the Stagea came with a variety of silky-smooth straight-sixes that ranged from a normally aspirated 2.0 liter to a 2.5-liter turbo, with both rear- and all-wheel-drive available. With room for the kids and a week’s worth of groceries, there was little to complain about. There was also little to make the Stagea stand apart from its rivals.

Enter Autech, Nissan’s performance subsidiary. It wasn’t long before the firm began tuning the wagon to within an inch of its life, and the result was the fire-breathing Stagea 260RS. This limited-production beast lost nothing in practicality but gained everything in eye-popping performance. You could still haul the kids and the groceries, but by the end of any spirited ride, there’d probably be vomit all over the back seats and the cargo area would look like the aftermath of a food fight.

Autech engaged in some focused massage to turn the Stagea into the 260RS. Into the engine bay went a RB26DETT, the twin-turbocharged 2.6-liter six borrowed from the R33-generation Skyline GT-R. It made 276 hp (nearly 150 more than a base Stagea and 45 more than one equipped with the 2.5-liter turbo) and 271 lb-ft of torque, with power sent through a five-speed manual transmission to the permanent ATTESA E-TS all-wheel-drive setup, which included a rear limited-slip differential, also cribbed from the GT-R. The hits kept coming, though, as Autech also incorporated the GT-R’s nimble Super-HICAS four-wheel steering system, in addition to upgrading the suspension and adding a front strut brace and rear stabilizer bar. They also fit Brembo brakes and 17-inch BBS forged alloy wheels, plus a body kit with a deep front valance, side skirts, and a rear spoiler. The result is a car broadly considered to be a Nissan Skyline GT-R wagon, one capable of making the 0–60 sprint in 5.7 seconds.

Production was limited to just 1734 examples, all right-hand drive, and all built from late 1997 to early 2001 in two periods (Stage 1.5 and Stage 2), which differ largely in cosmetic “facelift” terms. The car’s combination of practicality, mind-blowing performance, and rarity made the Stagea 260RS something of a cult classic, which helps explain its inclusion in nearly every iteration of Gran Turismo since part 2.

America began welcoming them to our shores as each successive model year turned 25. Our Sale of the Week, this 1998 Nissan Stagea 260RS Autech, crossed the Pacific last year, and on March 12, it sold on Cars & Bids for $37,500.

According to the GT-R registry, this car was the 1051st model built, the 65th of 748 Stage 2 cars. Finished in Pearl White over a black and gray interior, its metric odometer reads 173,500 km (about 107,800 miles). The seller claims to have purchased the car in Japan in 2022, then waited a year to import it before titling it in Georgia. Aftermarket upgrades made by the seller include a Kakimoto racing exhaust, a NISMO strut brace, and 18-inch RAYS wheels, plus a bunch of minor exterior and interior bits. Recent work includes replacement of the valve cover gaskets as well as the timing belt and all accessory belts.

The seller made it clear that given the car’s import status, it may not fly in every state, so caveat emptor and all that. The seller also provided no fewer than 220 photos, so it’s not hard to gauge the car’s overall condition. It is far from pristine, and in most areas it’s not even clean, with dust, dirt, staining, and what looks to be pet hair throughout the interior, which itself is an interesting mix of suede up front and leather in the back. The exterior is straight, dent-free, and rust-free, though there are some minor paint scuffs throughout. This is all stuff you might expect from a family wagon driven in a manner that dumps the groceries, and we’d peg this one in #3 (Good) condition.

Now, we don’t feature the 1998 Nissan Stagea 260RS in the Hagerty Price Guide, but we do the 1998 R33 Skyline GT-R, and in similar condition we price them at about $54,000. Other recent 260RS sales (there aren’t many) seem to fall into the $30K–$50K range based on condition and mileage, so this result seems par for the course. And when compared to that GT-R valuation, it’s quite a bargain.

Fast wagons will never not be cool. When they happen to be far cheaper than the supercar on which they’re based, it’s hard to go wrong. Driving a RHD car on our roads might have its inconvenient moments, sure, and parts availability may present some challenges—particularly the body kit bits—but mechanically you can find much of what you need through Nissan Heritage. And the growing network of JDM specialists cropping up as more and more cars make their way over will only help matters.

So, congrats to the winning bidder. First order of business should be a thorough detail, but then go have fun with it. Just try not to spill stuff.

The post This Nissan Stagea 260RS Is a Fast, Cheap Hauler appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Ask a motorcycle enthusiast who lived through the 1970s to name the best bike of that memorable two-wheeled decade, and they’re likely to mention a multi-cylinder Honda or Kawasaki, or perhaps a glamorous Italian V-twin or triple. Inquire about the best one they’ve ridden, and the answer is far more likely to be Yamaha’s RD350.

Half a century ago, Yamaha’s two-stroke parallel twin was the ultimate superbike for the young rider—quick, exciting, and relatively inexpensive. The Japanese firm produced a string of excellent two-stroke twins of various capacities during that fast-changing decade, but it was arguably the RD350, launched in 1973, that really hit the mark.

Those RD initials stood for Race Developed, and they helped differentiate the new twin from its similarly styled predecessor, the YR5. In the RD350’s case the slogan was justified. Yamaha’s TZ two-stroke twins had dominated club- and national-level 250cc and 350cc racing worldwide for several years, to the benefit of its street bikes.

Yamaha had won the last three 250cc world championships, too, through British riders Rod Gould and Phil Read, and Finnish star Jarno Saarinen. And although Giacomo Agostini still held the 350cc title on a works MV Agusta, the TZ350’s many victories included Don Emde’s Daytona 200 triumph in 1972, and Saarinen’s win on the same Florida banks a year later.

Yamaha’s road-going twins, which were air-cooled, unlike the liquid-cooled TZ racers, had a distinguished history of their own. The RD350 was developed from the YR5, which had been launched in 1970 and in turn traced its design back several years further to the firm’s first 347cc model, the YR1. The engine’s cylinder dimensions and 180-degree crankshaft arrangement had remained all that time.

The RD350’s main engine-related innovation was its reed-valve intake system, called Torque Induction by Yamaha. The reed valves, one located between each Mikuni carburetor and its cylinder, improved intake efficiency by reducing the amount of mixture that was spat back.

As one contemporary tester put it, Torque Induction “allowed hairy intake timing without the motor suffering from low-speed indigestion.” This allowed Yamaha to boost top-end power while giving useful performance and cleaner running at low revs. The RD350’s peak output of 38.5 hp at 7500 rpm was a handy three horses up on the YR5’s figure.

The RD also incorporated Yamaha’s Autolube system rather than requiring oil to be added to its fuel by hand, as was still common at the time. In most markets, the bike gained a six-speed gearbox, with the now-familiar left-foot change and one-down, five-up shift pattern, although bikes sold in the UK had the top ratio blanked off.

Chassis layout was mostly similar to that of the YR5, based on a twin-downtube steel frame that held typically skinny front forks, plus twin shocks that were adjustable for preload. The main change was the front brake: a single disc in place of the old twin-leading-shoe drum.

Styling owed much to previous Yamahas, including the YR5, but a larger fuel tank, a longer seat, and a black-finished engine gave a more substantial appearance. Although the RD’s raised bars and fairly forward-set footrests offered little clue about its sporty character, it was a lean and attractive machine.

The borrowed 1974 model I rode looked almost new, apart from a couple of minor marks on its blue tank. It fired up easily, requiring just one or two gentle prods of the kickstarter before bursting into life with an evocative blend of exhaust crackle and two-stroke fumes.

My first impression was of how small and light the Yamaha felt, which is no surprise given its short wheelbase and dry weight of just 315 pounds. This might have been a race-developed sports machine, but it was docile and easy to ride. The wide handlebars and generous steering lock combined to make it effortlessly maneuverable in town.

Also contributing to the RD’s ease of use was its smooth low-rev performance, which was notably better than that of its YR5 predecessor. Although the response to a tweak of the throttle at 4000 rpm or below was gentle, the Yamaha pulled cleanly in the lower gears, with no sign of the plug-fouling tantrums with which some of its predecessors had punished gentle treatment.

Not that I let the Yamaha have an easy time for long, because the moment it reached 5000 rpm, the RD350 was transformed. Its exhaust note hardened from a flat drone to an excited zing, and the bike leaped forward with enough urgency to make me tighten my grip on those wide bars. The tach needle flicked round toward the 8500 rpm redline, and my left boot jabbed repeatedly at the gear lever to keep the motor in its power band.

The little twin certainly responded with enough enthusiasm to make me understand why the tester from Cycle Rider wrote that “the performance and acceleration of the RD is nothing short of amazing.” But I didn’t share this impression: “The power-to-weight ratio is so great that if one isn’t careful he will unexpectedly find the front end lofted quite high in the air when accelerating hard in a low gear.” If that tester pulled unplanned wheelies, he must have been mighty sharp with the throttle …

Even so, using all that power sent the Yamaha charging past an indicated 90 mph despite its unhelpful high-barred aerodynamics, and some testers reported 100-mph-plus top speeds, although the true figure was generally just short of that. That high-speed reputation helped the RD350 outsell rivals, including Kawasaki’s S2 350 and Suzuki’s GT380 in most markets.

One slight downer was that above about 6000 rpm, the Yam passed a fair bit of vibration, especially through its seat, which made the engine’s incessant demand for revs tiresome at times. Contemporary reports generally rated the RD very smooth, so either I’m less tolerant than those riders or this bike had understandably got a little rougher in its middle age. Back in the 1970s, more testers seemed more concerned by the two-stroke’s predictable thirst for fuel.

This RD’s chassis had held up very well, and my thoughts on its quick, occasionally over-sensitive but generally stable handling pretty much tallied with comments written when it was new. Its short wheelbase and light weight meant it could be flicked into bends with the merest nudge on those wide bars. And the Yamaha gave a firm, reasonably well-controlled ride without being too harsh over bumps.

That remained true even when it was ridden hard, as the tester from Cycle Guide enthused: “The first time you really stuff the 350 into a tight corner, you begin to understand about its road racing ancestry. You enter the corner wondering if you’re going to make it; you leave the same corner wondering why you didn’t enter it faster.”

I didn’t get quite so aggressive in the bends on this elderly RD, but was happy to make good use of its relatively modern tire combination of Avon front and Bridgestone rear rubber, both of which were doubtless superior to its original fitment. And I was equally impressed by the front disc brake, which stopped the Yamaha abruptly, with no hint of grab.

The disc reportedly even worked well in the wet, unlike many contemporaries, and it combined with the reliable rear drum to give the best stopping performance that Cycle magazine had ever recorded. Contemporary testers also enthused about the high-quality finish, neat switchgear, and even the hinged and lockable fuel cap. Seat comfort was another matter, but for a sporty middleweight the RD was impressively practical.

All in all, the RD350 was brilliantly lively, capable, and fun to ride—this example very much included—I thought, as I followed its headlight beam back toward base on the last leg of my ride. Then the Yamaha suddenly slowed to a gentle halt at the roadside, felled by an elderly battery that couldn’t handle the lights’ demands.

The RD350 ended up being trucked home in disgrace, but that shouldn’t diminish the reputation of a model that fully deserves its classic status. The RD400 that followed it in 1976 was even stronger and more powerful; the liquid-cooled RD350LC of five years later was better still. But there’s something very special about the air-cooled RD350—the bike with which Yamaha’s two-stroke twins came of age.

***

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The beautiful thing about the 25-year rule is that it just keeps on rolling right along. That foreign car you’ve always loved but could never import will come of age sooner than you know, and then, if you’ve got the funds and your hoop-jumping shoes properly laced up, you can park it in your garage.

The law has cleared a path for some truly remarkable and bonkers machinery to make its way to these shores, and overwhelmingly, those vehicles have come from Japan. Home to Skylines of all stripes, borderline WRC-spec Imprezas, luxo-barge Crowns, and the cutest little kei cars, JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) cars have always fascinated American enthusiasts of a particular bent. Our auction pick of the week, this 1997 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IV GSR, is one such fascinating JDM machine.

Mitsubishi first homologated its Lancer sedan for Group A rallying in 1992, and as its arms race with Subaru intensified throughout the ’90s, subsequent versions—or Evolutions, 10 in all—of the car gained more power, more sophistication, and more blistering pace.

None of them really left Japan until Mitsubishi’s motorsports arm, Ralliart, started exporting them for European markets in the late ’90s. American fans, however, could only imagine the driving experience through Gran Turismo.

The Evo IV hit the streets in 1996, with a fresh chassis and a more powerful 4G63 turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-4, now making 276 horsepower. Perhaps the biggest news was the introduction in top-spec GSR models of Mitsubishi’s Active Yaw Control (AYC), which deftly regulated torque to the left or right side of the car to cope with loss of traction in corners. It seemed pretty handy, and in 1997, Finnish driver Tommi Mäkinen put it to good use as he piloted his Evo IV to a driver’s title in the World Rally Championship, capturing 4 of the 14 rounds that season.

The right-hand-drive Evo IV GSR currently listed on Hagerty Marketplace has had its Scotia White paint professionally refinished, and the car includes all the bells and whistles—the AYC, yes, but also power windows, Recaro seats, a Nardi steering wheel, A/C, PIAA fog lights, vented disc brakes, an aftermarket HKS turbo timer package, and a stainless exhaust. Power runs through a five-speed manual transmission to all four 17-inch EVO five-spoke wheels, each shod with Bridgestone Potenza performance tires, which will need replacing. Current mileage shows 103,215 km (64,135 miles).

This car was imported to the U.S. from Japan in July 2023 and carries a clean North Carolina title. Offered through seller AutoBarn_Classic_Cars, the bidding closes Tuesday, February 20, at noon.

The post Auction Pick of the Week: 1997 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IV GSR appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The 1990s were a wild era for sport-utility vehicles. Models like the mid-size Ford Explorer blew open the segment, showing families a fresh alternative to the traditional station wagons and dowdy-but-functional minivans that had taken over as the capacious conveyances of choice. Compact SUVs like the Jeep Cherokee and Chevrolet S-10 Blazer, which had arrived in the mid-1980s, remained popular well into the following decade. Automakers thus found themselves freed from the full-size shackles that had until then dominated the SUV scene, and they were willing to take a chance or two on more small SUVs—even trucklets that trod a much more modest footprint.

Among these market experiments, perhaps the boldest was a gambit from Japanese automakers to sell smaller, “kei”-derived SUVs in America. If the term is unfamiliar, kei cars were born out of rigorous regulations and insurance practices in the Japanese domestic market. The result was a subset of tiny, city-focused autos that ranged from sporty to semi-rugged: box-like vans, gull-winged coupes, and two-door ‘utes were all readily available in Japan at reasonable prices. Despite their shoebox proportions and capped displacements (no more than 660cc for most of the 1990s), kei vehicles proved massively popular and served as the economic bedrock that financed the overseas overtures of numerous pan-Pacific brands.

Slightly puffed-up kei trucks, despite big ambitions, failed to take hold in the Western world. It would take another 20 years or so for Americans to embrace the small, gently lifted trucklets that dominate today’s entry-level market. Despite their legacy of missteps, the original crop of kei-flavored SUVs seems ripe for re-evaluation, especially as auction blocks and online sales platforms are filling up with more JDM metal each year that becomes eligible for import under the 25-year rule.

Suzuki Gets a Head Start

Despite the cute-ute revolution not fully blossoming until the ’90s, the United States had already been the subject of a kei-truck experiment that began midway through the previous decade. The Suzuki Samurai, which arrived as a 1986 model, presented off-road fans with the smallest possible steed for sampling the great outdoors. The Samurai was a rebadged version of the brand’s popular Jimny, a strong-selling kei competitor in Japan.

Measuring 4.5 feet shorter and nearly 2 feet narrower than a contemporary Ford Bronco, and offering a sub-$8000 price tag, the Samurai found a healthy audience with hardcore off-road fans who valued light weight, small footprint, and switchable 4WD transfer case that allowed it to handle challenging trails. The North American engine at launch was a carbureted 1.3-liter, 63-hp four-cylinder, rather than the 543-cc and 41-hp mill in the kei-class version. Later, in 1991, Suzuki added fuel injection for North America that ticked output to 66 hp.

Sales neared the 50,000 mark in the model’s first year. The SUV’s raucous reception was soon muted, however, when Consumer Reports flagged the Suzuki’s propensity for rollover accidents resulting from its short wheelbase and narrow track. A libel lawsuit ensued, and while the Samurai remained in showrooms until 1995, the damage to the vehicle’s reputation was done.

Suzuki had significantly more success with its second foray into small SUVs, launched in 1988. The Sidekick was a step up from the Samurai in terms of size, grafting an additional two feet onto its overall length and boosting its track by a foot or so. A new 1.6-liter four-pot engine offered 80 hp. Not only did these moves improve passenger room, on-road stability, and drivability versus the Samurai, but they also attracted a corporate partner with deep pockets: General Motors. GM owned a minority stake in Suzuki at the time and signed on to build and sell a version of the Sidekick called the Tracker, branded with its nascent Geo marque.

Until 1995, the Sidekick/Tracker was sold alongside the Samurai, whose sales dwindled until it went out of production in 1995. The twins were a boon for Suzuki and gave GM access to an entirely new group of customers when the kei trucks were introduced for the 1989 model year. The timing was perfect, as the contemporary fervor for SUVs dovetailed nicely with the Tracker/Sidekick’s affordable price, respectable off-road chops, and livable driving dynamics. It also didn’t hurt that the little SUV was the perfect size to tow behind an RV, serving as a convertible, fun-in-the-sun dinghy with which adventurers could explore beyond campgrounds.

Big Splash, Small Pond

The Sidekick and Tracker initially had zero competition in the United States, as no other subcompact SUVs had yet appeared as of the early 1990s. It wasn’t long before one of the world’s biggest automakers emerged to test similar waters.

Toyota’s cute-ute approach for the first-ever RAV4 took an entirely different tack. Rather than tap into its vast wellspring of off-road acumen, the Japanese automaker instead pursued packaging as the vehicle’s primary strength. The goal was a street-oriented trucklet that was comfortable, spacious, and thrifty while mimicking the style (and open-roofed fun) of the tiny two-door SUVs that came before it.

Toyota took its time to get this formula right. The RAV Four concept was first displayed at the 1989 Tokyo Motor Show, but it wasn’t until four years later that a less Jeep-like, more production-ready version appeared. The vehicle actually went on sale in Japan in 1994, and this “Recreational Active Vehicle with 4WD” arrived on American shores in 1996.

Although a four-door model was available, the two-door (with optional soft top in 1998 and 1999) RAV4 epitomized the kei-like, fun-loving attitude that fed Sidekick and Tracker popularity. Though the RAV4 was dimensionally identical to its tiny-truck rivals, that’s where the similarities ended; instead of body-on-frame construction, Toyota’s urban mini featured a smooth-riding unibody design matched with frugal front-wheel drive. (An available slip-and-grip style all-wheel drive system was also available on the order sheet.)

End of the Era

Although it might have initially felt the beginning of a huge movement, a giant like Toyota jumping into the cute-ute tub ended up sloshing all the water out instead. By the end of the decade, it was clear that most buyers preferred the RAV4’s approach and favored practicality over capability in such thimble-sized sport-utilities. And while off-road specialists like the Jeep Wrangler could thrive in two-door form, four-door sales quickly came to dwarf everything else on the road.

Unfortunately for Suzuki, its third, most ill-fated kei truck did not match the prevailing trends. A would-be replacement for the Samurai, the 1996 Suzuki X-90 occupied nearly the same amount of space but prioritized style over substance. Though it packed a legitimate low-range four-wheel drive system and a tough enough frame, the X-90 was doomed by its unusual two-seat body style that swapped in a sealed trunk for a long-roofed hatch, effectively cleaving its utility and dooming its appeal to only the most daring of motorized toy shoppers. It was gone from showrooms after only three model years.

Sales of the two-door RAV4 never took off, either, compared with the volume success that was its four-door sibling, and Toyota wiped it from the roster amid the RAV4’s 2001 redesign. That left only the Tracker (eventually wearing a Chevy badge) and the renamed Sidekick (now the Vitara) to continue the short-wheelbase crusade, although each did gain a long-wheelbase/four-door variant to meet obvious demand. Both were gone after 2005.

GM’s S10 Chevy Blazer and S15 GMC Jimmy, larger two-door stalwarts, also faded away after 2005. That left the Jeep Wrangler as the last two-door SUV standing in North America, reigning as the truncated utility king with very few challengers real until the arrival of the recently revived Bronco and Defender. Even the Wrangler, however, adopted a four-door model (dubbed Unlimited) with the 2007-model-year JK generation. Today, the overwhelming majority of Wranglers, Broncos, and Defenders sold come with four doors.

Opportunity Knocks (At Knee-Level)

Thanks to the roving 25-year import window that JDM vehicles from the kei car heyday finally legal, collectors are taking major interest in tiny tots like the Mitsubishi Pajero Mini and the original Suzuki Jimny, alongside adjacent utility-friendly rides such as the Nissan S-cargo and the Subaru Sambar vans. They join a chorus of imported roadsters (Honda Beat, Suzuki Cappucino), hot hatches (Suzuki Alto Works) and mini-exotics (Autozam AZ-1) serving Rad-era enthusiasts with a taste for once-forbidden fruit. Yearly U.S. imports for the Pajero Mini and Jimny, for instance, have more than doubled since 2020.

Will that attention soon toward inward, back at the Samurai, Tracker, Sidekick, and RAV4? Values of models like the Samurai have remained attainable even as other classic SUVs see their price tags climb skyward, and the market for clean Trackers, Sidekicks, and RAV4s is in a similar state. Prized by their devoted fan bases but for the most part ignored by mainstream collectors, these American-market, almost-kei trucklets offer the chance to get into a cute-ute without the added step of importation.

***

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Sydarith Bo is used to questions about his 1980 Toyota Crown. At shows, he sees the questions forming in people’s brains as they try to comprehend what’s in front of them. Though the model was sold in the U.S. from 1958 to 1972, most Americans had never heard of the Toyota Crown until its 2023 return as a hybrid crossover. They’d almost definitely never seen one, least of all a Crown coupe. There is a tiny “Toyota” script above the rear license plate, but only hard-core JDM nerds usually know the make without asking.

“It looks like a Fairmont Futura and a Dodge Diplomat had a baby,” said one observer during our photo shoot. Indeed, the car is so full of Malaise Era American styling cues that it could easily have just rolled off the set of CHiPs. For Bo this is a feature, not a bug. “I like unusual cars, ones you don’t see very often and that nobody else has, but I also like G-bodies like Cutlasses and Regals, and my lady likes 1980s Monte Carlos.”

A classic full-frame boulevard cruiser, the Crown is almost totally unlike the popular JDM imports that have streamed into the U.S. over the last decade. “Bubble-era” icons like the R32 Nissan Skyline GT-R started turning 25 years old (and thus legal to import) in 2014, soon followed by 660-cc kei cars—everything from Autozam AZ-1s to Subaru Sambars. Many of Initial D and Gran Turismo fans’ favorite 1990s JDM cars have since become U.S.-legal. Their popularity partly reflects the influence of Japanese culture in 21st-century America, where Walmart sells sushi and Gen-Zers grew up on Yu-Gi-Oh! and One Piece.

Bo’s car comes from an earlier milieu when American culture—everything from bands to blue jeans to cars—loomed large in Japan. But this particular vintage of Crown is also among the last of its kind; although the model would continue as a stodgy Brougham-esque sedan for decades, the coupe was axed in 1983, eclipsed by the Toyota Soarer—a sophisticated luxe performance coupe that eventually morphed into the Lexus SC. In a sense, his Crown is right at the intersection between old and new school.

The American Influence

Most don’t know it, but the 1958 Toyopet Crown was the first mass-market Japanese car sold in the United States. Its American influence was baked in from the beginning, when development began in early 1952 at the tail end of the Allied occupation. A significant portion of Japan’s postwar economic recovery stemmed from U.S. aid, combined with industrial demand from the Korean War, which included many orders for Toyota trucks. (And, from 1946–50, Toyota’s Koromo plant repaired U.S. Army Plymouths.) The occupation brought a lasting cultural influence, which included lots of American cars.

Though Toyota had built cars since 1936, they weren’t truly mass-produced, usually using truck frames and often with bodies made by outside contractors such as Kanto Auto Works. The Crown, conceived by company president Kiichiro Toyoda, was instead conceived and created entirely in-house. Foreign partnerships were common at the time (Nissan with Austin, for instance, or Hino with Renault), but the only thing about the Crown that wasn’t wholly Japanese was its styling influence.

This was the Fifties, when American cars meant prestige, so the Crown prototypes all drew from that well. One even resembled a miniaturized 1951 Cadillac. When the final production model bowed, it was less imitative than that but still very “Detroit.” Toyota was hardly alone in this approach, when fins sprouted on everything from Alfas to Zundapps during the 1950s. The Crown’s well-timed 1955 debut in Japan coincided with major post-Korean-War investment in industry and infrastructure, and Japan’s economy grew, on average, by almost 10 percent annually until 1970, powering the rise of domestic automakers.

In the 1960s the Crown evolved, slowly but surely becoming cleaner and less Detroit-like in its appearance. In time it gained six-cylinder power and a widened V-8 “Crown Eight,” model, which became the Toyota Century in 1967. The last addition was a hardtop coupe in 1968.

That original Crown made Toyota the domestic market leader and soon inspired rivals like the Nissan Cedric and Prince (later Nissan) Gloria, though those cars took different visual paths. The Cedric donned a Pininfarina suit in 1965, while the Gloria went through Euro and American phases. All three cars were redesigned in 1971.

The Whale and The Hardtop

In an attempt to court more private owners rather than fleet or corporate buyers, Toyota radically reshaped the Crown into the low-slung S60-series, seemingly inspired by the late 1960s Ford Thunderbird and AMC Rebel. Nicknamed “Kujiara” (Whale) for its distinctive round shape and body-color bumpers, Japanese buyers were horrified by it at the time. The design was way too sporty for its conservative clientele and seemed to abandon the dignified looks of the 1960s. Collectors now, however, adore it.

The radical change allowed for Nissan’s equally new “230-Series” Cedric and Gloria, penned by 240Z designer Yoshihiko Matsuo; both employed American themes and “Coke-bottle” sides. Nissan solved the problem of differentiating expensive sedans from common taxi versions by adding a four-door hardtop for 1972, helping kick off a JDM hardtop sedan bonanza.

The S60-generation Crown was a rare misstep, and 44 months after its launch, Toyota replaced it with the S100-Series. The lesson both companies took away from this battle of the broughams? Make these cars as conservative as possible.

According to the late Japanese journalist Eizo Ikeda, writing about the S100’s design for Car Styling Quarterly in 1975, the Crown’s designers were looking more at American regulations than themes. The S100’s answer to Nissan’s airy four doors was instead a “Pillared Hardtop,” inspired, Ikeda wrote, by U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) regs. The Crown was nevertheless dropped in America in 1972.

Ultimately, the Crown did not return stateside, but Toyota ended up coming to some of the same conclusions as Detroit’s designers when faced with FMVSS standards. The “Pillared Hardtop” roofline looked Cadillac Fleetwood-esque but, otherwise, there wasn’t much discernably “foreign” in the styling. Despite the effects of OPEC and the Nixon shock, the S100 Crown was very successful. Sales rose by 58 percent in 1975 and the Crown again became Japan’s “formal sedan” to beat.

Detroit’s designers and Japan’s were now playing the same game with similar rules. The upright “formal look,” which relied on frilly chrome details and the visual signifiers of luxury like Opera windows and Landau tops, was king in 1970s America. It was also exactly what Crown customers wanted. “Formality” was a more serious cultural touchpoint in Japan; Toyota designers even had women in wedding kimonos and bridal wigs test the sedan’s ergonomics.

Twilight of the Full-Frame JDM Coupe

When it came time to design the S110-Series, the memory of the round S60 was still fresh so Toyota kept down the path of squared-off lines. Mechanically it was largely unchanged: rear-wheel drive, fours and sixes from 2.0 to 2.8 liters, a perimeter frame, and a live rear axle.

As before, the coupe lineup was more limited than the other Crown variants. The two-door came only with gas-powered sixes, either in tax-savings 2.0-liter (125 hp), 2.0 turbo (145 hp) or full-fat 2.8-liter “Royal Saloon” (145 hp and, after 1981 with twin cams, 170) trims. The lower rungs could have five-speed manuals, the 2.8s used three-speed automatics.

In America there was a long tradition of big two-doors, and such cars sold well in the coupe-crazy Seventies. Not so much in Japan, so in hindsight, it seems surprising that the coupe carried on at all.

Early Crown coupes were quite pretty, but selling a flashy two-door version of a car mostly associated with taxis and officialdom in a country with punitive tax laws was always a challenge—one made harder by conservative styling. Crown coupes were not exported after the S60 generation of the early 1970s, and Nissan dropped the Cedric/Gloria coupes months before the S110 Crown debuted in September 1979. The S110 was a hit, with annual sales passing 150,000 cars for the first time in 1980, but the coupes were only a sliver of the pie.

Designers are always responding to the world around them, and 1970s Japan was still mad for American culture while eager to put its own spin on things. After American R&B artists soared on the Japanese charts, Soul Train came to Japanese TV in 1975. In 1980, Yellow Magic Orchestra became the first Japanese band on the show. Sales of American-style jeans soared from 7 million pairs in 1969 to 45 million in 1973, a year after Japan’s first home-grown denim brand, Big John, debuted.

Showgoers and online commenters often compare Bo’s Crown to the 1980 Thunderbird/Mercury Cougar and other early Eighties two-doors from Ford and GM. The wheels do suggest AMC Concord hubcaps, but are they borrowed? Given production lead times, there’s no way Toyota’s designers could have seen all these cars’ details, so it’s just as likely that the designers were aiming for the same targets at the same time in a world made smaller by 747s. Convergent evolution.

The New Wave

While big coupes didn’t sell in Japan, sportier two-doors and personal-luxury cars did. Both Toyota and Nissan had entirely new takes on this genre in the pipeline. Nissan struck first with the Leopard, which came as a sedan or a coupe, but at the 1980 Osaka motor show, Toyota dropped the “EX-8” concept. This sleek coupe, angular but aerodynamic and owing nothing to any foreign design, was Toyota’s real Thunderbird. Three months later, it went into production as the 1981 Toyota Soarer, replacing the two-door Crown.

Compared to the later Soarers the original seems visually restrained, but at the time it was a huge leap in cool factor. Sharing its engines and a variety of parts with the Supra, it was as quick as it looked, and it bristled with technology, including touchscreen-activated climate controls, digital gauges, an electronically-controlled suspension, and lots of other high-tech toys. It beat out the Honda City to win the 1981 Japan Car of the Year award.

A hit from the start, the Soarer was not exported but regardless sold more than 30,000 units a year. Although Toyota doesn’t have exact figures on the breakdown among Crown body styles, that volume was probably ten times the total for the prior Crown coupe, whose S110 generation ended in after 1982. By 1991 the Soarer arrived in the U.S. as the Lexus SC, largely putting the remaining American personal/luxury coupes to shame.

Old-School Vibes

The Coupe is Bo’s second Crown, but he’s always liked Toyotas. “Growing up, we had Cressidas and Previas, very typical Southeast Asian family cars, but I also have an appreciation for Chevy vans.” The child of Cambodian immigrants, Bo has always lived in Tacoma, Washington but also grew up on nearby farms. “In the summer, we’d wake up at 4 a.m., hop in the Chevy van and go pick strawberries.”

As soon as he had money for cars he spent it on weird ones. “I had a ‘63 Studebaker Lark Wagonaire, the one with the slide-back roof, but I always liked Crowns.” He loves S60-generation Crowns, “But they’re expensive, so a friend and I found an S110 sedan for auction in Japan.”

He heavily customized that first sedan and had no intention of selling it, but after it made the rounds on social media, a man in Florida, Danesh Sookal, made him an offer he couldn’t pass up. “He’s Trinidadian. He and his father had Crowns there in the Eighties, but they had to leave them when they moved.” Repaying the favor, Sookal remembered seeing the coupe at a Virginia importer months earlier.

The car was still there, Bo said, “sitting outside with four flat tires and a destroyed white vinyl top. They didn’t want to sell it because it was so rare.” The importer was eventually persuaded, and Sookal and his son Ryan trailered the car to Florida, drained the fuel tank, got it running, and then helped Bo ship it back to Tacoma.

The car needed interior pieces because things were just worn or torn, including the back shelf and the door top fabric, which wears out quickly on S110s, he added. “The vinyl top was replaced with new material and in a new color, but it’s also a color that was offered on these originally.”

And how does it drive? “Like an old American car, like a G-body but with less power. It’s only a 2.8 and an automatic, so I wouldn’t say it’s fast. It’s the same engine as in Cressidas and Mk. II Supras, but the Crown is heavier. The suspension’s really soft, so it’s a boulevard car, and we cruise Point Rustin every weekend. Newer tires did make it handle a little better though.”

As with his previous Crown, he plans to add custom wheels. “I’m a wheel guy, so I’ll keep the stock wheels but I also have three-piece welded Enkei EK62 and a set of 15-inch Vogues for a sort of Cadillac look.” The rest of it will probably stay the same. “I’d like to repaint it, but the trim is so rare I’m a little afraid to. Those rain gutters are accessories. If they broke I’d never find new ones.”

One other tiny addition? The Buddha hanging from the rearview mirror. “My grandmother gave me that Buddha and it’s supposed to protect you while driving. I don’t think of it in a very religious way, but I do like having a piece of Cambodian culture with me. We have to hold on to things like that.”

***

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The last time we flipped our calendars over to a new year, we looked back on a 2022 full of record-breaking car auctions, price-guide-breaking sales, and previously-unseen growth for seemingly everything four-wheeled and fun. As we roll our calendars to 2024, things are a little different. Prices are still high in general, and higher than some of us would like. Some cars are still appreciating, but the lines on the graph aren’t as sharp, and quite a few cars actually decreased in value. The Hagerty Market Rating, our measure of overall activity in the collector car market, just dropped for the eighth month in a row. Though this year saw far fewer common trends spanning this massive hobby of ours, several segments offered compelling storylines that stood out to us. Here they are, below.

Momentum among Japanese collector cars appears to be slowing

Japan is the Land of the Rising Sun, of course, and cars from that country have been doing some rising of their own the past few years. Mk IV Toyota Supras are worth roughly double what they were in 2018. So are first gen (AP1) Honda S2000s and (NA) Mazda Miatas. Nissan’s Skyline is on its own monstrous trajectory.

This year, though, hasn’t been as drastic. Of all the Japanese collector vehicles in the Hagerty Price Guide, the average appreciation in 2023 was 4.5 percent. Still growing and still higher than inflation, then, but last year the number was 15.6 percent.

Some Japanese classics have taken a dip. From May 2015 to April 2022 the 1970-73 Datsun 240Z grew 163 percent, but during 2023 that game-changing sports car took a four percent drop. The aforementioned first gen Honda S2000 shed ten percent in 2023, and the third gen (FD) Mazda RX-7 dropped 16 percent.

Some Radwood cars are up, some are down

This segment has some overlaps with the Japanese cars above, and Radwood-era cars (collector vehicles built during the 1980s and 1990s) were another group that spent much of the pandemic boom shooting up, only to slow down during the past 12 months.

Over the course of 2022, all 1980s and 1990s vehicles in the Hagerty Price Guide experienced an average appreciation of 14.5 percent. For 2023, the number is 4.5 percent. Fox-body Ford Mustangs kept up their multi-year growth spurt, with 5.0 convertibles appreciating an average of 15 percent in 2023, while 1991-92 GMC Syclones grew 6.7 percent and 1981-83 DeLorean DMC-12s grew by a movie-appropriate 18.8 percent. On the flip side, 1986-92 BMW M3s dropped 12.9 percent, 1987 Buick GNXs dropped 5.6 percent, and 1987-91 Ford Broncos dropped 12 percent.

Ferraris had a good year

If we ignore Formula One for just a sec, 2023 was quite kind to Italy’s most famous carmaker. Ferrari won the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the tenth time, and its first since 1965. Its Q3 revenue rose 24 percent from a year ago while profit jumped 46 percent. The company shipped more vehicles and its stock (ticker: RACE) is riding high. There’s even a movie about the man himself coming out. As for older Ferraris, they had a good showing in 2023, too. As of Q3, Hagerty’s  Ferrari Market Index saw higher year-over-year growth than any of the other six indices in the Hagerty Price Guide.

At the top of the Ferrari ladder, despite some headline cars falling short of estimates at auction this year, several sales both public and private confirmed that the market hasn’t dropped for Enzo-era Ferraris, especially ones with pedigree. Five Ferraris sold for over $10M this year. Although six brought $10M or more back in 2014, most years don’t see more than one or two, and some years don’t see any. And, after 2022’s shocking $142M sale of the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe, Ferrari wrested the top auction spot of 2023 with a $51.7M GTO, the most expensive Ferrari ever sold at auction.

With a wide range of performance, vintage and price point, the overall Ferrari market is nuanced. Naturally, not all the cars move together. Many gained value in 2023. Many of them didn’t. While median #2 (“Excellent”) values for some models like the 1968-73 Daytona (-4 percent), 1975-85 308 (-3 percent) and 2004-09 F430 (-12 percent) took notable steps back, the 1962-64 250 GT Lusso (+7 percent), 1968-76 246 Dino (+6 percent) and 1994-99 F355 (+11 percent) saw sizable gains.

Modern exotics were mixed

Exotic cars from the 1990s and 2000s, particularly the kind with a stick shift between the seats, were all the rage in 2022. We noted record sale prices every few weeks. Monterey saw records break for both the Ferrari F40 and F50, while even underappreciated exotics like the Jaguar XJ 220 gained a following. That car gained 26 percent in value over the course of last year. In 2023, however, not everything with carbon fiber and a clutch pedal was guaranteed to get more expensive.

Some did continue their momentum. Ferrari F50s, which more than doubled in value from mid-2021 to late 2022, saw a 3.5 percent gain in 2023. Lamborghini Diablos, which jumped 26 percent in 2022, gained 18 percent in 2023. Lotus Esprit V8s, which gained 18 percent last year, made an even larger 21 percent gain this year. At the same time, others retreated but remain higher than they were in 2021. Values for Porsche Carrera GTs surged 25 percent from Jan. 2022 to Jan. 2023. From then to now, Carrera GTs are down seven percent.  The rise and fall of Bugatti EB110s is even more stark. These cars shot up 54 percent in 2022, only to fall 15 percent in 2023. Ford GTs, meanwhile, had a modest two percent gain in 2022, and their current median #2 value of $408,000 is actually a few grand lower than it was last January.

Taken as a whole, the supercar market still grew in 2023, but it slowed down.

Modern F1 cars are showing up more often, and for more money

While this is an admittedly tiny, tiny slice of the collector car market, we can’t help but notice the proliferation of modern (early 1980s to today) Formula One cars coming up for sale as well as higher and higher prices for the most significant cars. All this despite these cutting edge computers on wheels not getting any easier to run or maintain. Modern F1 machines took a podium—landing among the year’s top three auction sales—in 2022 and 2023, something that’s never happened before. In 2023, there were two collector car auctions attached to Grands Prix. That has never happened before, either.

It all makes sense. F1 has been the pinnacle of motorsports for a long time, but it is more popular than ever right now. Owning a rare and drivable (albeit with great difficulty) piece of the series has big appeal for certain collectors, and the market for the best modern F1 machinery had a big showing in 2023. Highlights included Michael Schumacher’s 1991 Jordan for $1.63M, Kimi Raikkonen’s 2006 McLaren-Mercedes-Benz MP4/21 for $2.76M and Lewis Hamilton’s 2013 Mercedes-AMG W04 for $18.82M, the new record for a modern Grand Prix car.

Online auctions kept growing, and aren’t going anywhere

Online collector car auctions are sort of like remote work. They were around before 2020, but they flourished and matured during the pandemic, and now they’re here to stay.

During the 2020-22 period, it seemed like there was a new online auction company popping up every other week trying to cash in on the boom. That was no longer the case in 2023 and several of those upstarts are no more, but the space kept growing as people are no longer buying cars from the keyboard out of necessity, but out of convenience.

The post These are the collector car segments that stood out in 2023 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

This is the unlikely success story of the Mazda MX-5 Miata—the world’s bestselling two-seat roadster and the only remaining true lightweight sports car. Mazda, of course, made its name in the 1970s with small rotary-powered runabouts and then the RX-7 sports car. Had the company listened to the experts, however, the Miata never would have happened. And if Mazda had listened to its own customers, it never would have succeeded.

Instead, the Mazda Miata has succeeded where every other lightweight sports car has failed, by decidedly not giving the customer what they want. No more weight, no extra complexity, no excessive speed, no ultra luxury.

On this episode of Revelations, Jason Cammisa welcomes special guest Tom Matano, the father of the Miata, to tell the story of how the simple Japanese roadster has survived economic downturns and done the impossible. In the process, it has proven every other carmaker wrong. Because it turns out that cars can indeed be light, simple, and fun, even while meeting modern emissions and safety regulations.

And yet, somehow it almost never happened. Battles between Mazda HQ in Japan and the company’s North American office, which conceived the Lotus Elan–like roadster, almost resulted in a front-wheel-drive, or even a mid-engined, car. All of which led the original team with Matano and Bob Hall to ask for the project to be killed off. To just forget the whole thing.

Thankfully, Mazda didn’t do that. And 35 years later, the Miata reigns King of Sports Cars, selling the same amount of cars in the U.S. every year as Porsche sells 911s—despite the 911’s incredibly broad product offering.

***

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The post The Mazda Miata Had No Chance of Success | <em>Revelations—</em>Ep. 33 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Among the various corners of the collector car market, few have seen such widespread ascent in the last decade as vehicles from Japan. Demographically, this makes sense—just as muscle cars transitioned from mere “used” cars to collector status as the generation that grew up with them hit their peak earning years, so too have cars from the ’80s, ’90s, and early aughts. What’s more, though there are plenty of standout moonshot examples—looking at you, Skyline GT-R and Mk IV Supra—this latest round of emerging classics also offers more accessible ways to enjoy cars from a bygone era.

We dug into our Hagerty Price Guide data to see which Japanese collectibles can be had in #2 (excellent) condition for under $25K. This fetches a needs-almost-nothing example that, while not quite concours level, is nice enough to proudly display at shows and events, or just use and enjoy as a pristine example. Driver-quality cars can typically be had for thousands less. We wanted to get a feel for what’s popular in addition to where the values stack up, so we layered insurance policy data on top of the $25K threshold to see which models in this group were most abundant among Hagerty customers. Here are the top ten.

1990–2005 Mazda Miata

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Mazda’s cheerful little convertible occupies the top spot of this list. Technically, it’s the top two spots, with the first-gen NA model taking top honors and the ’99–’05 NB nabbing second place. With three-quarters of a million of them built between these two generations, Miatas were $3000 cars seemingly forever. Plenty of them still exist, but racing and decades of being known as a cheap-thrills sports car means that finding excellent-condition cars has become a bit more challenging.

Whether you’ve gotta have pop-up lights or prefer the updated look and feel of the second-gen cars, you can find one for less than $20K. Currently, #2 condition Miatas in these generations range from $19K for a ’97 model (the final year of the NA) to $16,900 for an ’05, the last year of the NB. Deals are out there, and these reliable cars still have decent parts availability, so the diminutive Miata is likely to loom large in the collector world for years to come.

1984–1996 Nissan 300ZX

Beneath the Miatas on this list, two generations of 300ZX sit adjacent to one another. The 1990–’96 Z32 base (non-turbo) Z-car slides in ahead of its more angular ’84–’89 Z31 older sibling. Though the Z32 introduced a number of changes that made the car more dynamically appealing, 30–40 years on, performance is less of a consideration for these cars. The bigger question is stylistic: whether to go for the pseudo-digital, boxy-look ’80s, or the more sculpted ’90s-Japanese-sports-car-boom visual.

Z32 base cars nudge our $25K limit with a #2 value of $24,500 in later years, with values slipping a bit for 2+2s and older cars. Turbocharged examples of Z31-generation cars hit 25 grand right on the nose, but a #2 condition 1987 base Z comes in at $11,400, so there is a wide value spread of quality Z-cars from this era.

1984–1989 Toyota Pickup

Turns out Marty McFly isn’t the only one who likes the Toyota Pickup. That the durable, runs-forever Pickup (Toyota really got creative with the naming of this one) finds itself third on this list behind two venerable sports cars speaks to just how much people dig this truck. Based in no small part on surging interest interest in the Pickup, we named it to the 2023 Hagerty Bull Market List.

Despite the buzz, there’s some solid values out there. #2 condition values range from $25,000 for an ’85 SR5 or half-ton 4×4 down to $13,200 for a 1985 Deluxe trim with the diesel engine.

1990–1995 Toyota MR2

Baby Ferrari looks and mid-engine character set Toyota’s Mk II MR2 apart from the others in this list. Though the 200-horse turbocharged 2.0-liter 3S-GTE engine was more sporting, the base car’s 130-horse mill only had 2300 lbs to push around—similar to a contemporary Miata in terms power to weight ratio. The “Mister Two” garnered a less benign reputation than the Mazda as a result of stories of exuberant owners finding themselves facing the wrong way after lift-off oversteer moments, however. To quell these concerns, Toyota induced a number of suspension tweaks over the car’s life.

That doesn’t appear to have dampened enthusiasm for the MR2 in the collector market. Turbo models have crept above $40K, but the base car hovers at $24,400 for younger cars and $19,300 for early models.

2003–2008 Nissan 350Z

Three generations of Z-car on this list suggests Nissan was doing something right back in the day. After a brief hiatus, the Z returned, eschewing the previous generation’s tech-heavy ’90s approach for retro-ish styling and the now-revered (but aurally divisive) naturally aspirated VQ35DE 3.5-liter engine. Its debut was welcomed with enthusiastic reviews, and it quickly become a regular in the tuner scene and at track days.

Like the Miata, the 350Z’s sporting pretenses mean that many of them have met a noble end fulfilling their intended purpose, and still more have been cut up or modified in that vein. Clean ones are out there, but they do take some sleuthing. Right now, #2 condition values range between $23K and $24,900 depending on year and trim. The 350Z was also part of Hagerty’s 2023 Bull Market vintage.

1985–1995 Suzuki Samurai

The second of two trucks in this group, the Suzuki Samurai is also a Hagerty Bull Market List vet (from 2022). Samurais made a big splash in the U.S. market when they debuted for the 1986 model year, and they remain popular among off-roaders and fun-seekers today. Parts and modifications abound for this ultra-basic collectible, ensuring enthusiasts can keep theirs up to snuff or build their Samurai to conquer their local trails.

There’s a big spread in values for the Samurai based on years and trim. $24,500 snags a ’95 JL, while a similar-condition ’91 JS can be had for a mere $13,700.

1991–1999 Mitsubishi 3000 GT

Perhaps as well as any, Mitsubishi’s 3000 GT VR4 embodied the tech-driven battle for Japanese sports car supremacy in the ’90s. Active aero, all-wheel drive, all-wheel steering, tunable exhaust, twin turbos, and a host of other features made for a quick, if chunky, entry into the segment. Buyers who wanted the show and some of the tech without the associated cost could opt for the front-wheel drive, non-turbo 222-horse 3000 GT SL. 1994 brought with it a facelift, and this second generation also saw some of the options begin to taper in an effort to keep prices in check. Ultimately, increasing prices drove sales to a trickle, and the car’s final year stateside was 1999.

Values for the SL vary between $19K for a ’99 down to $13,400 for a ’91 model. Base cars still come with the 222-horse engine, but forego most of the techno-gadgetry that help give the car its personality. As such, they range from $16K for a facelifted car to $11K for an early model.

1968–1973 Datsun 510

Datsun’s 510 stands as one of the first cars to truly convert Americans into loyal customers of a Japanese brand. As we highlighted in a recent Market Spotlight, the small sedan dominated its class in racing throughout the ’70s and introduced a fun, affordable driving experience to thousands.

They’re still reasonably affordable, too, despite a recent uptick in values. $20,500 will fetch a #2 condition sedan. Expect to pay more for coupes, as they’re more rare.

1985–1991 Honda CRX

If the 510 was the car that democratized driving fun among the first big wave of Japanese offerings on U.S. shores, Honda’s CRX brought a similar take to the economy segment in the ’80s. Honda R&D Managing Director Hiroshi Kizawa’s brief for the car came down to two words: “Economy Fast,” and while no one would consider a stock CRX fast these days, the car did wonders to inject the notion of driving pleasure into Honda’s previously plain but reliable and economical identity.

These days, #2 values for a CRX Si—assuming you can find one in that condition—hover around $23,500. That may sound like a lot of money for not a lot of car, but a CRX never fails to bring a smile when the roads begin to twist. The CRX Si landed on Hagerty’s Bull Market list in 2020.

2002–2007 Subaru WRX wagon

The last car on our list sits directly astride our $25K threshold. The four-door Subaru WRX that hit our shores in 2002 is now worth a cool $25,200 in #2 condition. The wagon of the same era squeaks under, however, at $22,400.

What’s not to like about a discount for more space? Though it’s every bit as capable, it’s not the look popularized by the high-flying Subarus competing in the World Rally Championship at the time. The last couple of refreshes of the WRX have brought hand-wringing from the Subaru faithful, who think the company has slowly gotten away from the original identity and feel of the car. Whether that’s true or not, combine it with attrition over the years, and the old ones that are left have become revered, useful collectibles.

***

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The Japanese collector-car market, on the rise as of late, is about to have a milestone year. 2024 brings with it the ability to import into the U.S. several lust-worthy enthusiast vehicles hailing from the class of 1999, but one car stands above the rest: Nissan’s R34 Skyline GT-R.

The hype surrounding the R34 GT-R is hard to understate, even if its story has become well-known. The new-for-’99 top-dog Skyline GT-R combined the utter racing dominance and tuner-car prowess of its R32- and R33-generation forebears with silver-screen and video-game fame to forge its place among the most revered JDM (Japanese domestic market) cars of all time. The U.S.’s 25-year import rule has only added to the desire and anticipation.

“For me, driving the R34 feels special, but more importantly, the car’s appeal is in its lore, the aura it emits, the look, the texture, the beauty, and the shape,” says photographer, enthusiast, and Hagerty video personality Larry Chen. “The R34 GT-R is pretty much the pinnacle of ’90s Japanese car culture, and it’s also the last of its kind.”

Chen fell for the R34 when he drove it in the Gran Turismo video game as a teenager, vowing that he’d one day have his own in Bayside Blue—the car’s launch color. For those not already familiar with his work, Chen has snapped some of the most memorable automotive images of the last couple decades and has immersed himself in the import tuner scene for even longer. As a result, he’s had plenty of time in and around the best cars Japan has to offer. Through all his experiences since then, his passion for the R34 never wavered.

Earlier this year he made good, purchasing an early-run ’99 R34. It’s still in Japan awaiting its 25th birthday to cross the Pacific, but in the meantime, Chen’s taken advantage of using the car on its home soil, racking up about 7000 km.

“As a Japanese car enthusiast and someone who grew up in the Gran Turismo era, there’s just nothing like driving your own car in Japan,” says Chen. “Every time I’m there, going down the highways and to the tracks I had only experienced on screen, or parking my car in a vending machine, I have to pinch myself. It doesn’t feel real because it’s so beyond what I could have ever imagined as a kid.”

Buying a car thousands of miles away a year or more ahead of its import eligibility takes some dedication, but Chen isn’t alone. Toprank Importers of Cypress, California, reports that the practice is becoming increasingly regular. In fact, for many, it’s part of the broader experience to which the R34 is essentially a ticket.

“A group of owners will fly to Japan, pick up their cars—which are registered there and stored in our facility—and will attend the Rs Meeting at Fuji Speedway, drive through the mountains, or hit Bayshore or other famous routes,” says Brian Jannusch, sales director at Toprank. “Some buyers have said, ‘I want to purchase a 2001 or 2002 GT-R, not because I don’t have the money to buy the ’99, but because I intentionally want to experience the car in Japan before I bring it back to the U.S. for the rest of my life.’”

Setting aside for a moment the healthy sense of community and activities that surround these cars, what is it about the R34 generation specifically that makes it so different and sought-after? It is, after all, the final step in an evolutionary, not revolutionary, path that began with the R32.

From a numbers perspective, the R34 is the rarest of the three, with 11,578 made according to GT-R Registry. R33s are next, with 16,668 produced, and the R32s are much more prevalent, with 43,937 hitting the streets.

This smaller number of cars is divided again by what’s perhaps the most varied submodel list of these three generations. A few familiar favorites like the V-Spec and N1 were reprised, but new to the menu were the more comfort-minded M-Spec as well as the Nür, which in a sense was a final edition attached to the V-Spec II and M-Spec.

As with the previous two generations, the R34 was motivated by the 2.6 liter RB26DETT engine, making the same 276 horsepower rolling through the proven ATTESA all-wheel-drive setup and HICAS 4-wheel steering. A Getrag V160 six-speed manual replaced the prior five-speed unit, the body received additional stiffening over the R33, and minor suspension tweaks that varied based on submodel were made as well.

Among its siblings, the R34 is the most visually aggressive, looking the most like a tuner car from the factory. That could be further amplified by NISMO factory body kits, which, along with a host of other NISMO tuning parts, remain available and very popular. Unlike earlier NISMO creations, R34-based cars were not born as such, rather they were customer cars sent to the Omori Factory for upgrade.

Like many Japanese cars from the era that are now collectible, modifications aren’t frowned upon, in large part due to the context in which Americans saw these cars a quarter-century ago. Along similar lines, “numbers matching” is not part of the buying process for GT-Rs. There’s a chassis plate on the firewall, but there’s no way to confirm the originality of the drivetrain. Finding a trustworthy inspector is essential to ensure you’re sourcing a good car, especially if you intend to buy it in Japan rather than after it’s imported to the U.S.

Which gets us to a critical part of the process: what year car to buy. Yes, the ’99 is the one that will be eligible soonest, but if you’re in the market for an R34 GT-R and you’ve been waiting for them to reach legal status, be prepared to shell out. That “buy a younger model year and enjoy it in Japan” strategy is more than a means to a touge run—it will also save you a few bucks.

The delta between a great ’99 R34 with a build date that enables it to be imported in January of ’24 and a 2000 or 2001 model that’s in the same condition with the same spec can be as much as $100,000. That’s just the delta—the price tag for that top-flight early car is about $240K. That said, Jannusch says there’s no shortage of folks willing to pay the premium to be among the first.

You read that right—unlike the R32, which was considered a legitimately affordable car at the beginning of its import eligibility in 2014, the R34 is straight-up expensive already. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a sorted R34 anywhere in the world for less than $100,000. And that’s with the smart money getting in early.

What’s next after R34s start to become legal for import on January 1, 2024? Realistically, it may be several months before we start seeing R34s on the streets and at events in any real numbers. There are a couple factors at play. First, the 25-year legal import status is determined by the year and month of manufacture. Second, transit takes time, as does the customs process. In addition, cars that are already here via the Show or Display rule will be easier to transact once they reach their 25-year build date.

We expect the market to evolve for these cars as the premium for immediately ready R34s works its way into the system. Right now, the market for an R34 GT-R ranges from expensive to downright eyewatering. To get your hands on a GT-R that literally needs nothing, be prepared to shell out at least $100,000, plus storage fees.

From there, the price tag creeps up dramatically. Cars already in the U.S. via Show or Display are by nature high-demand, limited-production variants. Models like the V-Spec finished in Midnight Purple II have sold in the states in excess of a quarter million and even more exclusive models such as the M-Spec Nür and N1 command high six-figure price tags, with rumors of upwards of seven-figures for the right cars with no kilometers in the clock. However, premiums commanded for Show or Display–imported and MotoRex cars have the potential to diminish as the rest of the market catches up.

Of course, if that isn’t expensive or exclusive enough for you, look no further than the cars upgraded by NISMO’s Omori Factory. These are bona-fide blue-chip collectors of the JDM world with cars like the coveted R34 Z-Tune commanding multiple millions of dollars. Based on the performance of Show or Display–eligible cars we track in the price guide, values shot up drastically in 2021 and 2022, but have since leveled out. That said, the realization by the broader JDM collecting community that we in the U.S. market can now have these may renew activity in this market.

If the R32 and R33 GT-R’s past value trends are any indication, don’t expect prices to go down with more supply stateside—the GT-R market is a global one, and there’s no shortage of demand. The GT-R retains an immense following across Asia and in Australia due to its racing success, and many countries, including those that use right-hand drive vehicles, have had the importation jump on the U.S. for years. Passionate buyers exceed available cars by a wide margin.

There’s likely to be a knock-on effect for the older-generation cars, too. Jannusch reports that he thought R32s would see a price drop when R33s became legal to import, but the increase in R33 values steered consumers to the more abundant, less expensive R32, which in turn made their values go up.

Unsurprisingly, the R34 is incredibly popular among millennials. Given that so few R34s are in the country at this point, it is hard to draw significant conclusions on buyer demographics. However, Hagerty quote data lines up with previous generations of GT-R, where millennials account for over half the insurance inquiries.

Chen affirms this notion: “I think the collectors that will buy them are primarily the ones that grew up in my generation that have done well for themselves and can justify buying the car of their dreams,” he says. “The GT-R is forbidden fruit, and you always want what you can’t have.”

Chen’s and Jannusch’s responses brimmed with talk of how their R34s connected them with people and places. If their experiences are indicative of who’s buying these cars, it’s a safe bet most R34s headed to the states will get the healthy use they deserve, and that’s a testament to what the R34 means to those in its community.

“The easiest way to sum this up for people that don’t follow the Japanese market is that Skyline GT-R people are just Porsche people from the Gran Turismo era,” says Jannusch. “They like the history, they like that the car has racing pedigree, and they especially like the culture that’s been built around it.”

If Jannusch’s characterization is accurate, the R34’s already red-hot future is poised to remain bright.

***

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Press a group of enthusiasts to say which Japanese car established a beachhead on American shores and proved that the island nation could build a world-class car, and the Datsun 240Z may well be the only answer you get. It’s no surprise that the Z-car steals the show, but another offering from Datsun, its plucky little 510 sedan, went beyond the sports car world to show the masses that the company could build a fun car for everyone.

On its way to commercial success in the U.S., the 510 built off the work of old-world automakers, benefitted from larger-than-life personalities, and sprinkled some racing victories on top for good measure. As a result, and thanks in no small part to the way they drive, the now-highly-collectible 510s fetch values that belie their economy car origins. That fact may raise some eyebrows, but likely only from those who haven’t gotten behind the wheel of one. Here’s how America fell in love with what affectionately became known as the Dime and why it’s still a beloved classic with Datsun fans in the know.

Learning from Germany

When the first Datsun 240Zs arrived in the U.S. in the fall of 1969, a lot of people were shocked to see a proper sports car from Japan. Datsun fans weren’t, however. For the two years prior to the Z’s debut, while the general public still saw Japanese cars as cheap and disposable, people who had bought the well-priced 510 sedan knew better. Well-built and sporty, the 510 was Japan’s equivalent to BMW’s Neue Klasse.

Though the two companies barely have anything in common today, back in the 1960s Nissan studied Munich’s progress carefully, possibly to the point of copying BMW’s homework. In the postwar period, BMW flailed with bubble cars like the Isetta before releasing the Neue Klasse cars that would come to define the brand in the U.S. When the 1600-2 and later 2002 arrived, they were embraced by the enthusiast press as a light, nimble, and racy alternative to lumbering domestic iron.

Nissan saw a similar opportunity and decided to offer a solution to American consumers who had Oktoberfest dreams but a Budweiser budget. In 1968, for roughly two-thirds of the price of a BMW, you could get a subtle and handsome Japanese sedan that was economical to run and scrappy in the corners. The 510’s recipe was as simple as they come: an affordable, lightweight, rear-wheel-drive family car riding on a fully independent suspension.

Europe in the east

Just as the first-generation Mazda Miata was an everyman copy of the Lotus Elan, the 510 made good on proven themes and technology to become an incredibly popular affordable alternative. Nissan cribbed notes from European automakers Austin and Mercedes-Benz, something made easier by existing relationships and a consolidation-happy domestic auto industry in the 1960s.

Many Japanese automakers built cars under license in the rebuilding period after WWII, and Nissan’s partnership with Austin enabled them to produce direct copies of the Austin A30 and A40 sedan. (If you talk to wily old parts-counter managers from those days, many of them stocked Nissan/Datsun parts for their Austin customers. The Japanese-made parts were identical, but built to much more consistent standards.) Nissan’s work with Austin would provide the stepping stone to its own 410 in 1964. Designed by Pininfarina, the 410 remains attractive, if more than a little overshadowed by the 510 that followed. It originally came with a 60-hp single-carburetor engine, and shared many parts with the contemporary Fairlady (Datsun Roadster). It just needed a little push to achieve greatness.

Nissan’s acquisition of the Prince Motor Company took their capabilities a step further. Prince is most famously now associated with the Nissan Skyline’s origin story, but the company brought a wide range of engineering expertise to the table. In the case of the 510, Prince’s engineers had been studying Mercedes-Benz’s four-cylinder engines as benchmarks for durability.

The 2.0-liter four-cylinder that would go on to power Peter Brock’s famous BRE Datsun Roadsters was one such Prince development. Called the U20, it took a Prince Mercedes-inspired single overhead cam head and married it to a 1600-cc Austin-derived block, expanded to 2.0 liters of displacement. For the time, the U20 was a pretty stout performer, rated at as much as 150 hp when fitted with twin Mikuni carburetors and the hottest cam.

While the 510 wouldn’t get this kind of power, some of the lessons Nissan learned in building the U20 would go under the hood of its new economy car. But before that could happen, one of Nissan’s greatest renegades had to resort to some trickery.

The magical Mr. K

Oceans of ink have been spilled about Yutaka Katayama—known by Datsun fans as Mr. K—but not one drop of that ink was wasted. A charismatic and assertive figure, Mr. K frequently found himself at odds with Nissan’s executives. Early on, his obsession with racing as a marketing tool didn’t sit well with top brass. Although his success in a grueling ’round-Australia endurance race in 1958 brought acclaim to the small company, Nissan soon shipped Katayama off to America on what many saw as a fool’s errand to build a dealer network.

Despite a paltry budget, Katayama found success. He first grew Nissan’s U.S. export business with the Datsun brand through small pickup truck sales, but he was forever calling back to Yokohama with demands for a small car. Having slotted right into Southern California car culture like he belonged—he got speeding tickets constantly—Mr. K understood what would and would not sell to Americans. Mr. K didn’t want to push any more toy-like sedans, but instead called for something roomy and light on its feet. Something exactly like the BMW 1600-2, but priced to move.

As plans for the 510 coalesced, it became apparent that being on the end of a phone line didn’t carry the same weight as pounding on a boardroom table yourself. Initially, plans were in place for the 510 to get a 1.3-liter overhead-cam engine, something similarly-sized but more advanced than the pushrod mill found in the 410. Katayama pushed for a 1600 to match the BMW. Headquarters told Mr. K the best they could do was 1.4 liters.

But Katayama wasn’t completely isolated. Sitting on Nissan’s board was Seiichi Matsumura, a new political appointee who had joined from Japan’s international trade organization. Whether because of his familiarity with overseas markets, or the forcefulness of Katayama’s argument, Matsumura agreed to sign his name to a memo written by Mr. K. Everybody knew about the sleight-of-hand, but the board just collectively sighed as the 1.6-liter engine was pushed through for export models.

The 510 was penned in-house by rookie Nissan designer Teruo Uchino. In a pivot from the Italian design cues of the 410 before it, Uchino’s clean, gimmick-free effort helped establish Datsun’s own styling language. It’s aged well, and a 510 can proudly park next to a 2002 of the same vintage.

With Nissan releasing the smaller Sunny sedan around the same time, the 510 moved up in size, growing about five inches compared to the outgoing 410/411. It weighed a little over 2000 pounds depending on body style and trim, had front disc brakes, and featured MacPherson struts up front and trailing arms in the rear for independent suspension at all four corners. (Station wagon versions sported a live axle to handle the additional load.) A four-speed manual transmission was standard, a three-speed automatic optional, and under the hood was the L16 1.6-liter overhead cam engine that Katayama had fought so hard for. It was rated at a peppy 97 hp, but in some markets a factory-installed twin-Hitachi carburetor setup pushed power to nearly 110 hp.

Mr. K’s bet was right. U.S. Datsun sales exploded in the late 1960s, tripling in two years. The 510 cost $1996, slightly less than a dollar per pound. It was about as cheap to purchase and run as a VW Beetle, but roughly twice as fast in a straight line and a delight in the corners. And that was just the factory performance—when the racers got hold of the 510, they really made it dance.

Beating the world

The film revisits Datsun’s exciting path to the 1971 Trans Am championship. Hagerty

One of the first customers for the Datsun 510 was the late Bob Bondurant, a brilliant racer and instructor who gave racing lessons to everybody from Jeff Gordon to Paul Newman. When he started his racing school in 1968, he first approached Porsche for support. Stuttgart turned Bondurant down, but when he called on Datsun, Mr. K personally said yes. The Bondurant racing school started with two Datsun Roadsters, a 510, a Lola T70 and a Formula Vee.

The 510 proved itself a friendly, predictable, and approachable instruction car. It also put up with a titanic amount of abuse. Everything that made the Dime such a fun little road car translated directly to the track.

Of course, Mr. K also ensured that Datsun would have a racing presence on American tracks. The factory-backed racing teams started with a two-pronged approach in 1971, with John Morton piloting Pete Brock’s California-based BRE entry in Trans-Am racing’s Two-Five class (so-named for engine displacements 2.5 liters and under). From the east, Datsun chose Bob Sharp racing. Right from the get-go, the 510s were competitive.

At that time, BMW and Alfa Romeo held a tight grip on small-bore sedan racing in the States. That all changed with the debut of the 510, however. John Morton won the manufacturer’s championship in 1971, and at the SCCA Runoffs, Bob Sharp finished first. As the 510 kept racking up the trophies, more racers turned to the little Datsun that could, and by the end of the 1970s, the grid was nearly an all-Datsun affair.

The 510’s on-track success did more than bring racers into the fold. Thousands nationwide attended SCCA events during this golden era of sports car racing, and the 510’s prowess translated to sales in the showroom and a strong reputation for cheap thrills on the street. Import tuning culture in the U.S. can trace some of its roots to modified 510s inspired by racers from the ’70s, and that in turn impacts today’s 510 collector market. While other cars from the era might be most valuable in completely factory stock form, a tastefully modified 510 can still fetch solid money.

Stacking dollars for Dimes

The 510’s giant-killer reputation has combined with rust attrition (along with many cars giving up their lives for racing) to drive up prices. Values for the two-door sedan model are the highest, up 85 percent over the past five years to an average condition #2 (Excellent) value of $30,600. The 510 station wagon has skyrocketed as well, posting a 92 percent increase over the last five years and a 24 percent gain in the last year alone. Despite that, it’s still relatively affordable, with an average condition #2 value of $22,100. The four-door trails a bit behind at $20,500, up a little more than 50 percent over five years.

As might be expected, Gen X and younger buyers make up over 78 percent of the market, though that number is nominally down, shrinking two percent over the last three years.

Despite the car’s popularity, 510 public transaction data is a little sparse. While 240Zs roll through the big auction houses regularly, only Bring A Trailer has moved many 510s recently. Several of these have been race cars or heavily modified examples, and they have fetched prices north of $50K—well above condition averages.

That’s quite a lot for what started out as a sort of poor man’s BMW, and in some cases a 510 might fetch more than a BMW 2002. There’s the nostalgia factor, of course, and the racing pedigree, but the 510’s simplicity is also something buyers seek out.

Nissan appears to know this, and in 2013 brought out the IDx concept. The IDx Nismo was a modernized version of the 510’s design essence, powered by a turbocharged 1.6-liter engine making around 200-230 hp, sent to the rear wheels. It would have been a sedan competitor to the Subaru BRZ and Toyota GR86, or, hearkening back to the original, a more affordable rendition of BMW’s 2 Series.

But because there is no more Mr. K at Nissan, we instead got tens of thousands of Nissan Rogues in various configurations. There is still a new Z of course, there to please Nissan enthusiasts. But Datsun fans still know now what they knew then: there are few more fun driving experiences than those found behind the wheel of a Datsun 510.

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Translation software often goofs when asked to turn Japanese into English. For instance, a label warning that a product is not safe for kids becomes “Do Not Eat Children.” Some things just don’t compute across the Pacific divide. Just thinking about how to concisely explain Japanese Kaido racers makes my brain hurt.

“People’s usual reaction is just to think it’s crazy,” says Keith Measures, “Just completely crazy. But it goes deeper than that.”

This past July, Measures and his friend Reid Olliffe, known simply by Rudeboy, hosted their second annual Summer Touring event for kaido racers in Vancouver, Canada. I’ll attempt a basic definition in a moment, but as a primer, I suggest drinking in the joyous madness of these ultra-low, ultra-wide, ultra-impractically-modified machines in the images below. Soak up the fat wheels, stretched tires, and exhaust pipes sized like Paul Bunyan’s chopsticks. The front splitter on Measures’ own Nissan looks like it was made to flip giant pancakes.

Piece of advice: Whatever you do, don’t call this style “bosozuku,” or at least not in front such a crew gathered here. Bosozuku is a foreigner’s catch-all for wildly styled machinery from Japan, but it’s not accurate. (The actual bosozuku were the frequently violent motorcycle gangs that rose to prominence in the 1970s. Think Japan’s version of the Hell’s Angels, and likewise with motorcycle culture on this side of the Pacific, some of that outlaw style trickled down into motorcycle and car modification.) In Japan, “bosozuku” still carries a whiff of hitting old ladies with nunchucks. Frowned-upon behavior.

Kaido Racers often flout the law with their extreme modifications, but they’re largely regarded as harmless in the way the leather-jacketed Sons Of Dentistry ride big Harleys on the weekends without raising alarm. “Kaido” is an older Japanese term for road or street, so a Kaido Racer is literally a street racer, although not in the Fast & Furious sense. The origins come from young Japanese enthusiasts modifying their street cars to resemble the touring car racing they were watching at Fuji Speedway and the like.

As an automotive subculture, Kaido Racers can claim a half-century of evolution and history. Visit Yokohama’s Daikoku parking area on a Sunday morning and you might see some older owners, still infatuated with the passions of their youth, proud of the enormous sums poured into their builds. The closest North American relative is perhaps low-rider or Kustom culture.

Here on the west coast of Canada and America, that enthusiasm skews young. The crowd here at the staging area for the Summer Cruise in Vancouver are mostly 20- or 30-somethings—young men and a few young women in Toyotas, Nissans, and Hondas. All of their cars are slammed to the ground on wide, small-diameter wheels.

(There’s also rolling golf green car made of plywood, but more on that later.)

For the most part, kaido racer style takes its inspiration from the Super Silhouette racers of the late 1970s and early 1980s. If you’re a student of the Nissan Skyline, you might recognize the gargantuan box flares of a Super Silhouette R31 Skyline in its signature red and black Tomica livery (Hot Wheels made a scale-sized tribute a few years ago). Some of this angular aero made its way onto the hero car of Seibu Keisatsu, a hard-boiled TV police show that was Japan’s answer to Miami Vice.

There were all kinds of other racing cars in this period, most of them with the same flared bodies and relatively small-diameter wheels. Kids started cutting up their street cars and getting together for late-night cruises, and a series of meets and magazines formed around the culture. There were different flavors, from the wide Grachan cars (for Grand Champion, like the racing machines) to the the narrow-bodied and brightly colored Fukoka styled cars with their hoods jutting forward like the brow of a giant space robot.

Kaido racer enthusiasts take their passion seriously. There is a right way to build a car and a wrong way. Every detail matters, and to an outsider, what makes a great kaido racer build correct can seem obscure or even arbitrary.

For Rudeman and Measures and their merry band of co-miscreants, uncovering Japan’s fifty-odd years of kaido racer culture is part archaeology, part art history. Their research pool? Rare magazines. A handful of experts. A growing pan-Pacific network of enthusiasts who love the obscure stuff. Gathered here today are kaido racer clubs who have driven from as far away as Los Angeles—even a guy who flew in from London. (England, not Ontario.)

Along with the seriousness, there’s an atmosphere of madcap fun to the scene. Between the couple of dozen cars here are thousands of dollars of rare wheels imported from Japan (replicas = heresy), and the high dollar rolling stock contrasts with hand-formed sheetmetal fixes, rust-rotted arches, and suspension modifications. They ruin both ride and handling, yes, neither of which are the point.

“I mean, this car is a joke,” says Measures, “But those wheels are five grand!”

The aforementioned golf car, apparently hiding a Geo Metro chassis underneath, zips off down the road for a pre-cruise shakedown run. Unsecured golf balls roll off the back and go bouncing all over the street.

It is a careful chorus of strict rules, terminology, and heritage, nevertheless inflected with wacky Japanese game show mayhem. The interior of Measures’ Nissan looks like he skinned the Abominable Snowman from the 1964 Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer TV special. A bunch of dudes in muscle shirts pose for photos with their pink roofless Tercel; they call themselves the “Team Sexy Cowboys.” There’s a smattering of JDM vans. Tents are scattered across the lawn like a music festival. Keith gets stung by a wasp’s nest in the bumper of the Nissan. Two guys doing a rudimentary alignment discover that the two tape measures they’re using differ by over half an inch.

Everyone is having the time of their lives, apart from the now-drenched-in-brake-cleaner wasps. Building actual racing machines is far more scientific stuff, if not an art whose measurement is shaving off seconds off around a race track. Even drifting displays less humor.

The kaido racers head off down the highway into the setting sun, bouncing on their impossibly low suspensions, scraping wheels on fenders, blasting tunes, and turning the usual parade of local grey-silver-white crossover traffic into a rolling disco. Many of them are skilled photographers, capturing these fleeting moments for social media.

The fact that this is happening in British Columbia is ironic, to say the least. The province’s road rules are notoriously strict. None of these machines would pass even a cursory roadside vehicle inspection. But even when one of the crew is pulled over for driving a little over the limit, the cop just shakes his head and lets everyone go.

It’s as if the kaido racers have been blessed by a meneki-neko—one of those waving-good-luck cats you find in sushi restaurants. Many of the cars have at least a lucky black Marchal headlight brand cat aboard.

Whether you’re an Alfa-Romeo purist, a Mopar Hemi fan, a vintage BMW propellor-head, or the kind of person who thinks the only good math is V-8-plus-carburetor, there’s something universal in this brand of car enthusiasm. Having fun with your friends on hot tarmac in the summer sun. Long nights, and maybe a little of the good kind of trouble. You just feel it, nothing lost in translation.

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We may be in a “slowing” collector-vehicle market, but when a clean car with both “Nissan” and “Skyline” written on it sells online for $6825, it’s enough to make us lean in close to the screen and furrow our brow. After all, we’ve spent the last several years telling you about how hot the Japanese car market is. It’s “thriving.” It’s “maturing.” “The end of the cheap Miata is near!”

All of that is still true, but deals are always out there, and this looks like a particularly sweet one on a premium JDM gem. There are just a few caveats.

In this country, the Nissan Skyline variant that enthusiasts pay attention to most is the turbocharged, all-wheel-drive GT-R, the earliest version being the R32 built from 1989 to ’94. The car sold this week is not a GT-R. Nor is it an R32. It’s the Skyline that came before the R32, naturally called the R31. It’s also a GTS-X, one of the rear-wheel-drive coupes built on the R31 platform.

While the flagship GT-R models are the most exciting and desirable for American gearheads, “Skyline” has a much wider connotation in the cars’ home country of Japan, where the first Skylines were built by Prince Motor Company way back in the 1950s. After Prince merged with Nissan in the 1960s, the cars wore a Nissan badge, and over the years Skylines have been everything from commercial wagons and commuter sedans to the race cars and tuner favorites that we know and love.

The R31 is technically the seventh generation of Skyline, and it was available as a sedan, hardtop sedan, coupe, or station wagon. And while it shared similar styling with the R30 that came before it, the R31 debuted a number of firsts for the Skyline. Most important was the RB-series engine, the legendary turbocharged oversquare straight-six that powers R32, R33, and R34 GT-Rs. The R31 was also the first Skyline with Nissan’s proprietary HICAS (High Capacity Active Steering) four-wheel steering system.

This one was purchased by the seller in Japan and reportedly spent some time in Dubai before being imported to Canada, where it is currently located. A GTS-X model, it has a 2.0-liter RB20 version of the RB engine as well as the HICAS rear-wheel steering, front and rear spoilers, and two-tone gray cloth sport seats. It’s also, unfortunately, an automatic. But it also presents well, shows no serious mods or signs of abuse, and has just 50,000 km (about 31K miles).

On the one hand, snagging an interesting JDM coupe for $7K seems like a great move. On the other hand, anybody who owns this car is going to have to have a lot of conversations that go like this: “Yeah it’s a Skyline! No, not that Skyline. No, not that one either. No, it’s not a GT-R, it’s a GTS-X. And it’s an automatic. It is a Skyline, though.”

No matter the asterisks, it’s hard to argue with this price. “I think that is a damn good price for any Skyline” says Hagerty Price Guide Editor and self-professed Skyline nerd Greg Ingold. “Its only sin is the fact that it’s not a later version and that it’s an automatic. For context, a grubby R32 Skyline GTS-T (also RB20-powered and RWD) will cost more than this clean R31 went for.” And for somebody who wanted to modify it, the car is a good base and the new owner is already in it for so little. “I’m thinking manual swap and a warmed over RB26DETT [from an R34 GT-R], and you’d have a real sleeper on your hands,” says Ingold. Sounds good to me.

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If you have not done so already, reading Sajeev Mehta’s dissection of the new Toyota Century SUV is well worth your time. One of the great benefits of having a trained transportation design expert on staff is seeing a heffalumpian shape receive a good skewering; we may instinctively find this new flagship crudely offensive, but Mehta neatly explains why we do so. However, let’s leave Toyota’s Bentayga moment aside, and focus our gaze instead on its Rolls-Royce era.

This magnificent machine is the V-12-powered second-generation Century, never officially sold in the U.S., but now a very tempting import under 25-year gray-market exceptions. It is the apogee of the breed from which Toyota is now sadly descending. Well, perhaps that’s a bit unfair; the current-generation Century limousine is still a pretty elegant machine.

But today’s Century has fewer cylinders, and in terms of the most luxurious machinery, that’s a bit like not having enough secret offshore bank accounts. Not only is the second-generation Century a machine of unimpeachable build quality and refined restraint, but it is also powered by the only production V-12 engine to ever come out of Japan. From the people who brought you stacks of champagne glasses balanced on the hood of a Lexus at 145 mph on a dyno, how about half again as many cylinders, and a dollop more class?

First, a primer on what the Century nameplate stands for. If you exclude the latest front-wheel-drive cankle, there have only been three Century models since 1967, a year chosen because it was a hundred years since Toyota founder Sakichi Toyoda’s birth. The first generation was slow off the line, not just in stately performance, but in being beaten to market by Nissan’s equally highbrow President and Prince Royal limousines. Imagine the loss of face at Toyota headquarters when it emerged that Nissan would provide the state vehicles for both the Japanese Prime Minister and the Imperial household of Japan.

Still, on the streets of Tokyo, the Century gained a certain reputation as the ultimate soft-power vehicle. Ordinary people got around using Japan’s exactingly punctual rail system, or by taking a Toyota Crown taxi. Executives in neatly tailored suits were ushered into the Century’s interior by white-gloved chauffeurs. The car barely changed in 30 years of production, but as Japan’s bubble economy expanded, its highly traditional aura created huge sales demand.

By the mid 1990s, Toyota found itself in a position similar to the time Mercedes-Benz changed the G-wagen to the G-Class. How do you update a vehicle where the entire appeal is its unchanging nature?

But then again, consider the position the Japanese automotive industry was in during that period. Mazda had its razor-sharp third-generation RX-7 twin-turbo and a win at Le Mans, Nissan was dominating both street and racetrack with the R32 Skyline GT-R, Subaru was at the height of its rallying mastery, and even the House of Mitsubishi was powerful and respected. Toyota first flexed its muscles with the overengineered fourth-generation Supra Twin Turbo. Then, in 1997, it spoke even more softly, and carried an even bigger stick.

The second-generation (G50) Century shares underpinnings with no other Toyota product. It looks similar to its first-gen ancestor on purpose but is a clean-sheet redesign, built to provide the quietest, smoothest, most serene chauffeured experience Toyota could manage. Even the badging is subtle, using phoenix symbols as you might find adorning the roof of a Japanese temple.

The headline is, of course, the 5.0-liter V-12, so let’s begin there. For an engine that would only be found in a single production car, and one developed almost entirely for the Japanese domestic market, Toyota splashed out the R&D dollars lavishly. The 1GZ-FE incorporates lessons learned from the architecture of the Lexus V-8, and also from the silky-smooth 3.0-liter inline-sixes found in the Supra and SC300, but it is its own beast entirely. Twin ECUs manage each bank of cylinders individually, each with its own fuel-injection systems, throttle bodies, and intake manifolds.

Peak output is modest at an official 276 horsepower, but as this figure conveniently fits within the “gentleman’s agreement” limit set by Japanese automakers at the time, it’s probably closer to 300 hp. Torque is 340 lb-ft at 4000 rpm, but the graph of the 1GZ-FE’s low end grunt is as flat as an Arizona mesa. As is typical of Toyota engineering at the time, the V-12 is also massively overengineered. In 2008, Japanese tuning house Top Secret took a fourth-generation Supra fitted with a twin-turbocharged Century V-12 to a speed of 220 mph at Italy’s Nardo Ring.

Because the 1GZ-FE was largely a JDM offering only, technical information on its development can be hard to pin down. However, poring over details from the 1997 Japanese Society of Automotive Engineers (JASE) lecture notes reveals some tasty details. Toyota’s engineers used Jaguar, Ferrari, and Mercedes-Benz V-12s as benchmarks, for instance, and even that of the Bugatti EB110. In comparison, the 1GZ-FE has a long stroke in order to maximize low- and mid-level torque over high specific output; Toyota doesn’t name names, but in provided charts, their 12 out-grunts every other manufacturer from 500 to 3500 rpm. Further, friction was reduced at every level in an effort to ensure Toyota’s V-12 would beat even less complex V-8s of a similar displacement in fuel economy. From the beginning, this was an engine targeted at effortless navigation of heavy traffic.

The combustion chamber is slightly angled for more stable flame front. Variable valve timing provides an ideal fuel-air mixture under light loads, and the dual channel injection and throttle body system evens out the mixture across all cylinders. Every effort was made to reduce engine vibration to nearly imperceptible levels.

And if the powertrain is a jewel, then the setting for it is craftsmanship of the highest quality. Fine wool upholstery is a Century trademark, less prone to squeaking on the move than leather and more breathable in a muggy Tokyo summer. The rear seats offer recline and massaging functions—common now, not so much then—and the electric latching doors shut with an authoritative click.

To be driven around in a V-12 Century is a transcendent experience. However, it’s really the chauffeur who’s having all the fun. From behind the wheel, a G50 provides all the gliding comfort of a golden age Lexus product, but with an even creamier torque delivery and ride. Air suspension is standard, and the Century’s ride comfort rival is less Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud and more actual cirrostratus.

“There’s nothing that says a practical car can’t be cool, and the Century is super-cool,” says collector Myron Vernis, co-author of definitive Japanese car collector book, A Quiet Greatness. He’s owned his V-12 Century for just over a year now and says he’s still discovering fun features. “I haven’t quite worked out the rear video system,” Vernis says, “but I’m pretty sure you can control the central GPS from the back seat.”

Vernis reports that his Century has been nearly as reliable as a contemporary Camry. One of the air suspension struts failed—a wear item—but ordering a replacement from Japan was relatively simple. V-12 Centurys were sold over a 20-year run, from 1997 to 2017, with just fewer than 10,000 made. Some consumables are shared with Lexus models, and there are still many Centurys working in livery service in Japan. A modern V-12–powered Jaguar, BMW, or even Mercedes can be a potentially financially terrifying prospect, but this is a Toyota. It’s like the world’s nicest Camry.

Toyota’s marketing slogan for the car sums things up nicely: “The Century is acquired through persistent work, the kind that is done in a plain but formal suit.” Let the pop stars and movie icons have their Maybachs and Rolls-Royces; a V-12 Century passes through traffic with quiet authority, not flash. That’s what makes it a timeless classic.

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This story originally ran on this site in April of 2022, when we had no idea that Honda would resurrect the idea of the Motocompo as the Motocompacto. Brush up on your history, and stay tuned for our first ride of the scooter’s electric reboot. —Ed. 

The whole concept of a portable, stowable scooter is one of those bizarre ideas that gets periodically lodged in the zeitgeist. Every decade or so, some inventor takes another crack at building a vehicle that you can fold up and take on your travels. Some vintage versions of these creations are pretty collectible now. After all, it’s not like storage is an issue.

1964–67 Fuji Go-Devil

Meet the Fuji Go-Devil. It is part motorized barstool, part two-stroke mosquito fogger, part archeological wonder. A 50cc scooter designed to be packed away in a suitcase for your next flight (yes, really), the Go-Devil is an example of forward-thinking motorized ingenuity, straight out of the 1960s.

Little more than a square-tube frame with an engine and fat rear tire, the Go-Devil looks more than a bit sketchy to ride. With a central spine twisted into place and a couple of pulls on the starter handle, it’ll take right off. Outside his workshop, owner Gerry Measures swings a leg over the low seat and whizzes off on a demonstration run, leaving a cloud of hydrocarbons hovering in his wake.

Built between 1964 and 1967 in Japan, the Fuji Go-Devil is a rare little beast indeed, but it’s one of an enduring breed. It’s also technically a Subaru, as it was built by Fuji Heavy Industries (FHI), the parent company of everyone’s favorite Japanese pancake-engine manufacturer.

Measures points out a couple of the Go-Devil’s more curious features: magnesium wheels and aeronautical-looking struts. FHI was an aircraft manufacturer—hence the boxer engine in your WRX—and there appears to have been some parts-bin product development at work. The rear wheel looks like it might fit some tiny tail-dragger scout plane.

It’s a tiny example of manufacturing history, one more tied to Subaru’s heritage than you might think. The larger Fuji Rabbit scooter dates all the way back to 1946, and it proved instrumental in Japan’s post-WWII building period. Resembling a cycloptic duck, the Rabbit S-1 took inspiration from the Powell scooters used by American servicemen. As Japan’s industry pivoted to an export model, Fuji’s scooter division looked to capitalize on the demand with something more portable.

Go-Devils are rare, so they tend to crop up in unusual places. When Measures saw his first one, years back, it had been discovered in an old fallout shelter, tucked alongside cans of baked beans. Their small size means that there are probably a few out there in the back of a garage or the corner of an attic.

1942–54 Welbike/Corgi

The most obvious customer for a minibike that can be folded up and taken on abroad is, of course, the modern paratrooper. Obviously, “abroad,” is a bit of a euphemism in this case. During the Allied invasions of France and Italy, some British paratroopers were deployed with a 98cc motorcycle that was designed to be air-dropped inside a tube.

Dubbed the Welbike, the small-wheeled mini-machine had an air of dachshund, with its two-stroke single-cylinder lying horizontal in the frame. Total setup time to unfold and start it was intended to be just fifteen seconds, assuming the paratrooper could find the thing; it was dropped separately from the plane and not attached to the soldier. One hoped that Jerry did not nick your Welbike before you got to it.

As you might expect, most of these scooters in practice ended up serving as on-base runabouts.

In the postwar period, swords of all kinds were beaten into plowshares. Former Lt. Colonel John Dolphin, who had been commander at the secretive research station where the Welbike was developed, found himself managing director of the Corgi Motorcycle Company. Since Corgi is a dog breed that resembles small, adorable footstools, the name was a perfect fit.

In the U.S., Corgi’s parent company had recently acquired the storied Indian motorcycle company. The Welbike thus began advertisements in department store catalogs under the name “Indian Papoose,” complete with signature burgundy paint and gold “Indian” script. It was not road-legal and thus found favor with farmers who used it off-road.

With a top speed of around 30 mph, all varieties of this little scooter were slow. However, in postwar England especially, gasoline rationing made the Corgi very popular. Some 30,000 units of all varieties were built, though few seem to have survived outside of the U.K.

1981–83 Honda Motocompo

While practical thrift spurred the scooter explosion of the postwar period, the next (and perhaps the most famous) folding scooter was an expression of economic optimism. Where else but in Japan, amid the run-up to a bubble economy, could something like the Honda Motocompo gain traction?

Launched in 1981 as a $332 accessory for the Honda City and Today compact cars (you could also get one of these scooters as a standalone), the Motocompo was something entirely new. The concept was a trunk bike—a “last-mile” folding scooter that would take you from your parking spot to your final destination. Think a sprawling industrial or corporate campus, and the ability to scoot right over from your peon-status salaryman lot.

Powered by a 49cc engine that made about 2.5 hp, the Motocompo was the smallest scooter ever made by Honda, and it was somewhat strained at even city speeds. A little above 30 mph is technically possible but not recommended for a sustained period.

Not a commuter, then—a commuting solution, at least in concept. Pictures of Motocompos stacked two and three to a trunk conjure memories of 1980s Transformers—”Soundwave” the boombox in particular, complete with his team of transforming cassette tapes. There was just one problem: For a toy, the Motocompo was a bit heavy (99 pounds) and not really practical for a land of excellent public transportation.

Still, in terms of public fascination, the Motocompo endures as an example of Honda’s fun-loving personality and ingenuity. You can buy a Hot Wheels City Turbo off the peg at your local grocery store today; peer inside, and it’ll have Motocompos tucked in the back.

They’re also popular as a quirky pitbike solution, and despite not being fast at all, they are rather fun to buzz around. Prices for vintage Motocompos are high enough these days (they easily bring $5000, frequently more) that you wonder why Honda doesn’t bring back the concept. (Guess Honda heard you, Brendan. —Ed.) It might not have sold all that well in period, but an e-Motocompo for the back of the Honda e city car would generate more headlines than the company could possibly want. (Even electric! You’re good. —Ed.)

1991 Mazda Suitcase Car

What company could be even weirder and more ambitious than Honda? Leave tiny oddities to a relatively tiny company—in this case, Mazda, an outfit in which one imagines engineers locked the beancounters in a broom closet so they could sell sports cars with high-strung twin sequential-turbo rotary engines and full warranties, amid other lunacy.

In response to a company-wide innovation competition, a handful of engineers from Mazda’s R&D department responsible for the brand’s manual transmissions came up with the idea to build a motorized suitcase. Working with a tiny sliver of budget, the team set to work turning its idea into a functioning vehicle. They obtained the largest available Samsonite suitcase, as well as a 33.6-cc pocket bike to be cut up for parts.

Folded up, with the external rear wheels stowed, the suitcase car looks like, well, a suitcase. However, once you open it flat, unload the rear wheels, attach them, and deploy the handlebars, you have a sort of motorized tripod skateboard on which you can perch your fashionable self. The build was incredibly popular inside Mazda, but in the end, the suitcase car amounted to no more than a prototype.

Three such prototypes were built in total: the original was crashed and destroyed by an over-exuberant test driver, and one bound for the European car show circuit went missing. The third and final Suitcase Car is with Mazda in California and has appeared on The Discovery Channel and The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Unlike the other scooters listed here, Mazda’s Suitcase Car was never sold to the public. From the outset, it was really more a proof of concept than a practical mobility solution. Yet who among us wouldn’t be first in line for a go? It looks like huge fun in a tiny package.

Perhaps that’s why, even today, manufacturers and startups still seem to be looking for a way to sell portable mobility solutions that you can pack up and take with you. Few ever seem to make it past the cool-but-ultimately-useless stage, but maybe one day someone will crack the code.

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There are so many nuances and trends in the old-car market. Identifying and reporting on them is one of the reasons Hagerty Insider exists. When you’ve been around the hobby long enough, though, you start to see familiar patterns, even with cars that are a little newer to the hobby. Take Japanese cars, for instance.

In the 1970s, there was no such thing as a collectible Japanese car.

(This is what’s known in the storytelling business as setting the stage, so fans need not freak out about this characterization, because it gets a lot better for Japanese cars as collectibles … mostly).

Sure, there were the oddities, the antiques and the oddballs, but they were not taken seriously in North America and Europe, where the “real” collector cars came from. Or so many said.

At the dealership where I worked in the 1970s, an interesting Japanese car, a Toyota 2000GT, passed through. My guess is that this came about because of the James Bond connection—a chopped top “convertible” version appeared in 1967’s You Only Live Twice. I remember a few things about the 2000GT that came our way. It was red, had a wooden dash, and I could almost, but not quite, fit my 6’4” frame into it, even though at that time I had a much more limber (and quite a bit smaller) teenage body. The other things I remember include the excellent build quality, and the fact that we sold it to a Toyota dealer who put it on his showroom floor. He used it as a sales tool that would call attention to the fact that Toyota had a bit more automotive history than what Americans saw in the the Corolla sitting next to it.

Though Japanese brands gained traction across the industry, including with legitimate enthusiast cars, their collector status, or lack thereof, remained pretty much the same throughout the 1980s and 1990s. But for those aware, the Toyota 2000GT was starting to turn more heads.

“They have no soul,” I would hear from most car guys back then in regard to cars from Japan. “They build nothing but disposable cars,” or “they only make automotive appliances.”

In reality, everything had changed back in 1970 with the introduction of the Datsun (now Nissan) 240Z. That car did everything well, was affordable, good-looking and, dare I say it, up to the minute and hip. It had soul, performance (okay, it was quick and nimble), and was anything but an appliance. The color palette offered was early Skittles, the transmissions were mostly manuals, and it was the car to have if you were young, single, and had a job to afford the payments.

The 240Z started a trend that took a while to fully take hold. As an appraiser and the publisher of the Hagerty Price Guide, I follow markets as well as individual cars, and the 240Z has been one to watch. It took a long time for the 240Z to break the $25,000 barrier as a collectible, but ever since that happened, there was no looking back. Unsurprisingly, the 240Z brought the 260Z, the 280Z, 300ZX and a host of other cars from Japanese manufacturers to the collectible party, and festivities have been in full swing ever since. Cars that were originally introduced to the American market as well as JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) cars have been on a tear.

What happens next should come as little surprise. With values heading upward in the marketplace, people tend to get cocky. Now, instead of “never collectible,” the new normal is “they will always increase in value.” Sorry gang, but guess what? Even Japanese collector cars are subject to the whims of the market. Collectors who are in their 30s haven’t yet witnessed a downturn in the Japanese collector car market, but that doesn’t mean those cars are immune.

Some, but certainly not all, of this crowd’s favorite Japanese cars have hit the tiniest rough patch. Is it time to run for the exits? Is this a hair-on-fire three alarm emergency? Not even close. I’m just here to tell you that you know a market is beginning to mature when market forces start to temper initial enthusiasm.

Perhaps this is a totally appropriate time for youthful critics to say “OK, Boomer” and stop reading, or vent to Insta their friends about bad information from an automotive dinosaur who has no idea about today’s market because “this time, it’s different.” No, it’s not different, and it’s possible to make, or at least save, a considerable sum of money by simply paying attention.

Let’s go back to some really good Japanese collectible news. Many of the sales at the auctions in Monterey this year showed record prices for Japanese collectibles. Broad Arrow sold a 1995 NSX Type R for $632,000, which is just about twice what one sold for on Bring A Trailer. More good stuff? How about $1,105,000 for Lexus LFA at RM Sotheby’s? That’s the first non-Nurburgring Package car to cross the million dollar mark at auction. (An event we predicted back in 2019.) Going back to Datsuns, Mecum had a 1969 240Z that sold for a hair-raising $132,000. Great news, indeed.

But on the not-so-lucrative side, Mecum also had my personal favorite, a lime-green four-speed 1972 Datsun 240Z, one of 37 completed Vintage-Z program cars. That was the very unusual factory sponsored deal where early Z cars were restored using all-original factory Z parts, and they then sold through a small group of Nissan dealers as a “new-ish” (my word, not theirs) car, complete with a factory warranty. A few of these have since sold for $100,000 and more, but this one was a steal at just $66,000. The list of cars with a factory, or factory-approved restoration is not long, and because most of them have a Prancing Horse on the hood, the commensurate values exceed $1,000,000, and sometimes way more.

Bonhams had the biggest dollar car at Monterey in the Ferrari 412 P, but also a notable no-sale: the very special Subaru Impreza 22B-STI prototype, #000 of 400. This was the first prototype for 1998 WRC rally car homologation, and it is exceedingly original with just 70 kilometers, or about 49 miles showing. Bids stalled out at a reported $365,000, its pre-auction estimate was $450,000 to $550,000.

Markets go up, down, and occasionally sideways, which is another way of expressing that the market is staying stable. Do Japanese cars still have staying power in the marketplace? Yes, absolutely. Will JDM cars continue to rise? Are their North American market siblings the better way to go? It might be time to make those buying decisions for the long term, and not just for the here and now. Will a 60-year-old you be just as excited about driving a right-hand-drive car as a 40-year-old you? The Japanese car market, like its consumers, is maturing.

You have decisions to make. Maybe now is the time to sit or cut sushi.

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Via Insider

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The Monterey auctions never fail to conjure visions of seven- and eight-figure Ferraris, exclusive Porsches, and a litany of race cars with incredible provenance. However, exceptional Japanese cars have started to gain a strong foothold at the Monterey auctions of late, with an increase of significant, valuable models available.

This year continues that trend—auction houses have carefully curated their Japanese collector-car options with some top-flight examples. Whether you’re a Japanese car enthusiast or just a casual observer, it’s worth keeping an eye on the five heavy hitters below—as segment leaders, the sale of these cars may serve as indicators of the trajectory of this increasingly popular corner of the market.

1997 Subaru Impreza 22B-STI Prototype

Bonhams, Lot 90

The 22B-STI is the undisputed king of the Subarus. The scrappy company known for all-wheel drive put a huge mark on the World Rally Championship with the 22B-STI in the mid-’90s, and in so doing won the hearts of enthusiasts the world over. Built to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Subaru as well as its third World Rally Championship (WRC) win in a row, production of the 22B was limited to 400 units. What Subaru delivered to buyers was about as close to a road-going WRC car as you could get. Subaru’s tuning division, Subaru Tecnica International, installed a comprehensive aero kit, upgraded suspension, big brakes, a potent 2.2-liter flat-four engine putting out a conservative 276 horsepower, and the cherry on top— gold BBS wheels, which would come to be iconic on all special Subarus.

Any 22B coming up for sale is worthy of celebration, but this one offered by Bonhams takes the hype up a couple notches. You see, this is the first prototype 22B, number 000/400, and it shows only 49 miles on the clock.

When Subaru released the 22B, it offered up the first five to its team and drivers. The honors of owning the first ever 22B? Well, that went to none other than David Lapworth of Prodrive, the man who put Subaru atop the WRC summit. Adding to that, this is the only 22B produced in 1997—all the others were made in 1998. The enormity of this opportunity for Subaru WRC fans cannot be understated. This car, estimated to sell between $450,000–$550,000, could very well set a new high-water mark for 22B prices.

1967 Toyota 2000GT

Broad Arrow, Lot 151

Toyota’s 2000GT deserves a lot of credit for the recognition of the rise of the Japanese collector-car market. It was the first Japanese car to strike it big and garner an immense amount of attention from enthusiasts who previously never thought that a Japanese car could be that collectible. It is also the first Japanese car to crack the $2 million mark at auction, with the sale of a Shelby-backed example at Amelia in 2022. Though Broad Arrow’s 2000GT is not likely to break that record (its sale estimate is $850,000–$1.1M), it will garner attention for being a left-hand-drive example.

Today’s segment trendsetter was yesterday’s halo car that put Toyota on the map. Developed with help from Yamaha, Toyota set out to create a world-class GT car. Though it never sold in significant numbers, it racked up racing wins in Japan as well as in SCCA and was even featured in a Bond film.

Toyota 2000GTs are an uncommon sight in the auction world—to only see one a year is not unheard of. Most of them are right-hand-drive, and while American buyers don’t seem to be too turned off by that fact, left-hand-drive examples like this one are greatly preferred. This undoubtedly comes from the ease of driving (anyone who has driven a RHD car in the U.S. knows the difficulty) as well as the fact that only 62 examples were delivered in LHD configuration out of 351 produced, making this example exceedingly rare.

1995 Honda NSX Type R

Broad Arrow, Lot 110

Honda’s NSX (branded as an Acura for the US market) is always in the conversation when it comes to the most balanced sports cars of the ’90s. Borrowing from lessons learned in Formula 1, Honda’s engineers poured themselves into a car that could take on and beat Ferrari on the street just as they did on the circuit. Adding to the car’s development was input from none other than F1 legend, Ayrton Senna, which resulted in a razor sharp sports car. After its introduction, Honda decided to take the NSX a step further. This resulted in the NSX Type R, which launched the Type R name that has remained in Honda lexicon for three decades. Everything about the Type R is just more hardcore: weight was obsessively removed to the tune of 120 kilograms (265 pounds), the engine blueprinted and tuned for optimal performance, transmission gearing revised, and a sharper-handling suspension installed.

Only 483 examples of the NA1-series NSX Type Rs were produced from 1992-1995, and scant few of them have come to market publicly. In fact, only one has been offered at auction in the U.S. prior to this example. The one here is presented with exceptionally low kilometers, showing merely 7000 (4300 miles) on the clock, and sports options such as a radio and air conditioning (remember, this is a track weapon, not a street cruiser). While the sole previous U.S. sale came in at $305,993, this one has seen less use and the opportunity to buy an NSX Type R is exceedingly rare. Those factors suggest the $550,000–$650,000 estimate makes sense. If this car blows the roof off of the Jet Center sale, expect to see more of these come out of hiding.

1970 Nissan Fairlady Z 432

Mecum, Lot S82

Without a doubt, this is among the most desired of all Nissan Z-cars. And, with only 420 produced, it’s not often you see a Fairlady Z 432 come to public sale.

You’d be forgiven if you are not familiar with the Z 432. Imagine the 240Z we got in the U.S., but with the wick turned up. With the domestic success of the “Hakosuka” Skyline GT-R (1969–72), Nissan decided to drop the GT-R’s S20 dual-overhead cam engine into the Fairlady Z. The S20 engine was legendary in Japanese racing series at the time, powering the Prince R380 race car and mopping up the competition in the Japanese touring circuit in the GT-R. Nissan called its hot-rodded Z-car the Z 432 for its four valves per cylinder, three carburetors, and two camshafts.

Not since 2019 has a Z 432 come up publicly in North America, so this thoroughly restored example will undoubtedly attract a number of Japanese car collectors looking for a car worthy of centerpiece status in their collection. The estimate from $350,000–$450,000 blows any previous sales of a Z 432 out of the water (and tops the Hagerty Price Guide’s Condition #1 value), but the expanded market and increased demand for Japanese cars make this estimate seem less far-fetched than it might look at first glance. Besides, there’s no guarantee we’ll see another one come up for sale any time soon.

2012 Lexus LFA

RM Sotheby’s, Lot 365

What happens when you so obsessively engineer a car that you make the decision to redesign the entire body mid-way through the development process? You get a Lexus LFA.

For Toyota, who had never built a supercar, the LFA represented a feat of engineering prowess that needed to represent the company’s identity while still delivering a world-class supercar experience. As a result, the LFA may not look as unhinged as a Lamborghini or have the same prestige as Ferrari, but it absolutely deserves to stand in their ranks. Every detail of this car is meant to make it faster, from a body that channels air exactly where it is required to a V-10 engine that revs from idle to 9000 rpm in 0.6 seconds and sounds straight out of a ’90s Formula 1 car.

While the LFA wasn’t a sales success, with many sitting in dealerships for months to reportedly years in some cases, it is now a highly coveted collector item. From early 2021 to 2022, these cars doubled in value, topping out at nearly $1 million for a standard model, and handily cracking the seven-figure mark for the Nürburgring edition. This 47-mile example offered by RM Sotheby’s is about as close to brand-new as you can get, so it should tell us a lot about the top end of the LFA market.

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The first members of the press just got to drive the hottest version of Acura’s reborn Integra. Though the new car is badged Type S rather than Type R, it smacks of the same simple, mechanical goodness as its ’90s predecessor. Here is a story, originally published on this site in June of 2018, featuring the O.G. hi-po Integra.

So much for that movie magic. We were on Terminal Island, part of the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles and the place where the final minutes of The Fast and the Furious were filmed. In that scene, a street racer and his undercover-cop nemesis engage in a quarter-mile race that finishes with both cars barely beating a speeding train across an intersection. This being the real world, however, our situation was different. To start with, the train had beaten us to the intersection, rather than the other way around, and it was in the process of slowing to a dead halt. Until this train resumed its motion, we weren’t going anywhere. “This road is not fast,” I said, “and it’s making me furious.”

Two cars—unrelated except that they are both from foreign lands, have four-cylinder engines, and roll on round wheels—waited for Walmart’s freshly imported stock to get moving on up the line. The Flamenco Black 2000 Acura Integra Type R, driven by owner Sterling Sackey, is a front-wheel-drive, five-seat Japanese hatchback designed, and mostly sold, in the past century. Meanwhile, people have cottage cheese in their refrigerators that is older than Bob Russell’s 2015 Alfa Romeo 4C Launch Edition. Yet these two cars currently command the same money—about $50,000—on the secondary market.

This is a stark but fascinating choice. You can be the umpteenth Porsche 911 driver at your local car show, or you can have a carbon-fiber, mid-engine quasi-exotic. Or you can have a limited-production street ninja that distills the essence of Honda’s seven-decade crusade to produce miniaturized perfection. Which will it be?

As you’d expect, the Acura all but disappears when parked next to that little red coupe from Alfa Romeo. Designed under the supervision of Lorenzo Ramaciotti, the man who also signed off on the Ferrari Enzo and Maserati’s 2007–19 GranTurismo, the 4C has some of that bulbous but sleek look that distinguished the old Ferrari F430 and 599 Fiorano, rendered in slightly busy fashion at approximately 7/8ths scale. It’s certainly a shock to the average American, for whom the Alfa Romeo brand is still closely associated with the boattail 1966 1600 Spider driven by Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. The company traded on that association in the lean years of the 1980s, going so far as to build and sell a low-cost variant of the Spider badged simply “Graduate.”

The 4C, like the Spider, is an Italian-built two-seat sports car powered by a twin-cam inline-four, but that is where the similarities come to an abrupt halt. The Spider traded on its looks and nostalgic appeal, particularly toward the end of its 28-year production run. This new Alfa, by contrast, is intended to be a technological cymbal crash, as modern as any of today’s renaissance exotics.

The core of the 4C is a carbon-fiber monocoque chassis weighing only 143 pounds, with aluminum subframes bolted to it front and rear. A 1742-cc, 237-horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder engine sits behind the occupants and drives the rear wheels through a six-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission. Unashamedly raucous, the fast-revving inline-four howls under acceleration and then delivers a sharp crackle and pop with each one of the transmission’s seamless shifts. It sounds exotic from a distance, and you can usually hear the Alfa long before you see it.

That’s doubly true when Bob Russell is behind the wheel. It’s the first new car he has ever owned, after a career spent maintaining high-value vehicle collections for other people. “She’s an Alfa Romeo, the first real Alfa sold in the U.S. in 20 years or better. I had to do it.” In the years since taking delivery, he and his wife have driven it all around California and beyond in search of twisty-road adventure. More than 36,000 miles of hard use have blasted their Alfa’s nose into a peppermint mix of red paint and white primer. “I don’t baby the car,” Bob says with a shrug.

Sackey’s Acura, by contrast, is nearly flawless, even at close inspection, which is what makes this, a car that often sells in the teens and 20s with higher mileage and a lot more flogging, possibly a $50,000 car. It’s not even the most collectible variant. That would be the 1997 introductory car, painted the Championship White associated with racing Hondas in general and the Type R models in particular. The first batch of 500 didn’t even have air conditioning or a radio, although subsequent limited runs in 1999, 2000, and 2001 had those refinements.

“There were about 3800 Type Rs imported during those four years,” Sackey notes, “but I’d say that maybe 10 percent of them are in unmolested condition.” The Integra was famous for being easy to steal, and the Type R was a particular target—not because it was desirable, although it was. Rather, it was because the 195-hp, 8500-rpm engine could be bolted directly into the lighter and smaller Civic from the same model years. If the B-series Honda engine is the small-block Chevy of the new street-racer generation, the B18C5 is its 1970 LT1. Nearly perfect from the factory, the B-series is capable of massive power gains with the right modifications.

A quick half-lap of Terminal Island in the Alfa’s passenger seat next to Russell shows that this particular 4C hasn’t lost a step since leaving Modena, where Maserati assembles the car for its corporate sibling. Thanks to an aftermarket chip, it’s probably a little faster than it was when new. Yet raw pace has never been the 4C’s problem. Alfa Romeo added a few hundred pounds’ worth of safety equipment and crash reinforcement for stateside sale, but at less than 2500 pounds fully fueled, this is still an extremely light and responsive sports car, not much slower in a straight line than a turn-of-the-century V-8 Ferrari.

Drivers who fit into the little Alfa—and that’s not everybody—will find plenty to appreciate, from the polished-aluminum switchgear to a steering rack that goes about its business without any power assistance. On the move, the 4C forces you to involve yourself in the experience. This is not an automobile in which you eat a fastfood lunch, partly because there’s no place to put the bag. Nor can you idly chat on a cellphone, because expansion joints require a two-fisted correction.

There’s one thing that might end up separating the Alfa from an assured place in the classic-car panoply: that dual-clutch automatic. This one has the latest software updates, thanks to Russell’s persistence and skill in getting the most out of his local dealer, but it’s still deeply ambivalent about its work. Left to shift for itself, it seems to be on a mission to choose the wrong gear at all times. Switched into “manual” mode, it can display a truculent attitude toward the driver’s commands. A paddle-shifted manumatic is now de rigueur everywhere from Formula 1 to your Hyundai showroom, and given enough time, you would certainly get used to it. Still, a good conventional transmission with a single foot-operated clutch would make the 4C just about the perfect pocket-size Italian exotic.

I know where Alfa Romeo could get one, or at least where it (and everyone else) could look for inspiration. The Acura Integra Type R has a legendary five-speed stick tucked into the parsimonious space between its front seats. “I think it’s the best shift feel in a Japanese car, maybe the best shift feel period,” Sackey says. He should know, at least regarding the first part of his assertion. His Southern California company, SW2 Japan Sports, scours the country for the best factory-original, unmodified, low-mileage Japanese sports cars money can buy.

I pop open the Acura’s flimsy driver’s door and settle into the supportive but comfortable seat. Almost immediately, I’m nostalgic for the contrasting-color stitching and careful detailing found all over the 4C’s cockpit. The Integra’s interior is no less black than its exterior, without a single bit of shiny trim or contrasting color on the hard-plastic dashboard to lighten the mood. My seating position is perhaps three inches lower than what you’d get in a modern compact car, yet the 47-inch-tall Alfa makes the Acura feel like a Honda CR-V by contrast

Although Acura was always meant to be an upscale brand, at least in theory, there’s nothing luxurious or interesting about the Integra’s cockpit. In Japan, this was but a Civic with a sleeker and heavier body shell, sold in Honda’s home-market Verno dealerships that typically handled offbeat fare like the Prelude. There’s plenty of headroom available, but two large-size adults sitting in the front seats will rub elbows. The center console is tucked under the dashboard in an attempt to create space. The switchgear is familiar from the Civic and other entry-level Honda products of the era, but in 1997, the Type R sold for more than $24,000.

There’s a payoff for the Acura’s prosaic accommodations. It weighs merely 100 more pounds than the carbon-fiber Alfa, despite having a big glass hatchback and a reasonably useful pair of rear seats. Honda made it light the old-fashioned way, by using the thinnest panels and the least material possible. Every body panel, including the rear quarter-panels, will flex under the pressure of a motivated index finger.

A unibody this ethereal is a poor platform on which to build a sporting proposition, so Honda took extraordinary measures with the Type R. It is famous for being seam-welded instead of spot-welded. Seam welding, a process typically reserved for race cars, joins the different stampings of a unibody car together with long, continuous welds. This makes the shell much stiffer than that of a standard production car in which the stampings are welded in discrete “spots” with room for flex and corrosion in between. It makes a difference. Factory seam welding is rare (although if you purchase a late-model Aston Martin or Lotus, you will get an adhesive-bonded chassis that accomplishes much the same goal).

I’m expecting great things from this Integra, and from the first fast corner it fails to disappoint me. At a time when most sports cars were already styling on 17- or even 18-inch wheels, Honda stuck with 15s for the Type R, mounted to extra-stout five-bolt hubs. Thus, the lead-booted sense of running-gear inertia that affects most modern sports cars, including the Alfa, does not affect this little hatchback. Authenticity without flash is one thing that makes the Type R so cool.

Like the 4C, the Acura has a control-arm front suspension and an eerie sense of connection with the road. You get the sense that you could distinguish individual bits of gravel beneath the front tires, and sure enough, when I hook a hard right from Cannery onto Tuna (yes, those are the real street names), I can feel a flicker of feedback as the left front wheel rolls over a few pebbles on corner entry.

On the way out of “Tuna Corner,” I pin the throttle and let the Integra wind up to that famous 8500-rpm fuel cutoff. Surprisingly, there’s a lot of flywheel weight to overcome, but when the VTEC variable timing kicks in after the “6” mark on the tach, there is a strong and steady pull to the redline. Even so, I can see why many of the Type R’s original owners spent serious money on engine tuning and modifications. The Alfa can run away from it without so much as a downshift, and the approximately three-second gap in quarter-mile elapsed time between the two cars contains everything from a 5.0-liter ’87 Mustang to the current Honda Odyssey minivan.

At the end of our day, both of our owners are effusive in their praise of the other car. “If I were a collector,” Russell, the Alfa owner, notes, “the Acura would most definitely be a keeper.” Meanwhile, Sackey, the Integra man, is completely taken with the 4C’s exotic looks and construction. “Seeing that carbon chassis when you open the door is worth the price alone.”

Which leads us to the $50,000 question: Which car offers the most satisfaction for the money? Buyers thinking about long-term appreciation might want to consider the Acura. The conservative choice, it’s a blue-chip member of an exclusive group of Japanese cars that will likely continue to gain value for years. The Alfa is a riskier bet. The collectors of tomorrow might not give it any more respect than they’ve accorded the Milano and the 164—or they might consider it the spiritual successor to the mid-engined Dino—a cheap Ferrari without a Ferrari badge. It’s a roll of the dice, and much of that roll depends on how posterity regards that fussy dual-clutch transmission.

If you’re thinking about the here and now, though, the 4C and the Type R are compelling propositions, albeit for different reasons. The Alfa is a cornucopia of engineering achievement, unfettered ambition, and sensuous styling that stumbles a bit in the execution. It’s also an Italian wildcat for a younger turbo generation that glories in flame-spitting Group B rally monsters more than the classic front-engine GTs of an earlier age. The Acura, meanwhile, demonstrates what can happen when you apply a Formula 1 team’s worth of engineering effort to a prosaic platform. It is a hero car to an even younger generation reared on front-drive hot hatchbacks and a street language laced with arcane product codes and Japanese hot-rodding slang. Yet both cars will attack a back road with infectious enthusiasm—and they’ll both draw a crowd at any Cars and Coffee event you’d care to attend.

When that Terminal Island train finally started moving about 20 minutes later, our little caravan was ready to uncork some nervous energy. From my perch in the photography van, I could see and hear both cars ripping away from us—the Alfa with its sonorous song and the clipped brutality of its instant shifts, the Acura wailing toward that improbable redline, its nose rising and falling in the short throw from second to third. I couldn’t help smiling at the thread of unbridled enthusiasm that connects these cars—across continents, across decades, and across cultures. In today’s drab crossover-centric automotive environment, the 4C and the Type R are heretical by their very nature, sisters in a subtle witchcraft. When you have that, who needs movie magic?

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The Japanese car market is hands down the most interesting part of the collector car world at the moment. As an emerging segment, it’s more unpredictable, the rules are more fluid, and it skews far younger than the rest of the collector car market. All of this makes perfect sense given the fact that we’re talking about cars which as little as ten years ago weren’t on the radar of most traditional (read: older) collectors. But the people who grew up playing Gran Turismo and devouring the latest installment of the Fast & Furious franchise knew better, and taught the rest of the market a thing or two about what’s cool.

I’m hesitant to refer to it as the Japanese car market since that makes it sound far more monolithic than it actually is. In reality, it’s extremely diffuse, and a bit confusing, particularly for outsiders looking in. And frankly, although I’ve owned every flavor of early Z-car, I still fall into that category. Nevertheless, I can parse the market into some distinct categories and share some current trends.

Japanese Royalty

The established royalty of the Japanese car world consists of cars like the Toyota 2000GT, Mazda Cosmo, the Nissan Fairlady Z432, and early Skyline 2000 GT-Rs. The highest-spec, post-1970s Skylines, the Zanardi Edition Acura NSX, and the best of the MK IV Supra Twin Turbos, Subaru/Prodrive WRXs, and the Acura Integra Type R are probably destined for this group as well.

The 1960s and 1970s cars in this category represent the most stable part of the market. That makes sense, since these were the first cars to really take off and they’ve had ample time to find their buyers and evangelists. The established royalty seem fully priced at the moment, while the ’90s and newer cars seem to have no immediate ceiling, at least in the case of low-mileage, unmodified cars. Because of the demographic they appeal to, their best days are clearly in front of them.

U.S. Market Blue-Chippers

After the royalty, the bluest of the blue chip Japanese cars that were commercially available in the U.S. when new consist of the following: 1967 Datsun 2000 Fairlady Roadster, the Honda S600/800, the Datsun 240Z, the Z32 generation Nissan 300ZX Turbo, the Honda S2000 Club Racer, The third-generation (FD) Mazda RX-7, the second-generation (GD/GG) Subaru WRX, and the first-generation Acura NSX. R-Package NA Miatas should probably be thought of as near blue-chippers at this point, too. Though the Datsun/Nissan Z cars have seen values slip recently, most of the above are still at least modestly on the uptick, and all still have a significant upside.

The only impediment to collecting and enjoying these cars is parts support, which tends to lag behind other imported collectible cars, particularly those from BMW and Porsche.  Bargains are few and far between among the blue-chippers, but you don’t have to move that far down market to find some nearly equally interesting cars.  Either generation of Nissan 240SX (assuming you can find an unmodified one), and first-generation RX-7s seem like good deals. The RX-7 really was the spiritual successor to the 240/260/280Z and the price delta between the two cars just seems too wide at this point. Chalk it off to the usual rotary scare stories that seem effective in frightening people off.

Freakishly Low Mileage Examples of “Disposable” Cars

Most Japanese cars of the 1960s through the 1990s were simply low-cost (albeit high-quality) transportation and they were used as such, often racking up lunar miles in the process of being driven into the ground. While mechanically nearly bulletproof, cars that found homes outside of the West Coast usually saw their sheet metal dissolve after a few harsh, salty winters. Thus, the survival rate of once-numerous, fairly ordinary cars like first-generation Civics, Corollas and Accords is miniscule. Those that have survived tend to be street-parked, 300,000-mile-plus Los Angeles cars that evaded cash for clunkers and are still somehow able to pass smog.

With that, it’s no surprise that clean, low-mileage examples can bring eye-popping money via online auctions.  Need proof? A minty 32,000-mile California 1979 Honda Civic CVCC (with a two-speed automatic no less) sold on Bring a Trailer last year for $36,225 after fees. Simply have to have the best early Corolla out there?  A ’74 SR-5 Coupe with 29,000 miles drove bidders crazy recently on the same online auction site. This one was a five-speed manual, and predictably, also from Southern California. It made $37,275 after fees. Sales of low-mileage freaks are great fun to watch—who doesn’t like time-capsule early Japanese cars? In these kinds of sales, there’s just no telling whether a given car will set a record or fly under the radar. Cars sell for what they sell for, and each one represents a very limited opportunity—as many observers have noted, there may well be more Ferrari 250 GTOs extant than concours-condition early Civics.

Recently-Legal JDM

The car that’s captured the spotlight over the last couple years as the Japanese domestic market car to have is the Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R. The Nürburgring-bred R34 pushed the era’s boundaries for tech and performance, with some variants capable of sub-eight-minute Nordschleife times. American fans of the R34, and there are many, have been drooling over the few Show or Display cars that have made it here, and are counting the days until the 25-year rule kicks in.

The entry point for a Show or Display R34 GT-R, landed in the States with appropriate papers and customs clearances, starts around $200,000. While some speculate prices may come down as supply increases with more model years becoming legal, I wouldn’t count on it. This car is enjoying more than just a moment in the sun—it’s an icon that is now getting its due. I’m not sure the private import pipeline has the bandwidth to satisfy the truly voracious demand any time soon any more than the other side of the globe can satisfy Americans’ love for vintage left-hand-drive Land Rover Defenders.

It’s not just the GT-R dominating Japanese import headlines. The Mitsubishi Pajero Evo, a homologation sport utility special famous for Dakar Rally dominance, has recently reached 25 years of age and is making a splash in the U.S. market. The Pajero ticks a lot of boxes: it’s relatively rare at around 2500 units produced, its proportions, air scoops, and aero ooze personality, and sport utilities are now firmly a fixture in the collector world. We’ve noted three recent online auction sales of clean Pajeros for around $50,000, and we fully expect interest, and prices, to continue to grow.

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Automotive history is littered with “almosts”—cars that had the tools for success but nevertheless fell short. Despite the proper performance, design, and styling chops needed to turn heads and win over hearts, circumstances conspired against them. When thinking back fondly on their respective eras, we instead remember their peers.

The 1980s are full of such motoring melancholia. It was a decade of transition. Manufacturers shook off the shackles of late-’70s malaise and embraced exciting new technologies like turbocharging, electronic fuel injection, and computerized vehicle controls. Japan was a hub for much of this technological innovation, leading to beloved sports cars like the Mazda RX-7 Turbo II and Honda Prelude Si (with four-wheel steering).

With so many brands rolling so many different dice, it was clear that not every intriguing new avenue was going to pay off, regardless of how much money or effort was invested. Here’s a closer look at three might-have-been sports car contenders that never quite achieved the same respected status.

Mitsubishi Starion / Dodge/Plymouth/Chrysler Conquest

Mitsubishi was on the leading edge of the Japanese sports car craze at the beginning of the 1980s, and the Starion was its primary weapon. The car arrived on the scene just after the turbocharged edition of the Nissan Z and the rotary-powered Mazda RX-7, joining other newcomers like the Toyota Celica Supra. (A major European interloper in this space was the Porsche 944.)

At first blush, the Starion had all the right ingredients. Its sleek hatchback shape concealed an enormous (for a four-cylinder) 2.6-liter engine under the hood, turbocharged to produce 145 horsepower and 181 lb-ft of twist in base spec.

That went up to 178 horses and 223 lb-ft when the ESI-R edition appeared at the decade’s mid-mark. This wide-body version of the Starion offered additional visual punch to go with its turbocharged muscle. By the time the model had run its course in 1989, the intercooled ESI-R (or TSI in Chrysler Conquest parlance) was pushing out over 190 horsepower, managed by a limited-slip rear differential, stopped by four-wheel disc brakes, and controlled via a fully independent suspension at all four corners.

Today, the Starion is a cult car appreciated most by Mitsubishi fans. It does not enjoy the same mainstream recognition lavished on more celebrated contemporaries like the rotary-powered Mazda RX-7, which despite its stranger powertrain rode on a stick axle for the early part of the decade.

Let’s consider two primary reasons why the Starion is still being overlooked by today’s collectors. For one, both the Starion and its badge-engineered Dodge/Plymouth/Chrysler Conquest twins (collectively known as Starquests) were swept from the market in 1989 after only a single generation of production. That disappearance before the turn of the decade meant the Starion missed out on cementing its reputation during the JDM boom of the 1990s, an era that burnished the reputations of its Toyota, Nissan, and Mazda contemporaries. Second, Mitsubishi never again offered a rear-wheel-drive sports car in North America. It chose instead to focus on its Diamond Star Motors (DSM) partnership with Chrysler that yielded turbocharged high-end all-wheel drive and entry-level front-wheel drive sports cars, like the 3000GT VR-4 and Eclipse GS-T respectively.

Mitsubishi’s dealer network was also nowhere near the same size as those of Toyota, Nissan, or even pint-size Mazda, each of which had a head start on Mitsubishi establishing roots in the United States. Although its partnership with Chrysler for the latter half of its production helped boost sales, even in its best year the Starion/Conquest twins couldn’t touch half of the volume Mazda was claiming with the fairly niche RX-7.

For a long time, rare did not mean desirable for classic J-tin fans. The Starion’s fortunes might be changing, however; a 1989 Starion ESI-R in #3 (Good) condition is now worth $20,900 on average, which is up a whopping 80 percent compared to this time last year. That’s just a smidge above the #3-condition value for the RX-7 Turbo, at $20,500.

Subaru XT

Subaru’s entry into the ’80s sports car sweepstakes was considerably weirder than what Mitsubishi had to offer. Introduced in 1985, the Subaru XT marked a number of firsts for a baby brand still finding its footing in North America. Its aggressive wedge shape looked like nothing else in a showroom filled with sensible wagons and sturdy hatchbacks, and Subaru was quick to boast that the XT’s collection of deflectors, spoilers, and skirts made it the most aerodynamic car on the market at the time.

Open the door and you’d see the coupe’s pistol-grip steering wheel layout and digital dashboard were light years away from the GL and the Brat’s more basic interior. Height-adjustable suspension and a four-wheel drive system were in the mix, too, with high end models featuring an electronically-activated part-time setup that no other Japanese coupe could match at the time.

Under the hood was more of a mixed bag. Base models were saddled with a sub-100 horsepower four-cylinder engine hastily grabbed from the parts bin, and even the XT Turbo, with its 140 lb-ft of torque and 110 horsepower, was at risk of being left behind at stop lights by such sporting luminaries as Chrysler’s Voyager SE Turbo minivan.

Sensing how out of step the XT’s performance was with its extroverted looks, Subaru eventually gave the XT a 2.7-liter flat-six engine that improved output to 145 horsepower and just over 150 lb-ft of torque (while also introducing the option of full-time all-wheel drive).

Chances are you’ve never seen a Subaru XT in the metal. Fewer than 8000 examples were built from 1985 to 1991 (with the 1990 model year inexplicably skipped by the brand’s North American division), which makes it the rarest model on the list. So why did Subaru buyers stay away from the XT?

It’s instructive to look at Subaru’s buyer market when the XT arrived on American shores. The coupe’s doorstopper shape landed on the brand’s sensible, value-conscious customer base like an alien ship at the local farmer’s market, perhaps causing more consternation than fascination. (Subaru would immediately make the same mistake again with the SVX coupe’s upmarket attempt in the early ’90s).

Well before the rally craze of the 1990s, Subaru had at this point zero reputation in international motorsports to latch onto, nor had it ever sold a performance car in the United States. The XT was completely untethered from any potential springboard to respectability with customers outside its sphere of influence. Combine all of that with a botched launch, by the time the XT6 arrived in ’88 the chance to straddle the sports car/grand touring line (like the Supra or the 300ZX) came and went before the XT6 could make a dent.

Even today, the XT has no ties to the rallying reputation Subaru eventually built, and its part-time four-wheel drive and adjustable suspension may seem to some more of a liability than a bonus after four decades. Forever outside looking in, the XT occupies an abandoned branch of the Subaru family tree that even brand evangelists haven’t tended to. The best examples in the world are worth $13,500 on average, but#4-condition (Fair) examples are worth just $1600.

Nissan 200SX

The AE86 Toyota Corolla has become the default image for Japanese sports car fans picturing affordable 1980s fun. Aided and abetted by a starring role in a certain tofu shop delivery manga and anime series, the Corolla far outshines its near-identical contemporary rival, the Nissan 200SX. Also known as the S12 Silvia, this rear-wheel-drive, pop-up headlight coupe-and-hatchback combo had all the same moves as its Corolla antagonist when it arrived in 1984; yet in 2023 it’s more likely to be misidentified at a distance as a Toyota than celebrated as an equally fun-to-drive Nissan.

Like the AE86, the 200SX started out with four cylinders under the hood, but it one-upped its Toyota competition by supplementing its 105 horsepower base motor with a turbocharged, 1.8-liter unit that was good for 120 horses (4 more than the high-revving Corolla GT-S). By 1987 the AE86 was history, but the 200SX soldiered forward with even more muscle, snagging the 3.0-liter V-6 from the base 300ZX and lobbing a 160-horsepower hand grenade into the sport compact performance scene.

Still, the fact that the S12 Silvia both outgunned and outlasted the AE86 Corolla didn’t matter. After 1989 the 200SX was gone, and in its place arrived the Silvia that everyone remembers: the S13. Sold as the 240SX in the U.S., the larger, long-hooded coupe finished off the thunder theft that the AE86 started, and the 200SX’s name was rarely spoken again.

There is an argument to be made that Nissan’s focus on the Z is part of the reason the spotlight shone less on the 200SX. A company selling the same V-6 engine in both a lightweight, rear-wheel-drive hatchback and a much more expensive, sporty GT car would have a hard time convincing buyers to pay more for the more expensive car on the other side of the showroom. This wasn’t a problem in Toyota showrooms, where the Supra was so clearly differentiated from the AE86.

The next-generation Silvia, the S13, arrived in America entirely absent the turbocharged fury with which it prowled Japanese streets. The S13-gen 240SX was outfitted with the KA24DE truck motor—a four-cylinder that never crested 155 horsepower even when it was carried over into the next-generation S14 in 1995. Though some blame high insurance rates for anything with a turbocharger, it’s easy to imagine Nissan being concerned about a turbo S13 Silvia sapping ZX sales, which were a tidy profit center in the U.S. market. Naturally, fans of the S13 and the S14 on our shores engaged in judicious JDM engine swapping to unlock the performance potential of the 240SX platform, helping elevate the Silvia to its current drift royalty status.

The 200SX got neither the AE86’s pop culture cred nor did it enjoy the aftermarket attention showered on its 240SX successor. Until some copyright-avoiding media powerhouse reboots an alternate-reality edition of Initial D and calls on the Nissan to assume the starring role, it’s unlikely to ever reach a similar level of collector significance.

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What’s this? An early 2000s Japanese performance hatch that’s … affordable? In this market? Imagine that. Some lucky duck just paid $17,500 for a clean, one-owner 2002 Honda Civic Si with only 38,000 miles on the odo.

It’s tempting to connect this to the overall cooling collector car market. Our December market rating update showed slight decline for the third month in a row, the first time we’ve seen a streak like this since March 2020. But the (relative) bargain-basement price paid for this plucky little Civic isn’t a symptom of that. We don’t track the EP3-generation Civic (yet) in our valuation tool, but a quick flip through both Bring a Trailer and Cars and Bids’ completed sale archive shows this most recent blobular Si hatch hit exactly where we might expect it to, despite the explosive value growth of the preceding sixth-gen Si.

Compare this spotlight sale to that of a 2004 Civic Si sold on Cars and Bids back in August. That car wore both a rare Si Performance package and the same mileage as the most recent sale, and an active bidding gallery pushed the car just over the $20,000 mark. Meanwhile, the last EP3 sale on BaT was a 61,000-mile silver hatch that claimed $14,700.

What’s the deal? Based on the Hagerty Valuation tool’s $33,900 average for a previous-gen Civic Si in Condition #2 (Excellent), it might appear that enterprising enthusiasts are stealing these EP3 Civics for a five-figure discount. We turned to Hagerty Price Guide Editor Greg Ingold, our in-house Japanese collector car expert (and avowed Civic slappy) for the low-down on what makes this both a great buy and lesser-than when compared to the Si it replaced.

“EP3s are interesting because Honda/Acura fans often—and rightfully so, in my opinion—accuse Honda of nerfing the Si to pump up the [Acura] RSX Type S,” explained Ingold. “Both are K20-powered, but the [EP3] Si made 40 fewer HP than the Type S, and VTEC engagement was at a comically low point in the rev range for a Honda.”

That low VTEC engagement isn’t just marketing; power is unchanged over the B-series engine it replaced, but the EP3’s K-Series 2.0-liter upped the torque at the low-end for a more usable and “punchy” experience around town, where we do most of our driving. That said, critics are quick to point out the EP3’s questionable cost-cutting switch to MacPherson struts in the front suspension over the prior double-wishbone design, exacerbated by a 150-pound weight penalty compared to the old coupe.

Let’s not dogpile. Much of this weight gain came as a result of increased structural rigidity, with the EP3 Si packing a 95-percent boost in torsional rigidity and 22 percent spike in bending rigidity. Also, the hatch’s spunky console-mounted shifter won as many fans as it did detractors, but you can’t claim the car doesn’t have character.

Ingold agrees. “I think a hot hatch with low miles (when you consider it is a Honda) for under $20,000 is a bargain in this market,” he muses. “EP3s in the mileage range of Cars and Bids’ Civic seem to be selling in the $15,000–$20,000 range. There are cars with 10,000-20,000 more miles that have sold for more than this one, so I think it was a good buy.”

Is there room for the EP3 Civic Si grow? Naturally, but the underdog Japanese hatch remains a spot of rare affordability on the growing portfolio of investment-grade Japanese classics.

Via Hagerty Insider

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In 2018, Hagerty’s Bull Market list put a Toyota Supra in the front row of nine of the hottest collector cars on the market, right between a Lamborghini Diablo and a Porsche 911 Turbo. Four years later, valuations for the Mk IV Supra Turbo have nearly tripled. Also this year, the Supra’s ancestor—a 1967 2000GT prepared by Shelby for SCCA competition—fetched a record-setting $2.5M at auction. No longer an undiscovered country, the Japanese collector car market is now firmly established and still growing. And, with perfect timing, a new book set aims to provide a definitive overview of the most fascinating cars from the land of the rising sun.

A Quiet Greatness is a four volume plus appendix set that arrives with the thump of authority. That’s literally and figuratively, as collectively the set weighs a back-straining 32.2 pounds. Authors Myron Vernis and Mark Brinker have spent six years researching the Japanese market, diving deep to find the secrets of cars you already know about, and uncovering forgotten gems that never made it to our shores. With 1400 pages and more than 2200 photographs, it is the V12 Toyota Century (found on page 1281) of coffee table books.

“Self-publishing was one expense,” said Vernis, “but really, the greatest cost was discovering cars that we just had to have. It’s not a hard figure, but between Mark and me, I think we bought about eighteen cars over course of the project.”

Based in Akron, Ohio, Vernis has a fondness for some pretty obscure cars. To wit: he owns Wilt Chamberlain’s former Ghia 450SS, the 1953 Paxton Phoenix convertible penned by noted designer Brooks Stevens, and an NSU Ro80 used for R&D work by AMC when the company was considering putting a rotary engine in the Gremlin. He is also possibly the only person in the world to have the distinction of winning a three-way drag race between three-wheeled Davis Divans. Myron has a lot of fun.

Starting a decade ago, both Vernis and Brinker began noticing that some of the shine was coming off the car collecting hobby in general. The established shows still drew crowds, but fewer young people seemed to be in attendance every year. In contrast, while attending a Japanese car show in Los Angeles, Vernis clocked a crowd filled with an enthusiasm that reminded him of his youth. (Hagerty data indicates young enthusiasts are interested in all kinds of metal but do have a penchant for stuff from Japan.) Not long after, both he and Brinker had added a Mazda Cosmo each to their collection, and had dived down the rabbit hole.

You can find a thorough discussion of the Cosmo Sport 110S, both Series I and Series II, over eighteen pages in the second volume of A Quiet Greatness. Along with sumptous photos of this groundbreaking, handbuilt rotary coupe, there are driving impressions and a look at the car’s motorsports heritage. How otherworldly the Cosmo looks among the crowd of Renaults and BMWs at the 1968 Marathon de la Route at the Nürburgring. How otherworldly it looks today.

It’s entirely possible you’re already aware of the Mazda Cosmo, and probably the Toyota 2000GT as well. Although they are extremely rare, they form the imperial royal household of Japanese collector cars, along with Nissan’s many generations of Skyline GT-R and the Lexus LFA. All are satisfyingly covered extensively in A Quiet Greatness. Yet the real joy of the book is flipping a page and discovering something you’d never heard of.

This is the place where Mark Brinker is happiest, too. An orthopedic surgeon and restorer of some rare and overlooked American automobiles, he formed collection of handbuilt cars around a 1958 Devin SS, and expanded into twin-cam Italian confections like a 1955 Moretti 1200. The more he learned about Japanese cars, the more he found himself asking the same question.

“You’ve got a homologation-special with just 1400 made, a lightweight, twin-cam engined car with an impressive racing history—why isn’t that as special as a twin-cam Alfa Romeo GTA?”

Brinker is here referring to the Isuzu Bellet GT-R, a Japan-only car that needs some introduction. From page 251 of A Quiet Greatness:

In 1969, Isuzu introduced the Bellet GT-R (PR91), a homolgated real-wheel-drive racing coupe… powered by a front-mounted, 1.6L, DOHC, four-cylinder competition G161W engine sporting twin Mikuni carbs. Peak power was an impressive 136 bhp at 6,400 rpm, which was enough to propel the 2,138 lb GT-R to a top speed of 118 mph. Suspension was sophisticated for the time and was independent front and rear. Front suspension was by way of unequal-length A-arms, coil springs, hydraulic tube shock absorbers and an anti-roll bar. Rear suspension was via an independent swing axle arrangement, shock absorbers, diagonal trailing arm with coil springs and a leaf spring camber compensator. Stopping power was supplied by a ventilated discs up front and drums at the rear. Gear changes were by a manual four-speed box.

The Bellet is a fantastic and fierce little car, providing snappy, terrier-like performance for a fraction of the cost of a contemporary Alfa Romeo. Both Vernis and Brinker added a GT-R to their collection, and this chapter of A Quiet Greatness includes informed buyer tips to help you add one to yours. 1400 Bellet GT-Rs were built, but clones are very common; to correctly identify a genuine car, ask for copies of its Shaken (inspection) papers, and look for the correct “Number for Designation of Type” and “Classification number” of 02116 and 0004, respectively.

This kind of hard-earned knowledge is what elevates A Quiet Greatness from a pretty coffee-table display piece to authoritative work. Both Vernis and Brinker are serious collectors of these cars, one from a sense of automotive passion, the other from an obsession with finding and rescuing lost and overlooked cars. The overlap of the Venn diagram is in the delight of the hunt to uncover and enjoy something unique. In Japanese terms, both authors would be considered otaku, consumed by their interests.

That passion for Japanese cars is infectious, and it has taken root in the collector community as a whole. The evidence is right there in rising values: sensing a potential change coming, Brinker added a Subaru 22B to his collection just as the car was cresting the six figure mark. He bought the car to drive, not as an investment, but with prices above $300,000, with the potential to climb, it’s another sign that Japanese cars have joined the best from Europe and America in desirability.

But there are still bargains to be had—Vernis notes the rarity and value of his two coachbuilt Autech Stelvio Zagato coupes (page 928). Poring through the pages of A Quiet Greatness will help you uncover them.

Alternatively, should your car collection run to an interesting daily driver and a fleet of digital exotica on your Playstation, this book set can still be something of a collector item in and of itself. Priced at $350 plus shipping, more than half the run are already sold, and Vernis notes that many of the buyers are younger people. The sun has risen. Japanese collector cars are here to stay. A Quiet Greatness is the first book to properly treat these cars with the veneration they deserve. It is thoroughly worth putting it on your wishlist.

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In November of 2020, I joined the rotary club.

It was a product of timing, really. What the classic car market giveth with one hand, it taketh away with the other. Like most enthusiasts I’ve grown up surrounded by cars, waiting patiently for the moment a dream car from childhood would depreciate enough to perfectly intersect with my budget at a given stage in life.

Antony Ingram the Assistant Editor for Hagerty UK. He was once given a Toyota Paseo for free, but soon came to appreciate that the best things in life aren’t free, and promptly bought the Mazda RX-7 you see here.

It was tantalizing watching the values fall in the 2000s, seeing Honda NSXs pop up for £15,000 and Renault Sport Clio V6s dip lower than you’d pay for a half-decent Clio Trophy these days. Then, they began climbing again just as reality began to dawn: I wasn’t even close to having enough disposable income to buy one, let alone enough to then maintain the car after purchase. Values and budget never intersected; one curve merely followed the other, and my frustration grew.

Soon there was just one car left that fit my criteria—one last Japanese icon from the “bubble era” that seemed achievable. A car that could hold its own with NSXs and Nissan Skylines: the Mazda FD-generation RX-7 (1992–2002). Of course, even these early ’90s RX-7s were rising in value as enthusiasts clamored for the remaining examples. The clock was running.

I’ve had a fondness for Mazdas since buying my first MX-5 (Miata) back in 2009. That was a car I acquired mostly because it was an inexpensive way into something with rear-wheel drive, and it had double the power of the Fiesta it was replacing.

The MX-5’s Mazda RX-7 big brother though had always been out of reach. In 2021 money it translated to around £70,000 when new, and was never something that could be run—like the MX-5—on a relative shoestring. Moreover, most examples that cropped up for sale were (usually tastelessly) modified. Given the “FD” RX-7’s needy reputation—it turns out sequentially-turbocharged rotary engines require plenty of maintenance, who knew?—taking on someone else’s project, however affordable, seemed wholly unwise.

I’d kept a beady eye on values then, assuming that like every other car on “the list” it would soon become unattainable. What I did not expect was a car to fall basically into my lap when I’d all but lost hope.

In one of the rare breaks between 2020 pandemic lockdowns here in the U.K., I’d flown to Germany for a Mazda 100th anniversary event, at which several of the company’s past masters were available to drive. A red 1994 Mazda RX-7 was on the list, one of Mazda U.K.’s collection. Since I’d driven it at a previous event I concentrated on other cars: a rare 929 coupe, a 10th Anniversary MX-5, a second-generation RX-7 convertible.

Then I caught wind of a rumor that one of these Mazdas was for sale. My ears pricked up: Cars as original as those in manufacturer heritage fleets are rare on the open market, making them canny buys. I’d assumed that it would be one of the MX-5s (having sold my last one a few years ago, I was already itching for another), or perhaps the V-6-engined MX-3 I’d actually tried to buy three or four years prior. A quick chat with the right person at Mazda revealed it was actually the red RX-7. The suggested price was one I genuinely couldn’t refuse. I offered to buy it on the spot.

I’ll admit to some nerves when finally arranging to pick the car up, last December. These cars do have a capital-R “Reputation”, and a preliminary test drive had revealed a few things that need attention. Things, I’d add, reflected in the asking price. The car appears to be bypassing the second turbocharger, with little extra power apparent over 4500 rpm, so that’s probably job number one. At least parts should be easy to come by.

But broadly, it drives as cleanly as its blissfully standard appearance would infer and, for the first time, my garage is occupied by a genuine dream car. Now I just need my budget to intersect with its thirst for fuel and oil. If you own an RX-7, or indeed any rotary, do share your experiences in the comments, below. For an inkling of how my first year of RX-7 ownership went, read my diary entries:

April 12, 2021: Charging around

I knew what I was getting into when I bought an RX-7, but when the clouds finally dispersed long enough for dry, salt-free roads late in February, it was nevertheless still disappointing to excitedly turn the key to the sound of … absolutely nothing at all. Nada. Not even the click of a starter solenoid drawing those final few electrons.

It was of course a flat battery. The last time I’d driven the car was on New Year’s Day, and in a fit of optimism I’d avoided disconnecting the battery assuming that, at some point over the course of early 2021, there’d be a clear, dry weekend on which to give the car a lockdown-friendly but vital fluid-circulating spin.

The Mazda had lulled me into a false sense of security though, because each time I’d popped into the garage—a spot of cleaning here, some idle staring at Hiroshima’s bubble-era beauty there—the immobilizer light had been glinting brightly from the interior, suggesting all was well.

This isn’t my first rodeo though and I’ve had a battery charger and conditioner lying around the garage for years, ready to dispense the elixir of carefully-managed electricity to large, useless lumps of lead-acid. It took a couple of days to bring it back from the brink and then I let it run a top-up program until the following weekend. A blinking green light signaled success.

And wouldn’t you know it, the immobilizer deactivated, the car started up, and the only sign something was amiss was the string of zeroes on the trip computer. A celebratory but unspectacular drive followed just to check everything was A-okay, along with a distressingly expensive top-up of the 76-liter tank.

With the weather picking up I’ve been able to go for a few more drives since. It’ll take a trackday or a good drive on roads more spectacular than Northamptonshire can offer to really get under its skin, but I feel like I’m beginning to peel back the RX-7’s layers.

It’s capable in the corners for a start; tiny dimensions (it’s smaller in length, width and height than a 987 Porsche Cayman), modest weight (1310 kg, says the brochure, so also lighter than a Cayman) and fairly meaty tires (225 section on 16-inch wheels) seem to bond it to the road in a way I’ve not experienced in cars of a similar vintage.

The control weights are spot-on too and the smoothness of that engine—even though it needs some attention to deliver its full output (more on that at a later date)—give it a feeling of integrity that’s unexpected given the reputation of rotary cars for being a bit flaky. I’m often wary of driving hero cars, let alone owning them, but so far the RX-7 is more than living up to expectations. When the battery isn’t flat, anyway.

July 20, 2021: No, it didn’t blow up

I now own two cars with which I feel the need to qualify their existence upon introduction. The first was my Toyota Paseo daily driver, perhaps the most unexceptional of the 1990s coupe offerings. Its unloved status, plus its slightly rough condition with peeling lacquer and a now quite rusty dent in one door, means I feel obliged to introduce its presence in my life with “I got it for free.”

The Mazda though needs its own qualifier as, for the past month, the car has undergone an engine rebuild. I knew it was coming, and you probably knew it was coming, but it’s what you might call a preventative measure.

A compression test back in May suggested the infamous rotor tip seals weren’t long for this world. Since I’d budgeted for this kind of work when buying the car—despite my excitement, I did go into this purchase with eyes wide open—I figured there was no time like the present and booked the car in to HME Rotary in Coventry for the job that all rotary-engined cars will one day undergo.

It was a job even finding a specialist who’d work on an RX-7, with most concentrating on the more affordable and much more numerous RX-8, but HME stood out for its long experience with Wankel engines, stretching back to the 1970s. Given the company has tackled everything from the expected RX-7s to the vanishingly rare Citroën GS Bitrotor and Suzuki RE-5 motorcycle, Mick Hurley and his team seemed like a safe bet.

Along with the rebuild, it’d be a chance to investigate and perhaps solve some of the other issues I’d experienced in recent months, such as a lack of boost at high revs, some stuttering under load, and most recently, an increasingly recalcitrant starter motor.

With the engine out of the car and on the bench, Hurley quickly identified some of the issues. Thankfully, the turbos themselves appear to be fine—the car only ever smoked a little at idle, so I figured as much—and the boost issues seem instead to have been a result of numerous collapsed, split, crusty or melted pipes in the car’s underbonnet “rat’s nest.”

The coil was effectively toasted too, and that’s been replaced, along with the spark plugs and HT leads. New-old stock starter motors are basically unavailable now—predictably, they’re not shared with any more humdrum Mazda—so a reconditioned one went in instead, while a bunch of other ancillaries and of course new fluids should keep the car operating as it should until the next service.

As I type, the car is currently within the first 500 miles of its running-in period before an oil change, and I’m limited to an excruciatingly low 4000 rpm for a thousand miles after that. I’ll reserve judgement on the improvements until the next update then—provided I’ve covered enough miles—but in the meantime, I’ll just have to keep everyone informed that it didn’t actually blow up …

March 1, 2022: A thousand down, five hundred to go

Whatever your car revs to, half it. Then imagine what it would be like sticking to those revs for the next seven or eight months, and you’ll have some idea of the frustration of the Mazda’s running-in period, following its engine rebuild.

With an engine that will happily spin well past its 7000 rpm red line, and whose power band only starts in earnest at around 2500 rpm, the result is a car that needs miles adding as quickly as possible so I can experience its full potential, but also one that hasn’t actually been a great deal of fun to own since July last year.

The RX-7 is still perfectly drivable below 4000 rpm of course, and given its gearing, would still—where the law allows, as brochures used to say—hit 100 mph or so in top.

But given it’s happiest above 2500 rpm (in more ways than one—more on that in a sec), being limited to 4000 rpm means an effective window of drivebility of only about 1500 rpm. Even my daily-driven diesel Smart allows a useful range 500 rpm wider than that.

It can get through that 1500 rpm pretty quickly, so getting up to speed feels like going through a 12-speed gearbox in a truck. Brrrr-gear-brrrr-gear-brrrr-gear-brrrr-gear … oh, already at the speed limit are we?

2021’s fuel shortage and subsequent spike in prices hasn’t helped the motivation for driving, and nor has winter. Sticking a hundred quid in the tank to go maybe 300 miles stings a bit, and while the RX-7’s thirst doesn’t bother me per se—I’m unlikely to do more than a few thousand miles per year in it—running-in miles aren’t exactly fun miles. Likewise, while I’m trying not to be too precious about bad weather, I’d at least like to enjoy the thing if it’s going to rot away in the salt.

It’s all just part of the game, of course. And slowly but surely I’ve been ticking off the distance, on dry weekends, or when my wallet’s been having things just a bit too easy.

The first 500 passed between July’s rebuild and December, when HME Rotary took the car back for a quick checkup, oil change and idle adjustment. I’ve done another 600 or so since, so just 400 more to go before another oil change service at HME.

At the same time, I’ll get them to investigate the issue I hinted at earlier. Below the engine’s sweet spot, and under higher load, such as up a motorway incline, the engine will intermittently stutter, as if it’s not getting quite enough fuel. A downshift and a rev seems to clear it quickly. Part of me suspects throttle position sensor (old electronics can be flaky), or perhaps something as simple as a clogged fuel filter.

Either way, it needs sorting, so the next 400 miles can’t come soon enough. There’s half of the rev counter still waiting to be explored…

October 25, 2022: So here’s the thing…

It’s been nearly eight months since I last wrote about the RX-7. Predictably, there is a reason for this.

The good news is, the running-in process went without a hitch. Well, I assume it did, because in June, at nearly 1500 miles on the dot, I drove through the gates at HME Rotary in Coventry for its post-running-in service, and I’ve not so much as sat in the driver’s seat since.

It relates, in a long-winded way, to the car’s MOT test, carried out while it was in HME’s care. Unfortunately, the car failed. One thing was easily fixed, the other cluster of things not so much.

The easy fix—albeit not a cheap one—was a new catalytic converter, as the Mazda failed its emissions test. Given what rotaries kick out I’m guessing it’d had a hard life, and with the last 1500 miles run at fairly low revs, it hadn’t really had a good blow-through in at least a year either.

Wallet relieved of the better part of 800 quid for a new cat and a few other attention areas, the bigger issue was several failure marks on corrosion. I’d say that the British weather had finally caught up to it after all these years, but I think it’s been there before, as the MOT tester and HME found evidence of previous slapdash repairs, and these were as much at fault as Mazda’s own factory handiwork.

HME laid things bare: I could have everything just patched up again, but the car would probably need some proper metalwork at some stage anyway—so they advised me to start hunting for bodyshops.

This turned into its own heart-stopping palaver, as restoration specialists are apparently in some demand right now. One place suggested by a couple of acquaintances feigned interest and then went completely quiet, and another apologized for being busy, suggesting they could only fit the car in by summer 2023 … a whole year away at the time.

Before the palpitations really started, another nearby specialist finally got back in touch and could take the car in just a couple of weeks. Duly booked—after spending several hundred pounds more to put the car on a trailer, have it stored for a week, and then dropped off at the bodyshop—it’s been there ever since.

I won’t reveal just yet who is doing the work—that can wait until the car is back on its wheels—though the shots I’ve seen so far are very promising indeed. There was some quite significant corrosion, and with each photo they send through, it’s being replaced by clean, treated, and carefully painted metal.

That’s just as well given how much it’s already cost, but those of you who’ve had cars professionally restored in the past will appreciate just how excruciating those numbers can be, and why I’ll probably refrain from breaking down the bill until such a time as I finally sell the thing …

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it.

Via Hagerty UK

The post My 1994 Mazda RX-7 has been a mix of pleasure and pain appeared first on Hagerty Media.

We try very hard around here to explain why certain cars are worth what they are. Provenance, condition, and rarity all have roles to play, as do buyer demographics and economic externalities. Lost in all that, though, is a simpler explanation: Some cars become darlings of the collector-car market because they’re a hoot to drive. Or at least, because people think they are. Noted economists and sociologists who study this phenomenon have labeled it “The 1990s Japanese Car Effect.”

That last part is in jest, of course, but only a little. Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) cars have never, ever been hotter. The demand, in large part, comes from Gen-Xers and millennials who have spent countless hours “driving” these cars in video games and watching others describe how brilliant they are on YouTube. Japanese automakers in the 1990s, so the theory goes, found the sweet spot between modern capability and an old-school, analog experience.

That got us asking the age-old question: Does the driving experience truly match the hype? Matthew Ivanhoe, noted collector in his own right and owner/operator of The Cultivated Collector in New Canaan, Connecticut, helped us pursue the answer by offering time behind the wheel of a triad of Bring a Trailer–bound 1990s Japanese classics that represent the very apex of the segment: a 1994 Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec II N1, a 1996 Honda Integra Type R, and a Honda NSX-R.

Godzilla is polite

Before going much further, a note about me: As an obsessive enthusiast of everything wearing four wheels, I respect Japan’s legends and their impact on car culture … but I don’t crave ’em. The Japanese car bug shot over my millennial head like a thousand-horse, single-turbo Supra. I was in no danger of being let down by any of these cars, nor did I feel beholden to affirming any mythical attribute of a given chassis.

Nevertheless, getting a crack at this particular breed of Godzilla did make it a little hard to check emotions at the door. Ivanhoe’s blindingly white GT-R is hardly one of the thousands of “ordinary” R32-gen Skylines already clogging your local cars and coffee. It’s one of just 63 V-Spec II N1s created for component homologation in Japan’s namesake N1 race series, and is easily one of the most sought-after variants of the Nissan GT-R. This was the production car that directly led to the R32’s outright dominance of nearly every motorsports series in which it competed.

No surprise, the N1 is among the most valuable of GT-Rs, and the delta between it and the rest is widening. Where the value of the average R32-generation GT-R rose a strong 18 percent in our latest update to the Hagerty Price Guide, the N1 went atomic with a neat 100 percent increase over our previous iteration. An average (condition #3) R32 N1 goes for $200,000; top-condition (#1) examples like Ivanhoe’s 7800 km car are nearing the half-million mark.

Under Nismo’s lightweight, aluminum front hood resides the main attraction. The 2.6-liter twin-turbo RB26DETT inline-six is in hand-built, blueprinted “N1” spec, carrying N1-specific block, internals, and turbocharger, with the remaining hardware pulled from the Nismo-spec R32 GT-R. These modifications were made in the name of durability, and Nissan adhered, at least on paper, to the 276-hp limit from Ye Olde Japanese Manufacturer’s Gentleman’s Agreement. So, the official power output remains unchanged from garden-variety GT-Rs. Nevertheless, an R32 N1 with a simple exhaust-mod is reputed to put down just over 404 hp at the wheels.

The rest of the N1 is best represented in what’s not there. ABS was left on the shelf, as was sound system, air-conditioning, and rear wiper. Every N1 arrived with whisper-thin white paint, ostensibly saving some 66 pounds in the process. Later N1s like this one came in V-spec—V as in “victory”—guise, incorporating Brembo brakes, special BBS wheels, and a revised version of its four-wheel steering system. V-Spec II represents the final iteration, with slightly wider wheels.

In contrast to its status as a souped-up, stripped-out homologation special, the N1 idles under the summer sun with all the ferocity of a modern hot hatch. YouTube and Instagram overflow with clips of shrieking R32-R34 GT-Rs, most tuned to two, three, or even four times the stated factory horsepower. It’s almost unnerving to hear the N1’s special RB sound so corked.

Despite its movie-monster nickname, the N1 is incredibly confidence-inspiring. Aside from the right-hand-drive configuration, this is one of the tamest, most approachable homologation performance cars on the planet. The R32 N1 scoots around like a heavy Mitsubishi Evo with the heart of a modern M3. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it feels exactly like the analog, mechanical predecessor to the R35 GT-R that it is.

And like the current generation of Godzilla, it’s almost prosaic in its composure. On tight, stone-lined roads weaving through suburban Connecticut, the N1 claws through corners and undramatically presses into superlegal speeds. It’s quick, quiet, accessible—and in some ways forgettable. It’s analog in the way all cars from this era are, but not without a surprising overlay of modernity.

That’s the problem with separating a holotype from the genre it revolutionized. Frank Herbert’s Dune reads exactly like a generic political sci-fi novel unless one understands the literary landscape just prior to its publishing: It created the sci-fi tropes it appears to be regurgitating. In its day, nothing gripped or ripped like the R32 GT-R. Today, a Porsche Cayenne Turbo will perform many of the same tricks, propped-up by technologies pioneered in part by the GT-R.

Shaking a wasps' nest

If the N1 feels milled from a single block of aerospace aluminum, Ivanhoe’s 1996 Honda Integra Type-R is a bundle of thoroughly shaken wasp nests. Swapping mid-route from a heavy-ish, all-wheel-drive, turbo missile into a naturally aspirated, front-wheel drive buzzbox is akin to slipping from a sauna into a frozen pond.

Any enthusiast with a passing interest in Japanese metal from the ’90s knows this car’s tale—the merits of our USDM Acura Integra Type R are canonical at this point—but it’s worth revisiting.

Honda’s stripped-down, peaked-out super-compact is often labeled as the best-handling front-wheel-drive car of all time, thanks to careful engineering gleaned from Honda’s successful race cars. Comprehensive chassis upgrades significantly improved rigidity; stripping insulation and lightening other bits—even the floormats—shaved 93 pounds. The 1.8-liter B18C four-cylinder is easily one of the best four-pots ever produced, with a strong 195-hp peak against an 8700-rpm redline.

This isn't my first time in an ITR. A couple of years back, I had extended seat time on Angeles Crest Highway above L.A. with a museum-grade USDM Integra Type R pulled from Honda’s own archive. I walked away impressed but confused. At around $80,000 in today’s market in that condition, I couldn’t quite get a handle on the American ITR’s dollars-per-grin ratio.

Ivanhoe’s white JDM ITR shook this perspective. Wearing around 24,000 kilometers as of the time of my short drive, it was just as well-preserved as the archival USDM ITR, only this car sported some JDM-dedicated OEM improvements as well as choice Mugen parts that tightened my headscrews in the best possible way.

Consider this car the opposite of a sensory deprivation tank. The tight, hyper-intuitive shifter is a joy to snap-shift right at the 8700-rpm redline. Inputs—most notably the steering—are richly communicative. Like the GT-R, the engine is the keystone but in a very, very different way. The engine crescendos swiftly and sweetly to the limit, with VTEC engaging somewhere around the 6000-rpm mark, rewarding deep throttle operation. It positively screams.

I acquiesce—this is a very, very special car. Yet there's a reason a short drive in Ivanhoe’s previously verboten Integra zapped my soul harder than my Angeles rip in a USDM ITR: The imported Honda is better. JDM ITRs have higher compression than their USDM counterparts and wear a different header and a less restrictive exhaust system. The JDM ITR’s final-drive ratio is higher, too, and you get far better seats and a thinner, sportier three-spoke steering wheel. Here’s the best part—JDM ITRs are notably cheaper than the cheeseburger counterpart, because supply is significantly higher for right hand-drive versions.

Pick one: $10,000 to $15,000 extra in your pocket, or the ability to efficiently use fast food drive-thrus. I’d unplug that morphine drip of nostalgia and buy the better, cooler, and more affordable car.

The best Japanese driver's car

I’m afraid I cannot extend the same advice to the third and final JDM goliath, the NSX-R, as both supply and affordability are best discussed “on request.” We’d love to present a platter of valuation data here, but there’s a stunning lack of reference sales from which to draw. Back in 2019, BH Auctions in Japan offered two, one selling for $447,000 and the other for $285,000. But that was before the latest market rush, and it was a Japanese auction. When Ivanhoe’s Brooklands Green 1993 Honda NSX-R lands on BaT in the near future, we believe it will be the first time an NSX-R has come up for public auction in the western hemisphere.

Despite missing a "Type" in the name, the "R" treatment here was similar to that for the Integra Type-R, except of course, that Acura was starting with an NSX. Sound deadening, spare tire, air-conditioning, sound system, and traction control were all scrapped. Fixed-back, carbon-Kevlar race buckets and featherweight Enkei wheels replace the standard leather chairs and aluminum rims. All this Slim Fast nixes 265 pounds from the final weigh-in, cutting the final tally to an eggshell 2710 pounds.

Honda chucked the entire base suspension for the NSX-R, substituting stiffer sway bars, bushings, springs, and dampers. A higher final-drive ratio provides stronger acceleration, and a new, locking limited-slip differential plays nice with a balanced and blueprinted version of the standard C30A 3.0-liter naturally aspirated V-6.

The result is one of the most rewarding methods to burn gas, ever. It's a crystallization of balance, capability, sensation, and speed unlike anything made in the past decade. In sharp contrast to the N1, there’s no homework required to contextualize the NSX-R outside of what it offers as an immediate experience. From the weight and pick-up of the clutch, to the shift motion, to the brake balance and pedal pressure, to the throttle actuation, to the steering weight—every tactile point integrates you with the car.

The drivetrain is surprisingly the least remarkable aspect, but only because everything else is so exceptional. The 3.0-liter V-6 does its best snorting, screaming big-sibling version of the ITR’s underhood pipebomb, that intoxicating intake rush lancing through the unmuffled cabin. Pace is not significantly changed over that of the production NSX, but it’s edgier, sharper. It surges forward and crashes over bumps, playing the telltale soundtrack of pinging pebbles and clattery clutch. It’s absolutely symphonic.

Some of what I've said here likely has you heated. And why not? I'm casting rough judgement on cars that have consumed every neuron of your car-brain for the past 30 years. This nostalgia-free approach is my whole point. Japanese cars of the 1990s and early 2000s—both JDM and USDM—started out for many of us as video game renderings, and now they're fast becoming assets; but at the end of the day, they're still just cars and the collectors snapping them up are still just people, with widely varying and entirely subjective definitions of what feels good and what doesn't. If you're one of those people, do yourself a favor: Chase after your Japanese passion-car, but go drive it with eyes wide open before signing the check. It's the best way to save yourself some potential heartache.

The post Do these 3 ’90s Japanese heroes live up to the video-game hype? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Last week, bidders on Bring a Trailer had an extraordinarily rare crack at a 17,000-mile 1994 Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec N1, a car that is considered one of the most desirable Japanese cars ever made, full stop. Internal discussions amongst both the Insider and Valuation teams had this as a no-sale at anything under the $250,000 mark, with estimates reaching beyond $300,000. Bidding stalled out at $141,000.

A sign of a cooling market, perhaps?

Nope. Five days later, a far, far more commonplace 22,000-mile 1994 Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo sold easily for $140,000.

As if that weren’t nonsensical enough, note that a week prior to that, a 29,000-mile naturally aspirated 1994 Nissan 300ZX in similar condition to the TT changed hands for $21,525. That’s a $60,000 premium paid per turbocharger, or about twice the gap we’d expect to see based on Hagerty Price Guide values. At the same time, the bell rung at $110,000 for a 5000-mile 1993 Mazda RX-7. On the same day as the TT closed, an automatic, targa-topped 1997 Toyota Supra Turbo closed at $235,000.

If you’re looking for us to present charts and data that rationalize why these sorts of sales are happening, no dice. We’re as confused as you. Instead, chalk up these sales as further evidence that the market for 1990s Japanese performance cars is no longer rational.

Let’s start with that 300ZX. $140,000 paid for a 300ZX Twin Turbo of any condition is overbought by our book, blitzing past our valuation for an example in Hagerty Price Guide #1 (Concours) condition by $65,700. From a spreadsheet standard, it’s certainly not worth almost $120,000 more than the #2 (Excellent) non-turbo 1994 300ZX that sold just two days prior. A carbon-copy of this 300ZX TT with just 1000 more miles sold for a much more reasonable $57,435 back in May. Yes, the market is moving fast right now, but it’s not moving that fast.

The same goes for the Supra. The selling price is some eighty grand more than our price guide’s value for a 1997 Supra Turbo in excellent (#2) condition. Oh, and that valuation is for a manual transmission car—autos typically go for twenty five percent less. We’ll save you the effort of whipping out your calculator and tell you the car sold for double what we’d expect. This car’s rare combination of Royal Sapphire Pearl over Ivory leather does presumably boost this a bit, but not by a factor of two. A week prior to this sale, a one-owner white, automatic 1998 Supra Turbo targa with fewer miles attracted $147,500—still a big price, but one that at least correlates to the market.

These outlier sales are wild—and are starting to make things tricky. While there have been meteoric spikes in areas of the Japanese collector car space—the N1’s 100-percent quarterly boost is a topical place to start—both the Supra and the 300ZX Twin Turbo are established, mature Japanese staples. We shouldn’t be seeing this kind of growth, and we’re not. We don’t think, at least.

Let’s step back to the no-sale Skyline. As far as we can tell, this is the first R32 N1 already imported to the U.S. offered at public auction, the precious few previous public sales on-record occurring mostly either in Japan or Australia. Only 64 V-Spec I N1s were ever made, each a bona-fide homologation special aimed at re-populating the starting grid of the namesake “N1” racing series. It’s lighter, quicker, and impressively honed when compared with the standard production R32 GT-R; as example of its asceticism, each N1 wore a feathery, ultra-thin coat of white paint that scraped an incredible 66 pounds from the final tally.

Short of a 400R, the tiny cluster of N1s produced across the R32, R33, and R34 generations sit at the zenith of the GT-R market, and in-turn near the very apogee of the Japanese collector market as a whole. Our data shows values of standard 1989–1994 R32s are boiling over with an 18 percent rise for our most recent quarterly update to the Hagerty Price Guide. The N1 has increased by a stunning 100 percent. We have first-hand reports of clean ones claiming well over $300,000 off-market, and one N1 is currently fielding offers that approach its $600,000 asking price. As long as a reserve was (smartly) in place, we reckoned Bring a Trailer’s N1 was never going to sell for anything below $200,000 in the current market.

But then, what is the current market? When things are moving so fast, that can be hard to pin down. Consider that the “low-ball” $141,000 high bid would have been perfectly reasonable back in January, when our Price Guide pegged a concours-condition car at $197,000 and an excellent example at $119,000. Turn the clock back to September 2021, and the same money might have been considered generous.

Of course, inexplicable sales and no-sales have always been part of the auctions game. All it takes for a ridiculously high number are two highly motivated bidders.

The turbo 300ZX buyer, “Nirvana,” admits they weren’t going to let this one go after losing the prior concours-grade 300ZX sold back in May. “This was one of my childhood dream cars,” they wrote. “This completes my Japanese collection. Red NSX, red RX-7, red 280ZX, and red 300ZX. I’m not big on Supras…” The RX-7 and Supra had some distinguishing features that might excite a deep-pocketed bidder: rare paint and interior combo for the Toyota and ultra-low miles for the Mazda. The GT-R, for its part, simply could have caught the market at the wrong moment. With such tiny production figures and such a high valuation, the amount of interested collectors moneyed enough to play in this space is sparse.

No individual sale makes or breaks a car’s value—that’s why we’re all about data around here. And if the winning bidders are happy with their new-to-them rides, then we’re happy for them. Yet such outliers call attention to the messiness of the market for Japanese sports cars. After 18 months of wild appreciation, it seems some bidders no longer know (or care) how much is too much.

The post The ’90s Japanese performance-car market is no longer rational appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Stanley Paine knew what he had.

“When I originally got involved … I did my homework. We were excited.” he said. “Nobody gets 13 Supras.”

His eponymous company, Stanley J. Paine Auctioneers, handles repossessed property for many district attorney offices in the state of Massachusetts, and in that context landed 29 sports cars that had been seized from an alleged drug dealer in 2020. They included the baker’s dozen of Mark IV Supras, all but one of which were Turbos. The lowest-mileage of the bunch brought $304,750, including buyer’s fees.

The price alone merits our Sale of the Week crown. It’s 60 percent beyond the Hagerty Price Guide’s condition #1 (Concours) value for Supra Turbos and may well be a record for the model if one doesn’t include the modded Fast & Furious stunt car that Barrett-Jackson sold last year for $550,000.

The price is all the more remarkable because the car in question arguably isn’t. No question, it looks really nice: a Supra Turbo with a six-speed manual and just 22,962 miles showing on the odometer. But we’ve seen Supras with lower miles, including a Turbo that sold on Bring a Trailer last July for “just” $211,050.

Credit, among other things, the ballistic speed with which 1990s classics, Supras chief among them, are picking up in value. When we featured the Mark IV Supra in our 2018 Bull Market list, we wagered an Excellent (condition #2) example would cost you about $65,000. In 2019, we nearly lost our minds when RM Sotheby’s sold an 11,200-mile Supra for $173,000. Since then, prices have only continued to climb—our price guide has moved them up more than 40 percent in the last twelve months. And now, this.

Also at work here is the power of the internet and a seller smart enough to leverage it. We often talk about online classic-car sales in the context of the big online-only platforms, particularly Bring a Trailer. Yet the truth is that nearly every one who sells cars these days does so online, be it through a Facebook Marketplace listing, an Instagram photoshoot, or a walk-around on YouTube.

In this case, Paine took to key Facebook groups and forums, targeting the Supra superfans who could help get the word out.

“Social media made this auction,” Paine said.

The cars’ illicit origins certainly didn’t hurt, attracting coverage on FoxNews. By the time the auction rolled around, Paine said he had more than 900 registered online bidders—who were required to deposit 25 percent of their expected maximum bid as a show of intent—along with 60 on site. And so an auction company that more commonly deals in homes now holds the record for the most expensive Supra in the world. For now, at least.

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“There goes my wheel,” I thought matter-of-factly as I watched my left front wheel bound away from me like an excited kangaroo. My hub flange failed mid-corner while I was racing my 2000 Miata at Mid Ohio in October 2020, ending my race and beginning my search for a better hub solution.

I was fortunate that my only injury was to my wallet. Still, the failure highlighted a deeper issue with seemingly common parts for Japanese cars—the good stuff is increasingly hard to come by. OEM hubs for Miatas have long since become difficult, if not impossible to find, so the next-best option is to go with a top-tier manufacturer that supplies OEMs. Yet this “first-rate” replacement failed after just a couple race weekends, due to the inherently looser tolerances of a non-OEM part.

It’s not just hubs, and it’s not just Miatas. Getting a quality part for a Japanese car used to be as simple as walking up to the parts counter at your local dealer or parts store (or clicking on the tuning shop in Gran Turismo). These days, finding OEM or equivalent-quality replacement parts, or that perfect ‘90s-era mod can take a bit of sleuthing.

“It’s surprising how much everything costs to restore these cars to stock, and how hard it can be to hunt down these parts,” said Kenji Sumino, President of Greddy Performance Products, and longtime industry veteran.

One need look no further than Skyline GT-R parts to see what Sumino is talking about: It’s not unusual to see a pair of genuine NISMO R32 mass airflow sensors listed at $1900. New door cards can cost as much as $4000, and NISMO steering wheels can fetch as much as $3000.

A couple of factors conspired to create this challenge. Set aside supply chain issues and other pandemic-related problems for a moment and consider one of the biggest elements: These cars were used heavily as intended.

Japanese marques offered durable, affordable entries into the sports car world, and owners put them to work—whether at the drag strip in a Mk IV Supra, a road course in a Miata, or anything in between. It should come as no surprise, then, that these cars experienced a bit more abuse than your average Porsche, Lotus, or Ferrari, and went through a lot of replacement parts over the last two decades.

Manufacturers support their older models to varying degrees—some have a set time when they stop producing parts for a given vehicle while others will continue to supply parts as long as there is demand. On the whole, though, the inventory of OEM parts to maintain these now 20+ year-old well-used vehicles has dwindled, and limited supply has driven up costs up for what parts remain.

Another critical factor is the massive tuner culture that surrounds these cars. Video games, movie franchises, and an uptake across a variety of motorsports had outsize influence on Japanese car enthusiasts, prompting many to modify these cars extensively. There was no forethought for preserving these cars because they were comparatively affordable—almost no one was thinking about a future containing $300,000 Skyline GT-Rs or a $100,000 Integra Type R back in 2001. The impact of the modding craze in the 1990s and 2000s is twofold: first, it is driving demand for OEM parts as people seek to return cars to original condition. Second, vintage-correct modification is more accepted within this collector community, meaning rare aftermarket parts also command a premium.

Last but not least, there’s the trickle-down impact from the rising values of Japanese enthusiast cars. “The uptick in value is due to the cars themselves,” said Sumino.

That is obviously the case for top-tier cars like the Nissan Skyline GT-R. As these have become six-figure cars, collectors on both sides of the Pacific have hunted down factory-correct components—often to extinction. For more common cars like the Miata, there’s another factor: As the cars become more valuable, fewer are finding their way to the scrapyard. That’s a good thing, of course, but it means a major source of affordable second-hand parts are drying up.

If rising values for these cars has helped create the parts shortage, it’s also convincing people that it’s worth their while to find solutions. That includes OEMs in Japan. Honda, Mazda, Nissan’s NISMO division, and Toyota by way of Gazoo Racing all have parts programs for heritage cars.

Yet these catalogs remain somewhat limited. According to Katsu Takahashi, co-founder of Built by Legends, a company offering complete restomods of iconic tuner cars, Japanese OEMs are at the very early stages of this process compared to their European counterparts. Many parts are expensive to reproduce and automakers continue to weigh whether there is enough of a market to justify a new production run. For instance, Toyota’s catalogue supports the Supra, 2000GT, Trueno, and Land Cruiser. If you have a Sera or a Celica, you’re out of luck for the time being. Mazda Japan currently supports the MX-5 and RX-7 with a limited parts list, while Mazda USA carries a healthy supply of parts for the MX-5 but does not stock RX-7 components. Nissan tells us there is “talk” of expanding support for other cars, such as the Z.

Full refresh and restoration plans offered by NISMO and Honda for their top tier cars such as the GT-R and NSX are another way OEMs support their heritage cars. However, these command hefty premiums—a “new” restored R32 can come close to $400,000 and waiting lists can stretch out over a couple years. Mazda offers a similar program within Japan for its MX-5, albeit at a slightly more affordable cost of just under $50,000.

The strong enthusiast culture around Japanese cars has always relied not only on manufacturers but on a hugely popular tuner ecosystem. In a time where parts are becoming harder to find, this additional layer of support may prove key to preserving these freshly-considered classics.

“As a result of the resurgence of demand, Greddy has brought back some items that were discontinued long ago,” said Sumino.

If you are a Japanese car enthusiast, Greddy is a familiar name. The aftermarket parts supplier and parts importer has been a critical source for tuners across the globe for decades, and Sumino has been with the company since 1995. He’s seen firsthand industry trends come, go, and return again. He says Greddy is stocking a lot of products for Skyline GT-Rs, in large part to serve a new audience in the United States, and has also seen an uptick in interest in products for Nissan’s 300ZX and the Mazda RX-7.

In addition to people pursuing dream cars of their youth, Sumino sees another factor driving demand: “There aren’t that many new cars for enthusiasts, so people are going back to ’90s cars and enjoying them.” He added that many of Greddy’s top-selling items are for older cars, even though they have many offerings for new cars, too.

“It’s a little bit like American hot rod culture,” Sumino said. He indicated that original-condition cars are retaining the most value, but work done by known tuning shops or tasteful modifications would not devalue the car significantly, or at all. “Like with American muscle cars, the restomod movement is strong in the Japanese market,” he shared. Top-tier shops, like Takahashi’s Built by Legends, offer complete restomods of iconic tuner cars.

Sometimes the used marketplace is the only option for those obscure aftermarket parts you’re after. If you want that special part to impress your friends at the next car meet, head over to Instagram. There you’ll find users like s_jerin or gtr_europe, who trade in motorsports jackets, steering wheels, transmission gears, or anything you can imagine for your JDM classic. These two sellers primarily list GT-R-related items, but they and others like them are an excellent source for unique finishing touches to set your ride apart. Be prepared for the price tag, though—many, if not most of the items listed are out of production and unlikely to make a return.

What about those of us who race these vintage Japanese cars? As I discovered first-hand, the stresses of the track—exacerbated by tires with increased grip—can torment a sub-standard replacement part. Visit any SCCA or NASA race weekend across the country and you are bound to see a fleet of older Miatas, several RX-7s, and a swath of different Hondas, all of them voraciously consuming everything from ball joints to clutches much faster than street cars.

For my hubs, at least, there’s a solution. Justin Lee and Jeff Preston of MiataHubs have been racing Miatas for years and experienced multiple failures along the way. “The quality of the current parts store hub offerings is disappointing to say the least,” Lee said, “but even with the original OEM Mazda quality and tolerances, the stock hubs that were designed for 185-section tires and 115 hp aren’t up to the task of today’s Miata race cars, especially in endurance racing.”

After two years of prototyping, testing, and a very productive collaboration with the research and motorsports divisions of SKF, a well-known bearing supplier, MiataHubs was born. Its billet-machined hub addresses weaknesses only made apparent by racing.

As we see elsewhere, the solution isn’t cheap: at more than $1200 for a set of front hubs, MiataHubs are about six times as expensive as a pair from Timken, an OEM and aftermarket supplier. But that’s a small cost for something that prevents catastrophic failure and helps Japanese sports cars maintain their strong presence on racetracks across the globe.

Whether you’re looking to return your 300ZX to showroom original or flog your ’99 Civic Si at a track day, finding the right parts has, no doubt, become harder and more expensive. Fortunately, companies and enthusiasts are taking note of the rising parts demand and are beginning to meet market needs. Just the same, be prepared to spend some time and diligence searching, and likely waiting, for that key component to your build.

Via Hagerty Insider

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Even if you’ve been living in semi-quarantine for the last two years, there’s no missing the fact that nearly every flavor of interesting Japanese car has soared in value, many out of reach of most of us.

But there is still hope. If you make a habit out of trolling the margins of the collector car space on Facebook Marketplace and what’s left of the auto listings on Craigslist, you can find what remains of the affordable underbelly of interesting Japanese cars that nobody seems to care about. Yet.

Although most of five vehicles we’ve identified below aren’t in the Hagerty Price Guide, we can track how many people are calling us about them for a quote on insurance. No surprise, the numbers are going up.

2003–04 Mazdaspeed Protégé

Mazda is probably the closest thing to a cult brand left after the demise of the last true cult brand—Saab. Quirkiness and Performance has always been in the Japanese outfit's DNA. It’s no surprise that this story is dominated by cars from the brand formerly tag-lined with “zoom zoom.” Stung by its inability to get the complete package right with the somewhat anemic Protégé MP3, Mazda produced this, the Mazdaspeed Protégé, which upped the ante to 170 hp via a Callaway-engineered Garrett T25 turbo. Limited-slip diff, big brakes, and meaty for the day 17-inch wheels and tires added up to GTI chaser with Japanese reliability. No surprise, they’re rare in any condition, and most seem to be properly roached, but nice ones can still be found under $10,000. A perfect one with 24,000 miles has been for sale for quite some time at $16,000. That said, the average value cited by those calling Hagerty for insurance policies on a Mazdaspeed Protégé has more than doubled in the last two years, from less than $5000 to nearly $12,000.

2000–05 Toyota MR2 Spyder

There’s a reason why automakers don’t listen to enthusiasts—the mouthy ones who clamor for a lightweight, modestly powered, mid-engine sports car, and then don’t buy it when its available. The MR2 Spyder was a modern-day Porsche 914, an early Lotus Elise that didn’t hurt to get in and out of. It was comfortable, stiff for an open car, a superb handler, and decently quick for a car with under 140 hp (0-60 in 6.9 seconds). In its own way, it was probably even as quirky as the first-gen Mister Two, with its goofy bug-eyed visage.

And yet practically nobody remembers it. About $9000 buys one in driving condition (a "#3" in Hagerty Price Guide parlance). JDM hipsters will pay more money for a right hand-drive Honda Beat or Suzuki Cappuccino. Will that last? Our colleagues in the U.K., at least, highly doubt it—they included the MR2 on their 2021 Bull Market list.

2002–03 Mazda Protégé 5

Long-roofs are undergoing a renaissance. Not in the new car world, of course—they’re all but extinct there—but among younger enthusiasts who don’t have a recollection of a time when wagons had fake wood sides, and back back seats. Euro wagons like E46 BMWs and Audi A4s are getting scarce, mainly owing to the fact that the annual maintenance costs of Euro wagons with 180,000-plus miles are petrifying. Not so for Japanese cars, and the Protégé 5 exists in a size category that the Europeans almost never catered to in a wagon, unless you feel like searching out an Opel Kadett wagon or somesuch silliness. No matter, the 5 was so much better. With the serviceable underpinnings of the nippy Protégé, you also got a hatch, decent cargo space, and all of the aftermarket upgrades available for the less inspiring sedan. Did we also mention that bright yellow and a five-speed manual were common? Salt-belt cars are all becoming terminally rusty at this point, but a nice Cali 5 with 175,000 or so miles on it still has plenty of life left in it for somewhere around $4,500—roughly the average value people cite when they call Hagerty for insurance on one. That makes it the least expensive car on our list.

1994–2000 Toyota RAV4

Hear us out on this one. A new RAV4 is the essence of car ambivalent sense and sensibility. But the first-gen (XA10) RAV was something different altogether. Bare bones in a way that few if any vehicles are today, they’re virtual perpetual motion machines—most that you’ll see have more than 250,000 miles on them. Perhaps the most appealing variant is the clean-looking three-door with a five-speed manual transmission. While maybe not as appealingly boxy or off-road capable as a Suzuki Samurai or a Mitsubishi Montero, a clean, early RAV4 with a five-speed at this point is rare, and seems too nice for winter beater status even at the usual six-grand-or-so asking price.

2003–2008 Mazda 6 Wagon

Did we mention we like wagons? And Mazdas? Think of the Mazda 6 as an alternative to a B5-generation Audi A4 wagon, only without most of the cluster headaches that come with vintage Audi ownership, or sadly, the AWD option. What makes the 6 so appealing beyond the quite clean and competent styling is the fact that it was available with a 3.0-liter Ford-sourced Duratec 30 V-6 paired with a manual transmission option. While not exactly common, manual 6 wagons aren’t impossible to find, either.  Sadly there was never a Mazdaspeed 6 wagon option in the United States, but we’ve heard of people doing a drivetrain swap to make the wagon that Mazda should have built. Or if you can forego the handiness of a wagon, just snag a Mazdaspeed 6 sedan. Hagerty's insurance data do not differentiate between wagon and sedan, but 6 values have overall been stable around $9000.

Rob Sass is the Editor-in-Chief of Porsche Panorama, the official publication of the Porsche Club of America. The opinions stated are his, and not necessarily those of the Club. 

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Hey, alright! It looks like the gang is all here—now the high-value 1990s Japanese icon party can kick off in earnest. Supra brought drinks, the NSX’s got the chips ‘n dip, and the RX-7 and 300ZX will be right back with some wings. It sure took a while, but Mitsubishi might have just rung the doorbell with the shocking $100,499 final sale of a 1999 Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4 on Bonham’s new “The Market” online auction platform. With that, this might be signs of a significant cash spike for Mitsubishi’s enigmatic halo sports car. Maybe.

Or, this might be just another case of an unbelievably original example with absurdly low miles skewing the true view of the growing market. This particular black-over-black 3000GT was mothballed right from the get-go; according to the listing, it was purchased wholesale from a dealer in Indiana by the consignor, where it promptly sat static in a collection for the past two decades. Only 168 miles sit on the wrapper-fresh odometer, making this quite the museum piece. As such, this is an extraordinarily well-preserved specimen, with only superficial dullness to the paint due to age, and dried-out plastic and rubber components that are easily replaced.

The 3000GT has a lot of same things going for it as Japanese contemporaries, including a powerful turbo engine, a sophisticated chassis, and ahead-of-its-time technology. Mitsubishi, neck deep in rally competition by this point, fitted the 3000GT with all-wheel drive—hardly common tech for 1990s sports cars. Nevertheless, it received a lukewarm reception in era, with reviewers finding it bulky and unrefined compared to the 300ZX in particular. Nowadays, it suffers from a relative lack of recognition; Z-cars, Supras, and Mazda RX-7s enjoyed multi-decade runs that, in the case of the former two, continue to the present day. It surely doesn’t help that Mitsubishi’s presence in the United States has greatly diminished.

So, a signifier for big things to come for Mitsu’s long-undervalued super-GT? Maybe, maybe not. Hagerty’s Price Guide lists a 1999 3000GT VR4 in Condition #1—or concours-ready—as $60,900, with Condition #2 (excellent) dropping to $35,100. Healthy, but not even in the same stratosphere as The Market’s six-figure blowout. Consider that at $100,000, this is one of the most expensive Mitsubishi’s ever sold at auction, beaten only by the Eclipse used in The Fast and The Furious and a super-rare Tommi Makinen Edition Lancer Evo VI that sold last spring.

The latter was part of Mitsubishi Motors U.K.’s liquidation sale, where 14 museum-grade Mitsus went under the virtual hammer. Sure, the market wasn’t quite as volatile as it is now, but The Market’s 3000GT outstripped both a handful of rare Evos—historically more desirable than 3000GTs—and an honest-to-goodness Group N British Rally Championship winning Evo IX.

Even with the Bring a Trailer boost in full effect, excellent condition 3000GT VR4s with low-ish miles trade for between $25,000 and $45,000 on the ultra-popular auction site. Values of the 3000GT are undeniably on the rise—what Japanese classic isn’t—but don’t bother adding another zero to the “For Sale” sign on that Mitsu in your driveway—we reckon this is an outlier sale.

We’ll leave you with a little tip for you would-be 3000GT owners hoping to hop-in before values continue to climb the price graph. If you’re not absolutely obsessed with having the tri-diamond badge on your sports car’s schnozz, consider sourcing a well-kept Dodge Stealth. With only minor exceptions, Dodge’s mechanically identical captive import twin of the Mitsu 3000GT follows complete model parity at a moderate discount; Hagerty price guide pegs a concours-condition 1996 Stealth R/T Turbo at $28,500 against the $58,400 claimed for a #1 condition 3000GT Twin Turbo from the same year. As fewer Stealths come up for sale, your mileage—and price—may vary, but you’ll likely end up saving at least a few thousand.

***

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Fun fact: Toyota is not the only Japanese automaker that has produced trucks in the last fifty years.

OK, maybe you already knew that. But the collector vehicle market seems to think otherwise. We’re seeing major price gains for practically every truck with a Toyota badge—classic FJs, of course, but also the recently departed FJ Cruiser and the still-for-sale 4Runners. Other brands, not so much.

No doubt, Toyota trucks, long beloved by everyone from small-time contractors to UNICEF troops and Top Gear hosts for their tough looks and reliability, deserve their day in the sun. But that doesn’t make competitors any less great. Indeed, for those of us who want to use these trucks for their originally intended purpose—dependable, versatile, and cool transportation—these alternatives now have a leg up simply because they remain affordable.

1972–1979 Datsun 620

Don’t shame the Datsun 620 for never being as rugged and capable off-road as the Toyota pickup—it was never designed to be. From the start, Datsun marketed the 620 as a car-truck combo, and nearly half of buyers claimed they never used it for “work.” Remember, this was a time when people only bought trucks when they had to. Datsun helped change that.

Initially powered by a 96-hp, 1.6-liter “L16” 4-cylinder, displacement grew through the years until 1975, when Datsun graced the 620 with its 110-hp, 2.0-liter “L20B.” A couple years later, an optional five-speed manual was introduced. At just under 2300 pounds, the 620 makes for a great starting point for tuning, which might explain its popularity among young collectors.

Indeed, despite being nearly 50 years old, the 620 is beloved by enthusiasts in their twenties and thirties. More than half of all the folks calling us for quotes on insurance on 620s are millennials or younger. Gen-Z callers alone—who presently make of a tiny sliver of the overall collector vehicle market—account for 16 percent of the interest.

One caveat for these eager young collectors to keep in mind is how previous owners may have cared for—or not cared for—their trucks. In particular, 620s were, like the contemporary Datsun 510 coupes, a hotbed for period modifications. Unlike 510s and also unlike many Toyota pickups, these under-appreciated Nissans can still be had in great condition for less than $10,000.

1985–1995 Nissan Pathfinder

Of all the price disparities we’re seeing in the Japanese truck market right now, this could be the biggest headscratcher. The original Pathfinder has gone mostly ignored while 4Runner values have climbed.

This could be due to the reputation of its successors. Whereas the 4Runner has remained a body-on-frame off-roader since its inception, the Pathfinder eventually morphed into a comfortable commuter and today lives on as a family-hauling, car-based crossover.

It wasn’t always this way. The Pathfinder debuted in the mid-1980s as a two-door, body-on-frame SUV that shared many of its components with a pickup truck—the Nissan Hardbody. To enhance its on-road comfort and off-road capability, the Pathfinder had an independent front suspension and a five-link coil suspension in the rear; the 4Runner adopted an independent front suspension by the late 1980s, but didn’t offer coil rear suspension until the second generation in 1990. And just like the 4Runner, the Pathfinder could be had with a powerful V-6—but its six was shared with the Nissan Z, which is arguably way cooler than a Camry.

Some may argue that the Pathfinder is more stylish than the 4Runner. I am one of these people. The rounded box fenders look more deliberate and the three vents above the grille make the Nissan stand a part from other ’80s trucks.

Even those who don’t share my bias will have to concede one major advantage for Pathfinders compared to their old rivals: They’re much, much cheaper. That’s been true for some time but has only become more apparent as Toyotas have taken off. These days, Pathfinder values, as measured by our insurance data, are about half those of 4Runners. Are they every bit as capable? Perhaps not. They don’t have as much support in the off-roading aftermarket, and you don’t see many Pathfinder rock crawlers. But, like any Japanese truck from the era, they are incredibly reliable.

1989-1999 Suzuki Sidekick

The ad above implies that Connie bought a Sidekick and then married her dealer. We don’t know how the marriage worked out, but we can say that buying a Sidekick was a wise life choice.

The box-fendered younger sibling to the love-it-or-hate-it Samurai fixed many of the Samurai’s “bugs” (which some off-roaders would call “features”). In particular, the Sidekick was given an independent front suspension with coilovers all around instead of the Samurai’s solid front axle and stiff four-corner leaf springs. Although this suggests a trade-off in capability, the Sidekick (in Geo Tracker guise) beat out a Samurai and Jeep Wrangler(!) in a 1989 Car and Driver off-road comparison test. The Sidekick had a fuel-injected 1.6-liter four-cylinder pushing 100 hp in 16-valve form—a huge improvement from the Samurai’s notoriously underpowered 63-hp carbureted 1.3-liter.

More proof that the Sidekick is legitimately rugged can be found, in all places, in global shipping data. Many Sidekicks and Trackers have been exported out of the United States in the past decade, but 2013 was a highpoint. Number one destination? Yemen. If you read up on events around that time, you might understand why.

Collectors at home are beginning to appreciate the Suzuki’s charming qualities. Although values for Sidekicks have essentially remained flat, the number of them on Hagerty policies has effectively doubled every year since 2017—a good indication that more people consider them collectible. You can join the club for around $5K–$7K, which will buy you one in great condition; the best Sidekick in the world will barely break $20K.

1999–2001 Isuzu VehiCross

Whereas most Japanese trucks can and must be considered in relation to other Japanese trucks—the gold-standard Toyotas in particular—the Isuzu VehiCross stands on its own.

Just look at the thing!

What other company would build a two-door SUV with wild and controversial styling and a racing suspension with external-reservoir shocks? The closest modern comparison is the Toyota FJ Cruiser, but it was conservatively styled by comparison and, in any event, now costs more than twice as much.

There is a conception that the VehiCross was a sales failure—that Isuzu look too big of a swing and alienated the general population. False. The VehiCross was intended to be a limited-production vehicle—Isuzu used ceramic tooling dies instead of steel ones to stamp the oddly shaped body panels, which reduced cost and production time at the expense of tooling longevity. The dies wore out after just under 6000 VehiCross were produced.

It’s harder to argue, though, that Isuzu itself succeeded, at least when it comes to the U.S. passenger-car market. where the automaker had a limited dealer network. Worse, it relied heavily on a partnership with General Motors for products, and that pipeline dried up practically overnight in 2009.

Isuzu’s footprint in the United States—always small and now non-existent—limits the audience for the VehiCross, which is why this interesting-looking, capable SUV can still be found for under $10,000. For now.

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It’s no secret 1990s Japanese sports cars have taken over the classic car market. We’ve covered it countless times, to the point that what was once exceptional has now become routine. Six-figure Supras? Yeah, two sold this week.

Still, this 2003 Acura NSX-T caught our attention. It just sold for $205,000, making it the first base (non Zanardi edition) NSX to sell above $200K and the second-highest sale of all time. We think it’s a bellwether of more $200K Japanese cars to come.

The NSX, has, like pretty much all Japanese sports cars of the 1990s and early 2000s, ridden a wave of appreciation in recent years. Unlike the Mazda RX-7 and Toyota Supra, however, it never really fell into used-car territory, meaning its value increases have historically lead those cars. So, when we saw a 1995 Supra leap ahead by selling for $206K three months ago, we figured it was only a matter of the "right" NSX hitting the market to hit the same mark.

This was the right car.

Like other high-dollar NSXs, this one was pristine. It had just 9300 miles, which would be considered unexceptional on other supercars (see: 2005–06 Ford GT) but stands out here since owners tend to treat their NSXs like, well, Hondas.

It's also a later-production model, which most collectors (flip-up headlamp partisans aside) tend to prefer. In 1997, Acura offered an optional 3.2-liter V-6 that increased power to 290 hp—an option nearly every buyer ticked. Acura also gave the NSX a six-speed manual, replacing the old five-speed unit, thereby addressing complaints about the long-gearing in earlier cars. The new powertrain dropped the 0-to-60 mph time to below 5 seconds. Since sales had steeply declined by the time of these updates, most NSXs don't have these bragging points.

This NSX also had going for it all the factors that drive big premiums on Bring a Trailer—killer photos, a serial seller with a good reputation, and a firestorm of commenters.

Still, there have been several low-mile late-model NSXs sold in the past years and none have brought close to this amount. In fact a one-owner, 16K-mile 2004 NSX 3.2 sold for $180K—a record at the time. What made this one finally break $200K?

I think it was the color.

When a car becomes incredibly desirable but isn't particularly rare, collectors start to look for things that make their car stand out. When unusual equipment isn't an option, color combinations are what people go for.

The blue-over-blue combo is striking and very uncommon. Only 88 were sold in the United States in Long Beach Blue Pearl—a color only offered in the final four years of production (2002–2005). Only 33 of those had the blue leather interior to match. And only 4 were produced in this color combo for 2003. While not the rarest exterior/interior matching color combo—14 Rio Yellow-over-yellow and nine Grand Prix White over white—blue over blue makes for a good conversation starter. So, of course, does that price.

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Hagerty is all about tracking the ebbs and flows of collector car values. After updating our data last month, even we couldn’t believe some of the upward swings as the collector market continues to buzz. Growth was widespread, with some segments that had historically been down springing back to life and some segments that were already hot getting even hotter.

Put Japanese cars in the “hotter” category. This development shouldn’t be too surprising when you consider that 1980s–90s cars are experiencing the biggest increases and remember how thoroughly Japan dominated that era. The country produced everything from the world’s best compact pickups to the most sophisticated sports cars in those years, along with the sort of cool niche automobiles that get approved when automakers have lots of profit to play with. No surprise, that stuff is all appreciating right now. In first part of 2021, many of them saw their biggest increases ever. Here are the 10 Japanese ’80s and ’90s classics that gained the most ground.

1981–90 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ60/62

Average condition #2 (Excellent) value: +22 percent

The iconic Land Cruiser is of course the FJ40, which skyrocketed in value from 2010–15, then corrected a bit. The later, less agricultural Land Cruisers have a following, too, and FJ60/62s started appreciating in the mid-2010s—about when FJ40s started leveling off. FJ60/62s are still surging, and saw their largest single increase since we added them to our data pool. (That’s a running theme throughout this list.)

The FJ60/62 marked the Land Cruiser’s move to a more comfortable driving and trekking experience, as Toyota redesigned it to better compete in a growing SUV market. The quick way to tell the difference between an FJ60 and an FJ62 is the FJ60 has round headlights and a carbureted 4.2-liter 2F six-cylinder with four-speed manual. The 1988-90 FJ62 brought a 4.0-liter 3F six-cylinder with fuel injection and an automatic transmission—both firsts for the Land Cruiser. FJ62s are worth a little more, but both are highly prized workhorses that seem to be more highly prized from month to month these days. The average condition #2 value presently sits at $40,400.

Gen-Xers are the main drivers of the vintage truck market at the moment, and Land Cruisers are no exception. They make up 49 percent of Hagerty insurance quotes for FJ60/62s, while millennials make up 28 percent.

Over the past three years, the values people quote on these vehicles when calling us for insurance has grown 24 percent, and the number of quotes is up 214 percent. Often times, such activity in our call centers is a leading indicator of future value growth. Even in a generally hot truck market, the FJ60/62 Land Cruiser is a standout, and it looks like it’s not done growing.

1991 Nissan Figaro

Average condition #2 (Excellent) value: +22 percent

Nissan’s famous performance cars, the Skyline and Z car, are both as hot as can be right now, but let’s not forget Nissan’s other fast-appreciating two-door, the Figaro. Yes, it’s slower and lower tech, with front-drive and a three-speed automatic. But in the $20,000 range, there are few cars that get more people turning their heads, whipping out their smartphones, and asking, “What’s that?!”

Nissan introduced the Figaro at the 1989 Toyota Motor Show, and its styling is a clear nod to the past. The white leather seats with contrast piping look like something from the 1960s, as do its thin-spoked steering wheel and large chrome-trimmed analog gauges. Figaros came in four colors (Lapis Grey, Emerald Green, Pale Aqua, and Topaz Mist), one for each season. Nissan limited production to 20,000 units, and they were delivered via a lottery system.

Figaros turned 25 years old (and therefore became legal to register in the States) in 2016. Even as more Figaros get imported here, demand greatly exceeds supply and prices have surged accordingly. The condition #2 value shot up from $22,000 to $26,800 in our latest data update.

1983–89 Mitsubishi Starion

Average condition #2 (Excellent) value: +26 percent

Like the second gen Mazda RX-7, the Mitsubishi Starion/Chrysler Conquest twins (aka “Starquests”) aped the good looks of the Porsche 944 and added a turbocharged engine to their top trims (the Starion ESI-R and the Conquest TSi). When new, Starquests generally cost less than their competitors, then they stayed cheap and somewhat obscure for years. Now, though, it appears that they’re moving beyond cult status. This was the first significant increase for Starquests since we started tracking them, although they’re still on the entry-level end of things at $15,000 for a Starion in and $17,500 for a Conquest in #2 condition.

1990–96 Nissan 300ZX

Average condition #2 (Excellent) value: +27 percent

Recently, we did a deeper dive on the Nissan Z market, going so far as to ask if the Z is the next Porsche 911 when it comes to collector values. It should come as no surprise, then, that four of the cars on this list are Z cars.

Leading the charge is the second-gen (Z32) Nissan 300ZX, which also posted its biggest percentage increase on record. It probably has room to keep climbing, since it has lagged a bit behind other rapidly appreciating ’90s Japanese classics like the Mark IV Toyota Supra and third-generation (FD) Mazda RX-7, despite offering similarly stellar performance and packing similar levels of cutting edge technology (the Z32 was one of the first cars designed with computer software and turbo versions have four-wheel steering).

Both base and turbocharged versions grew by similar amounts, with the median #2 value sitting at $17,100 and 300ZX Turbos sitting at $33,200.

1974 Datsun 260Z

Average condition #2 (Excellent) value: +28 percent

The one-year-only 260Z, naturally, is closest to the original and most highly prized Z car—the 240Z. The main differences are the 260’s bigger bumpers and an engine stroked slightly to compensate for a lower compression ratio. As more people get priced out of increasingly expensive 240s, it’s only natural for them to turn to later and cheaper Zs, which in turn creates more demand and higher prices for those cars. So it goes.

The 260Z had its biggest percentage increase to date, according to our records. Standard coupes now carry a #2 value of $39,400, but even the less desirable 2+2 model grew 24 percent to a #2 value of $25,500.

1999–00 Civic Si

Average condition #2 (Excellent) value: +41 percent

The 1999-00 Civic Si, with its rev-happy B16 VTEC four and a snappy 5-speed, made a great impression on thousands of young gearheads and tuners when they were new. Twenty years later, there just aren't a whole lot of clean, unmodified, low-mile Civics left, so the ones that are out there command a big premium when they come out of hiding. We've reported on this before, but apparently these hot Hondas had more room to grow. From January to May, the condition #2 value went from $19,900 to $28,100.

Why a 20-year-old Civic should be worth more than a clean base C5 Corvette doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but this is one of those cases where you can blame the young people. Looking at Hagerty insurance quotes for Civic Sis, 45 percent of interest comes from millennials and 22 percent comes from Gen Z, who make up just 19 percent and 6 percent of the market as a whole, respectively.

1984–88 Nissan 300ZX 

Average condition #2 (Excellent) value: +43 percent

If we turn back the clock 10 years to 2011, the original Z31-generation Nissan 300ZX had a median condition #2 value of just $6700 and was one of the many downright cheap two-seaters to choose from out there. For better or worse, that list is a lot shorter now. Today, the Z31's median #2 value is $20,600, and like so many other cars this year, it just saw its biggest increase to date. All model years, all trims, and all conditions surged. No Z31 variant grew less than 30 percent.

1982–86 Toyota Supra

Average condition #2 (Excellent) value: +44 percent

Back in 1982, the Toyota Supra was still a long way away from becoming the king of the tuner car hill. It was still based on the Celica, distinguished by a different front end and extra length for its larger straight-six engine. The Mk II Supra isn't the best Supra. It isn't even the second best. But it did mark the point when Toyota got serious about performance. Four-wheel independent suspension came courtesy of Lotus, and engine power increased with each model year. P-type ("P" for "Performance") models also got fender flares, a limited-slip differential, larger wheels, and a rear spoiler.

Most Mk II Supras got beaten on, raced, modified, and/or crashed. As appreciation for later Supras trickles down to a shrinking supply of good Mk IIs, up goes the price. It saw its biggest surge to date with the latest update, with average #2 values climbing from $15,600 to $22,500. Over the last 10 years, these cars have tripled in value.

1978–83 Datsun 280ZX

Average condition #2 (Excellent) value: +50 percent

Once Z cars sprouted an "X" at the end of their names, they started to become heftier, softer versions of the original 240Z that turned the car world on its ear in 1970. But, like everything with a Z badge, 280ZXs are having a moment. These cars have been gradually creeping up since 2015, but this was by the far the biggest increase in value they have seen to date. The average #2 value shot up from $16,100 to $24,200.

1995–98 Nissan Skyline GT-R (R33)

Average condition #2 (Excellent) value: +52 percent

The R32 (1989-94) version of the GT-R became eligible to bring to the States in 2014, and they flew off lots as fast as importers could bring them in. In January of last year, the R33 became legal, and the market for them is already crazy. Although the R33 is something of a middle child between the original groundbreaking R32 and the sophisticated R34, the R33 is rarer than its predecessor, not to mention quicker and more roomy on the inside. There is more heat in the market right now for R33s, as they saw one of the biggest increases of any car that we monitor so far this year, even as R32s were up "just" 4 percent.

All R33 GT-Rs surged with this update, but we should note that there's a wide range of value here. A "normal" GT-R carries a #2 value of $68,000. Stepping up to a V-Spec model costs $71,000, while a V-Spec N1 crosses the six-figure line at $124,000. In a different ballpark entirely are the 40 or so NISMO 400Rs, which are now worth $440,000. It remains to be seen what will happen as more R33s hit our shores and some of that pent up demand gets satisfied, but for now people are clamoring for them, and it's the youngest buyers expressing the most interest, despite the already sky-high prices. Millennials make up 65 percent of insurance quotes for R33s, and Gen Z makes up 11 percent. What was once forbidden fruit now accounts for expensive taste.

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Possibly the largest single-year valuation increase we will ever see for a classic car is for a … Subaru 360?

In the matter of just a year, the Subaru 360 has quadrupled in value. In January 2020, the value for an Excellent (#2) condition 1969 Subaru 360 Sedan was $10,100. Now, just a year later, that same microcar is worth $44,300. One look at the historical pricing on Hagerty Valuation Tools shows how dramatic of an increase we are witnessing.

A little over a year ago, in November 2019, a yellow 1970 Subaru 360 Deluxe in great condition sold on Bring a Trailer for a modest $8500, right between our #2 (Excellent) and #3 (Good) condition values at the time. Then, less than a year later, in October 2020, a 1969 Subaru 360 Deluxe in marginally better condition sold for $50,000 on the same platform. This second sale wasn’t an outlier, either: two other Subaru 360s sold for over $30,000 that same month at RM’s Elkhart auction.

Certain cars are famous for mobilizing the masses, and they are often especially beloved in their home countries. Germany has the Volkswagen Beetle, France the Citroen 2CV, Italy the Fiat 500, and in the United States, we have the Ford Model T. For Japan, it’s the Subaru 360—affectionately nicknamed the “Ladybug.”

The 360 was Subaru’s first production car and Japan’s first mass-produced Kei car—a class formed specifically to provide inexpensive city cars for the working class. In 1955, Kei car engine displacement was capped at 360 cubic-centimeters, and just three years later Subaru dominated the class, selling nearly 400,000 examples between 1958 and 1971. Weight was kept low by means of a thin steel monocoque chassis and fiberglass roof, which helped make up for the meager 16 horsepower from the 360’s rear-mounted, 356cc two-stroke vertical-twin engine. The Subie also featured a four-corner independent torsion bar suspension, with finned brake drums bolted directly to the 10-inch steel wheels. Although it looks very basic, the 360 was fairly advanced for its time.

The 360 was a versatile platform offered in a variety of body styles, all conforming to Japanese Kei car regulations. The most popular of these variants was the two-door hardtop sedan (roll-back convertible top was optional), followed by a five-door “Sambar” van. For light utility purposes, a ramp-side truck was offered starting in 1961. Briefly, in Japan, Subaru offered a station wagon called the “Custom.”

For a hipper audience, Subaru made the “Young S,” which featured a slightly upgraded 25-horsepower engine, an extra transmission gear, bucket seats, tachometer, and a dented roof for a surfboard. An even “faster” version never offered in North America called the “Young SS” had all the modifications of the Young S with a dual-carb version of the 360 engine producing an impressive 36 horsepower. That’s 100 horsepower per liter! Watch out, Honda S2000!

The little Subie was underappreciated from the moment it arrived on American soil.

In 1968, Malcom Bricklin (of Yugo and SV-1 fame) and Harvey Lamm founded Subaru of America and imported 10,000 Subaru 360s to fill dealerships. The U.S.-market 360 was an improved version of the original sold a decade earlier in Japan. Engine output was increased to 25 horsepower and an overdrive fourth gear was added to the manual transmission, as with the Young S. An optional “Autoclutch” system eliminated the clutch pedal and operated the clutch automatically with an electromagnet. Gone were the days of pre-mixing oil using the fuel cap as a measuring cup, the new “Subarumatic” lubrication system mixed oil automatically from a reservoir in the engine compartment.  Like the Model T, you could have any color you’d like—as long as it was white with a red interior. The Subaru 360 was advertised as “Cheap and Ugly,” with the $1297 price ($9850 in 2020 dollars) and 66 mpg as the main selling points. American’s didn’t care about fuel economy just yet, and the Ladybug flopped. Subaru’s roaring success these days all happened after a seriously rocky start.

In a period review, Consumer Reports saw the need for a small economy car in America but ultimately branded the 360 as “not acceptable” for American roads because of its poor safety standards and blatant lack of power. The publication claimed the car could not hit 60 mph on its test track, and it managed to clock a 37.5 second 0-50 mph time. For context, a 1968 Volkswagen Beetle could make the 0-50 sprint in 14.5 seconds. To give you muscle car fans a laugh, the CR testing crew managed to run the quarter mile in 28.5 seconds at 47 mph. You wouldn’t want to go much faster, anyway; the rear-hinged doors were known to fly open in high winds.

The brake system was the only thing worthy of praise, though the suspension setup caused the car to dive tremendously under light braking. “Just driving straight down an open road could be unsettling,” CR concluded.

On top of that, the 360 wasn’t as care-free as it appeared. According to the user manual, the break-in period suggests the driver never exceed 45 mph for the first 1200 miles and, although two-stroke motor oil was rarely available at gas stations, only one brand should be used for the life of the vehicle. In normal American driving conditions, the Subie only managed 25 to 35 mpg—nearly half what was advertised.  The discrepancy is likely due to the car being designed for a Japanese city where speed limits rarely exceed 25 mph and average commutes are less than 10 miles.

More than anything, collision safety was a concern. Imagine a crash between this little Subaru and any 1970s American car. The driver of a Cadillac Coupe DeVille wouldn’t even notice. How did the 360 make it past American vehicle requirements in the first place? Due to a loophole, the sub-1000-pound curb weight made the 360 exempt from federalized safety standards. Bricklin, though, installed seatbelts to give some sense of safety. After its review, Consumer Reports suggested the National Highway Safety Bureau should remove the 1000-pound exemption from its safety standards.

Ultimately, a Volkswagen Beetle was only $400 more and superior in most respects. The American public agreed, and dealers were stuck with unsold 360s for years. Some even offered “buy one, get one free” deals to clear inventory. It’s rumored that unsold Subarus were loaded on a barge and pushed overboard to create an artificial reef off the California coast, but that probably didn’t happen. More than a few likely ended up being converted to go-karts at the hands of Bruce Meyers (of Meyers Manx fame) to be used at “FasTrack”, Bricklin’s next venture.

So, why the sudden Subie fever?

Modern Japanese classics are becoming a lot more valuable as of late, and in an age of nostalgia, collectors will look for deals in a marque’s earlier work. The 360 founded Subaru and is the company’s only car that many would consider “classic” (most legendary Subarus were made post-1980), so it likely strikes a chord with Subaru enthusiasts—a group that grows larger every year. The same thing is happening to early Hondas. The S600/S800 of the 1960s was Honda’s first production car sold in America, and it recently made the 2021 Hagerty Bull Market List.

Thanks to the passage of time, the flaws that made the Subaru a failure as a new car can now be appreciated as the early missteps of a nascent brand. When you look at other oddball microcars of the era, its amazing the Subaru 360 was ever priced under $10,000. An Excellent (#2) condition 1960 BMW Isetta 300 is $36,200. A 1964 Messerschmitt KR200 in similar condition is $53,600. Even at its current value of $44,300, the Subaru 360 seems like a steal compared to a 1963 Fiat 500 Jolly at $64,700.

Like the Jolly, maybe the yacht crowd is buying them up. The Subaru commercial below hints at that fact … maybe.

As a historically important vehicle, all of this attention tells us that the 360 is finally getting the warm welcome it hoped for, albeit 50 years too late.

Like this article? Check out Hagerty Insider, our website devoted to tracking trends in the collector vehicle market.

The post Once “Cheap and Ugly,” the Subaru 360 is having an unexpected moment appeared first on Hagerty Media.

For decades, Japan’s Mitsuoka has been turning out quirky classic-looking custom cars based on unlikely underpinnings. Now its Buddy, a wannabe Blazer built on a Toyota RAV4, has become a surprise best-seller, with production sold out for two years.

With its massive chrome grille, stacked headlights, vertical tail lamps, and classic rims, the Buddy bares hardy any resemblance to the Toyota underneath. It became an instant hit, with 200 cars sold in just four days. Despite costing around $45,000, it evokes memories of late-1960s Blazers and Broncos, but with the steadfast reliability of a RAV4 and fans flocked to buy it.

The Buddy follows on from the 2018 Rock Star, a rather lovely $40,000 Corvette-alike based on Mazda MX-5 Miata, which marked a design departure for Mitsuoka. Prior to the Stingray-inspired convertible, the company had been obsessed with grafting classic curves onto unlikely candidates.

The Himiko Roadster, for example, turned a Miata into almost-a-Morgan, but the design wasn’t exactly cohesive. At over $70,000, who in their right mind would have chosen one over a Malvern-made original? Mitsuoka’s website describes it as a “beautiful assassin,” which doesn’t inspire confidence about its standards of safety either.

Prior to the Roadster there were the Galue and Ryugi, bizarre attempts to convert a Nissan Cedric and Toyota Corolla into a Bentley, and the 1993 Viewt, which grafted a front end plagiarized from a Mk II Jaguar onto a Nissan March, much to the amusement of many.

Finally, after almost 30 years of oddballs, Mitsuoka has found its winning formula. Count us as fans, but what do you think?

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Motorcycles represent one of the rare collector vehicle markets in which a daily driver (or rider in this case) can check those three magic boxes: affordable, reliable, and cool. We look at five collector motorcycles you can grab now with an average #3 (Good condition) value of $2500 or less. Odds are they won’t be this cheap forever.

1988-1989 Honda NX650

Average #3 value: $2100

Wearing similar styling to BMW’s R100 GS, the Honda NX650 provides the rugged adventure aesthetic but for less money. The bike is still quite rare, too. Unlike most of the motorcycles on this list (for which the bigger-engine models have climbed out of the $2500 range) the NX650 was the top dog of the NX range. Their plastic fairing pieces don’t lend well to bouncing around off-road, and many of these bikes are beat up and ridden hard, but if you find a nice one it will last for quite a long time. On top of that, it holds the potential to become more collectible on the heels of the increasingly-desirable Honda Trans Alp.

1981-1983 Suzuki GS850G

Average #3 value: $2300

EPA emissions regulations in the late ’70s fueled fears that 1978 represented peak superbike performance from Japan, but the sports tourers of the late ’70s and ’80s nonetheless kept getting faster while combining the best of reliability, usability, and, in many cases, style. Most of these bikes have long been regarded as “cheap” rather than “collectible,” but values are trending up. The Suzuki GS850G, the smaller sibling of the GS1100G, combines the shaft drive of the GS1100G, a bored-out GS750 engine, and a reputation for bulletproof dependability all while maintaining most of the naked look of the more valuable ’70s bikes. Why pay $6000 for a K1 CB750 or $10,000 for a 1979 CBX when the GS850G can be had for $2300?

1991-1998 Honda CBR600F2 and F3

Average #3 value: $1,800

Many contend it’s a lot more fun to ride a slow bike fast than a fast bike slow. Thousand-cc sportbikes will always dominate their smaller 600-cc siblings, but the 600s are cheaper to buy, often cheaper to run, and arguably more fun to ride. Honda long dominated the 600-cc segment in the ’80s and ’90s, and that was thanks to the CBR600F Hurricane and subsequent F2 and F3. The F2 and F3 gained power and began to shift away from the awkward bodywork of the first generation. Collectors are now coming around to the mantra of “plastic is classic” and valuing fully-faired bikes, but the smaller 600s can be found easily for under $2500.

1981-1983 Kawasaki GPZ550

Average #3 value: $2500

The GPZ550 was the 600-cc sportbike before 600-cc sportbikes existed. It had an undeniable charm of a bad-boy street racer, complete with distinctive red bodywork and black engine—a color scheme so popular that it would come back later on the retro-modern ZRX1200. The GPZ550 set the stage for the middleweight sportbike craze to come, spawning ever-larger GPZ models including the GPZ900R, the first motorcycle of the Kawasaki Ninja family. The Ninja would eventually become one of the most recognizable names in all of motorcycling, and the fact Tom Cruise rode a GPZ900R in Top Gun didn’t hurt publicity, either.

1984-1985 Yamaha FJ1100

Average #3 value: $2500

The FJ1100 wasn’t the prettiest nor the fastest bike of the early ’80s, and it quickly became overshadowed as technology progressed, but the FJ did just about everything well. From slow commuting to highway to canyon carving, these bikes are recognized for their versatility. The uncommon fairing (that hadn’t quite spanned the gap from bikini to fully- faired) gives the rider a look at the engine while also protecting against the wind on long rides. Sporting the biggest engine on this list, the FJ is best suited for cross-country missions and frequent highway riding. And who doesn’t want to live their two-wheeled ’80s dream and ride cross country in style?

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It was the age of perestroika. Of peak Michael Jackson. Of U2 and The Joshua Tree and RoboCop and Reagan and the Black Monday Crash that seemed so terrifying back then. It was also a time of body stripes and dashboard inclinometers and five-speeds on everything. It was the time when Japanese trucks were cool.

This all started last year when three friends were talking about the idea of throwing in together on a barn-find Porsche 356C in need of everything. The plan fell apart when one of the friends, Hagerty’s own Logan Calkins (last seen jumping his VW Thing), decided that the Porsche was too much of a sinkhole, and that what he really wanted was a 1980s Toyota 4Runner. Because the 1980s were rad and because, despite the fact that he had already owned 13 Toyota 4Runners, somehow that itch wasn’t fully scratched.

Within a week, he had poured most of his Porsche stash into a 1987 4Runner with “only” 240,000 miles on it. The model year, 1987, was both coincidental and opportune: Another person in the group, Hagerty contributor Lyn Woodward, had recently rescued a 1987 Mitsubishi Montero from a suburban Los Angeles driveway where it had sat for years melting into the asphalt. The group chat about a Porsche devolved into a group chat about how awesome Japanese trucks used to be, when they were simple and rugged and not too big, and before they got soft and car-like and full of cup holders and computer screens.

Not wishing to be left out, your humble narrator hunted down a 1987 Suzuki Samurai, and the stars were thus aligned for a sort of high school reunion. Wrenches were laid to fix leaks and squeaks, and the group discussed what it should do with the trucks. The obvious answer: Leave. Vámonos. Make like a tree and get out of here. But to where? Greater Los Angeles is roughly a hundred miles by a hundred miles. On a map, our eyes followed the freeway out of town, past a lot of empty desert that would make fine adventure territory. But Woodward maintained that the backdrop had to be big to show off the littleness of these old trucks. “Not even Death Valley has enough bigness,” she insisted. So our gaze kept going across the map. Past Las Vegas, through the deserts of Nevada and Arizona and skirting a lot of natural wonder, until we decided, well, we’ve come this far, we might as well go for the mother lode of bigness: Moab, Utah.

The present capital of four-wheeling is an old uranium-mining hamlet at the eastern edge of the Beehive State, which itself is unfairly rich in landscapes best described as Mother Nature cranking the volume up to 11 and breaking the knob off. Canyonlands National Park, to the west of Moab, is 337,598 acres of craggy wilderness dominated by an immense, ocher-colored plateau called the Island in the Sky that divides two western waterways. The Colorado River and the Green River have each cut deep, meandering canyons on their way to a merger at the plateau’s southern tip, where the waters flow on together toward Glen Canyon and the Grand Canyon.

The White Rim Road, named for the layer of bleached stone that underlies much of this old mining and cattle-ranching track, traces these rivers under sheer cliffs, weaving among the fins and slender spires of Navajo and Wingate sandstones. The White Rim offers 70 of the most spectacular trekking miles with which you’ll ever roll an odometer. And though it has a few suspension-twisters and a lot of stretches made laborious by nubby rock, the trail is actually not that tough. That was a key factor for old, stock trucks that were built before the off-road industry reached DEFCON 1 with its push-button lockers, rock-smashing suspensions, and humongous tires.

More important, though, Canyonlands is massive and magnificent, a place where humans in three little 1980s trucks would feel suitably small and insignificant, an impression that is growing harder and harder to experience in our shrinking world. And, if we’re honest with ourselves, it’s where we wanted to go from the start of this tale, despite the 13-hour drive from LA. Thus, with our campsites secured three months in advance—you must book them through the National Park Service, and spring and fall are the busy times—we made for Moab in our flotilla of cheap escape vehicles.

The writer Edward Abbey lived much of his life exploring “all that which lies beyond the end of the road” in this area of countless serrated canyons and wind-sculpted arches. He is partially to blame for it being overrun in modern times with geared-up adventurers, having called his dusty red corner of paradise “simply the most beautiful place on earth.” Before Abbey came in the mid-1960s, the uranium wildcatters traipsed over it, cutting roads and digging toxic dogholes at the government’s encouragement. It was the Atomic Energy Commission that built the White Rim Road, using bulldozers to stitch a bunch of old herding paths together. Before the machines came, the ranchers ran cattle here on horses, and before them, Ancestral Puebloans sheltered in its coves and etched their stories on its walls in haunting petroglyphs.

People have always seen what they want to see in these breathtaking panoramas, from mineral riches to grazing nirvana to a homeland where the spirits live eternally in the wind. We saw a rock-hopping good time, so after assembling and provisioning in Moab for a three-day journey, we drove west across the 6000-foot-high Island in the Sky mesa to a snaking descent route cut into the cliff walls that death-drops a truck about a thousand feet into the gorge of the Green River. Taking pictures here at the start of our journey, the photographer noticed a glint of metal in the canyon debris, then the battered tailfin of a—Mercury? It was too far gone to tell. Several other crumpled wrecks lay with it, probably old mine company cars unceremoniously pushed off the edge when the uranium boom collapsed in the 1960s and vast investor fortunes were lost to the whistling wind.

I caught Logan studying the front of his truck with a furrowed brow. “Have you tried out your four-wheel-drive system yet?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“Me neither,” I lied, trying to make him feel better. Woodward volunteered that she had spent so much money fixing other stuff on her Montero yet never replaced the rotted old spare tire.

And with that, we worked the old-fashioned levers and twist-hubs (the deluxe Montero has an automatic transmission and auto-locking front hubs) to engage low gear, then descended to White Rim Road. Many of the names of scenic spots along the trail date to the rancher days, and they speak to the difficult life in one of North America’s remotest job outposts: Horsethief Trail, The Labyrinth, Hardscrabble Bottom, Upheaval Canyon, Dead Horse Point.

The names come rich with stories. Down the river a ways is Harveys Fear Cliff. The tale goes that a cowhand by the name of Harvey Watts had roped a mean bull when he was thrown from his horse and, still clutching the rope, wound up hanging on for his life off the cliff. When he pulled himself up, the bull saw Harvey and made a run at him, dropping him down. When Harvey was out of sight, the bull lost interest and wandered away, pulling Harvey back up. Back and forth it went, long enough for Harvey and his fear to earn a spot on the Utah map.

At Potato Bottom, we rolled past the splitting and desiccated remains of an old corral. Cattle herder Art Murray built a waterside cabin here in 1932, to which his wife, Muriel, scoffed, “Who else would throw up such a rat trap?” After five years, Art became fed up with “the whole thing,” presumably including Muriel, and moved to Canada. Just across the river is Binky Bottom, named for Dubinky Anderson, another cattleman in the 1930s. Dubinky knew a fella named Guy Robison, who while out riding with the herd got stuck in a snowstorm that painted the landscape completely white. Then the sun came out and the glare blinded poor Guy so badly that he had to ride back to the ranch with his eyes closed, just clinging to his horse. Days later, when they stripped the bandages off and Guy’s vision slowly returned, his eyes, which had been brown his whole life, had turned permanently blue. So the story goes, anyway.

The Green River courses implacably through endless writhing twists and turns in the canyon. “The whole country is inconceivably desolate, as we float along on a muddy stream walled in by huge sandstone bluffs that echo back the slightest sound,” wrote one of the area’s earliest white explorers, George Young Bradley of the Powell expedition of 1869. “Hardly a bird save the ill-omened raven or an occasional eagle screaming over us; one feels a sense of loneliness as he looks on.”

The only evidence of human impact during our visit 150 years later is the trail itself and a couple of kayakers making fanning ripples as they paddle along Bradley’s path southward toward what is now Arizona. Actually, another sign that men preceded us here is the bushy tamarisk that lines the riverbanks as dense as thick, green dykes. It’s a water-loving Mediterranean plant brought in decades ago to reduce bank erosion, but now the park service is trying to hack back the pervasive weed to give the cottonwoods and other native flora a chance to return.

The Suzuki scooted—“bounded is a better word,” insisted Logan—like a giddy jack rabbit deep into this eroded, crumbling landscape of natural splendor tinged by man-made folly. A 1987 Samurai is as close as the modern industry will likely ever get to producing a faithful replica of the World War II jeep. The axles are two small logs suspended by the cutest little leaf springs you ever saw. They are hitched together through a two-speed transfer case engaged with a stubby shifter that almost certainly was rarely touched by the yuppies and Aqua Netted prom queens who first drove these off dealership lots. Ditto the manual hub locks that engage the front axle. The only electronics are the ones controlling the carburetor (of the three trucks, only the Toyota is injected) sitting atop the 1.3-liter gerbil wheel that moves it.

The Samurai’s five-speed (natch) has the requisite gearing spread needed to put all of its 63 horsepower to good use. The Suzuki doesn’t weigh much, just a little over 2000 pounds, so it doesn’t need much. The fuel tank hides 10.6 gallons behind a skid plate, and after two days and 70 miles of rough going, often in four-low, the gauge showed just under half a tank consumed, though the 4Runner and Montero were down to a few gallons.

The Suzuki’s thrift partly makes up for the fact that it has the roughest ride of the three. Rolling over the knottiest stuff, your speeds are cut to a crawl lest the Samurai seizure itself to pieces. “I need a better bra for this,” grumped Woodward after a stint at the tiller, and she beelined back to her cushier Montero. Compared to the other two trucks, which are frolic-mobiles aimed at young outdoorsy types, the Montero is the adult in the room. Also formerly marketed here as the Dodge Raider, the severely upright and slightly uptight Montero is all business, a versatile, shockproof United Nations fleet car built more for ferrying aid workers into the malaria-infested far corners than whisking American moms to the mall.

Badged as the Pajero, the name it wears outside of the U.S., the Montero won the Paris-Dakar Rally 15 times, more than any other four-wheeled vehicle. They sold many more 4Runners here, and everyone thinks the Samurai is adorbs, but only one of these trucks comes with an international racing pedigree. It was also the one sold in the most variations, there being two-and four-door models, a 2.6-liter four-cylinder or a 3.0-liter V-6, and a choice of automatic or manual transmissions.

As with all Toyota trucks of the ’80s, the 4Runner feels almost like a sports car compared to today’s mastodons. You sit practically on the floor, legs and arms out, as if in a Celica on stilts. The shifter is so tall and light that two fingers move it without straining. The only truck in our group with power retractable rear glass also has a four-pot, the famous 22R, as suffused with a reputation for reliability as it is with torque. The long wheelbase offers plenty of squish and forgiveness—or at least it feels so compared to the bucking Suzuki. Lots of people have jacked up these things over the years with monster springs and tires. In the process, a pleasant desert roamer was lost.

Locked in low, our three little trucks ambled and bounced like radio-controlled Tamiya buggies playing in a huge sandbox, eventually scaling a steep and broken incline to our first campsite. Everything inside was tossed, and when the photographer opened the Montero’s large side-hinged door to retrieve a lens, one of our plastic water jugs came tumbling out and cracked open on the rock. Quick action stemmed the jug’s loss at 50 percent, but out in the remote canyons, in 33-year-old trucks bought on the cheap, the water supply was never far from mind.

Here at Murphy’s Hogback, the Murphy brothers, Jack, Tom, and Otho—who wrote a book in 1965 about the old pioneer days called The Moab Story—ran cattle around the time of World War I. A long foot trail leads to Murphy’s Point, where the family once occupied a dirt-floor log cabin with gobsmacking views to the west over the Maze district and its byzantine complex of interwoven slot canyons. One time, Maw Murphy was said to have thrown boiling water through a window into the face of the local chief to keep him from beating a woman. He came by the next day to tell her that she was “heap brave woman.”

The sun sank behind the distant Orange Cliffs while we fried up black beans and tortillas and told our own stories of vistas so dazzling that they can turn a pair of brown eyes blue, and of a few hairy moments where trucks teetered on two wheels. The stars switched on one by one until the whole sky was paved with diamond dust.

As the eyes must adjust to a tranquil darkness that is uncommon in our modern age, so, too, must the ears adapt to the blanketing silence of Utah’s canyon country. Here, you can gaze out across 25 miles of the earth’s surface and hear nothing but your own circulatory system. The muted peace and the slight night chill meant that sleep came fast and deep in our tents.

In the morning, we discovered the tracks—not of the bighorn sheep that roam the area, but of nocturnal furry souls that had inspected our vehicles inside out and from bumper to bumper in the night. Judging by the number of tiny paw prints in its layer of dust, the Suzuki’s engine had hosted a raging rodent convention. We packed up and carried on, eager to leave before the critters discovered that ’80s trucks have tasty wiring.

We reached the halfway point at White Crack, parked the trucks, and hiked out along an increasingly narrow spine of bleached rock to where it ended as giant geologic mushrooms towering over the lower basins of Island in the Sky. Somewhere unseen down in the deep gulches in front of us, the Green River collided with and donated its silty waters to the mighty Colorado. If you were a pinyon jay, you could fly from White Crack to an overlook viewpoint in two minutes to see the convergence yourself. As a human, you would need to drive 155 miles from this spot, including scaling Elephant Hill, one of the most tortuous four-wheeling trails in the national park system, then hike a mile to the overlook. Such is the tourist conundrum posed by this harsh and undeveloped terrain.

Having crossed over to the Colorado River side of the plateau, we trundled on at about 6 mph, going against the occasional traffic. Most people do the trail in a clockwise direction, from the Colorado River to the Green River side. Some heavily modified Wranglers painted in the same arclight colors as cans of energy drink came roaring up to us in a billow of dust from their 33-inchers. Kindly, they usually ground to a stop and let our convoy pass. We got one or two vigorous thumbs up, but most Jeepers, ensconced in their air-conditioned rock chariots and blasting their iTunes, just looked on in pity. This isn’t like your local cars and coffee; by and large, you don’t get points in the four-wheeling world for head-bobbing your way slowly along a trail in vintage stock equipment. Everyone wants to go faster.

We made it to our final campsite at the bottom of a thousand-foot wall into which a switchback road had been cut, known as the Shafer Trail. An old stock trail named for brothers Frank and John Shafer, who moved to Moab in 1878, the Shafer was remade in the uranium boom into a shelf road that leads travelers up off the White Rim and back toward Moab—and a shower. It is an acrophobe’s nightmare, the road at points about a Jeep-and-a-half wide, skirting what seems like a bottomless drop-off into a horseshoe-shaped chasm, which opens out to a gripping view of the frosted 12,000-foot peaks of the La Sal Range. It is, as Abbey said, the most beautiful place on earth.

We met up and camped with friends who were supposed to join us for the whole trip in an older Lexus GX470 set up for overlanding, but the rig had blown out an air shock on a trail near Arches National Park a couple days earlier and was stranded in Moab getting repairs. They seemed happy to be with us for one night at least, but in the darkness, the rodents became more daring, somehow penetrating the sealed-up Lexus and raiding its snack bin. We took it as a sign to retreat back to civilization, shaking the dust out as we went. Months later, Logan texted, “There’s still red streaks coming out of the seams every time I wash it. It will never be clean again.”

Toyota’s original fun-time SUV is, amazingly, still in production, still riding on the same platform as the contemporary compact pickup, and still a capable off-roader when optioned for dirt. But it’s no longer cheap, its base price starting above $36,000. Mitsubishi invested heavily in the Montero and reaped hearty sales with it through three generations, until the company lost interest in being cool and authentic and dumped the truck from its U.S. lineup in 2006.

Likewise, the Samurai yielded in 1995 to low sales and mounting lawsuits for its supposed tendency to roll over in accidents. Its replacement, the Suzuki Sidekick and Vitara, soldiered on until Suzuki quit the American car market altogether in 2012. However, the Samurai lives on elsewhere under its original name, the Jimny, and a redesigned version of this cheap and tough little off-roader debuted last year in overseas markets.

We hope Suzuki will find the gumption to return to the U.S. with it. In the meantime, we’ll be returning ourselves to this place, because no matter how many times you come to Utah’s canyon country, the itch is never fully scratched.

1987 Suzuki Samurai

Engine Inline-4, 1324 cc

Power 63 hp @ 6500 rpm

Torque 76 lb-ft @ 3500 rpm

Weight 2100 lb

Fuel tank 10.5 gal

Tires 205/70-15

Price when new $6950

Hagerty #2 value $10,000–$14,000

1987 Mitsubishi Montero

Engine Inline-4, 2555 cc

Power 106 hp @ 5000 rpm

Torque 142 lb-ft @ 2500 rpm

Weight 3260 lb

Fuel tank 15.9 gal

Tires 225/75-15

Price when new $10,409

Hagerty #2 value $11,500–$15,000

1987 Toyota 4Runner

Engine Inline-4, 2366 cc

Power 116 hp @ 4800 rpm

Torque 140 lb-ft @ 2800 rpm

Weight 3520 lb

Fuel tank 17.1 gal

Tires 225/75-15

Price when new $14,558

Hagerty #2 value $15,000–$20,500

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Brace yourselves, folks: The Subaru 22B STi you’re looking at just sold for $172,000 at the Silverstone Classic Online Auction. We covered this 22B in detail earlier this month, when we predicted the car would sell above its high estimate of $101,000, but none of us expected the 22B to best that figure by 63 percent. The chance to pick up a clean 22B doesn’t come around often, so conditions were ripe for a bidding war.

As auction-savvy readers know, modern Japanese sports cars have been on a tear recently. The 22B is prime example. The final sale price of £130,500 ($172,000 after buyers premium and VAT) was 78 percent higher than the 22B of comparable quality that sold at Silverstone in 2016. A 78 percent increase in value over the last four years shouldn’t be that surprising to anyone who’s been watching the Japanese collector market. Why? In that same time, the #1-condition (Concours) values for a 1997 Toyota Supra Turbo increased by 80 percent—from $77,500 to $139,000—while the 1996 Mazda RX-7 increased a whopping 161 percent, from $24,700 to $64,400. There are dozens of modern Japanese cars that have followed the same trajectory.

This Subaru 22B was probably a very smart buy—even at $172,000. As mentioned in an earlier article, the 22B isn’t legal to import into the U.S. until March 2023. The U.S. is obsessed with JDM imports, and these cars typically increase in value as soon as they are driven off the ship. Since the earliest Nissan Skyline R32 GT-Rs were legal to import in 2015, the value for an #2-condition (Excellent) 1989 Nissan Skyline GT-R has increased 46 percent, from $35,000 to $51,200. We’ve been keeping a close eye on the amount of Nissan Skyline imports, and when comparing the first two years of legal import for each generation, the newly legal Skyline R33 has outpaced the R32 in number of cars imported.

This is a sign that America’s love of JDM imports isn’t cooling anytime soon; it’s very likely that the first 22B to be sold in America will break the $200,000 barrier. Mark your calendars for 2023 …

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Has the Nissan Skyline R32 already peaked in popularity? Will the middle-child R33 become even more popular than its predecessor? What will happen when the R34 finally reaches the 25-year threshold? We counted chassis numbers in import records to give you JDM-loving maniacs the answers you seek.

The Nissan Skyline is one of the most popular enthusiast vehicles to be privately imported. While most Americans first encountered the Skyline as the similarly-platformed Infiniti G35 in 2003 or as the modern GT-R supercar in 2008, it had been a performance icon in Japan for decades. The import story, however, begins with the R32 generation.

Launched in 1989, the R32 brought back the GT-R variant with a twin-turbo 2.6-liter inline six-cylinder engine and advanced all-wheel drive. Those features helped it dominate in racing around the world, where it earned the name Godzilla. It also became a star in video games of the era, seeding the appetite for future enthusiasts worldwide, but especially in the U.S.

Despite the Skyline’s popularity here among enthusiasts—especially younger generations—the federal government’s ban on importing cars younger than 25 years old rendered them out of reach. That meant that many fans who wanted one had to wait, sometimes for many years. The generational split is apparent in Hagerty insurance policy quotes, where millennials have a 20 percent share for overall vehicles but generate nearly 80 percent of policy quotes for Skylines.

The R32 finally became eligible for import in 2014. Since then the R32 has proved popular, with at least 1900 examples now driving on the right side of the road in the U.S. This fountain of demand in a hungry market for the Skyline has even inspired Nissan to start reintroducing parts for the earlier generations.

According to import records, though, the market has already moved on from the new-hotness of the R32. Notably, examining how many of each generation was imported in its first two years of eligibility, the R33 generation has already eclipsed the R32’s initial fever. The total number of imports of those two generations are now approaching 2200. By comparison, if you’re wondering how desire for these classic Skylines compares to new models, Nissan sold fewer than 5000 of the new GT-R over the same period.

With demand growing for the R33 and supplies dwindling for the R32, values for the R32 GT-R have held up. Values have increased gradually since 2015, posting an average gain of 30 percent as supply has adapted to meet demand. In good condition, a 1989 Nissan Skyline GT-R is up from $25,000 in September 2015 to $34,900 as of May 2020.

One of the features that makes the Skyline so popular as an import is its wide variety of specs and styles. While the GT-R tends to get the most attention and is the most popular R32 import, single-turbo, 2.0-liter, 2.5-liter, rear-wheel-drive, and four-door variants are also popular as imports. The second-most-popular R32 behind the top-dog GT-R is the GTS-T, which has a 2.0-liter engine and rear-wheel drive, but about half as many examples have been imported to these shores when compared to the GT-R. Within the R33 generation, the GTS-25t (2.5-liter and RWD) is more popular than the GT-R, but this may skewed in the data because it has been import-eligible for longer.

The R34 also continues to trickle into the country, perhaps going into storage until it reaches its 25th birthday. Regarded as the most desirable generation, the anticipation for the R34 is building. Prices for examples in desirable specs and in excellent condition have gotten as high as $316,500.

Since 2014, awareness of the excitement around Japanese collectibles has greatly increased. Few examples of the R32 and R33 were imported so far ahead of the 25-year threshold, so when the R34 reaches that mark in 2024, expect Godzilla’s return to make waves.

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A Subaru 22B STi is finally coming up for auction, a rare event that will have collectors and fans of ’90s Japanese performance paying close attention. For the uninitiated: the 22B is perhaps the most desirable and beloved vehicle in Subaru’s history. In fact, the 22B is so iconic for the seven-star brand that one stole the spotlight from the WRX STi S209 that launched at the 2019 Detroit auto show. Unlike the 341-horsepower STI S209, which is only offered in the U.S. (finally we get the fastest version of a Japanese car) the 22B was a limited-production monster only sold in a few right-hand-drive countries.

Why don’t we see more 22Bs at auction, though?

For one, the cars are very rare. A total of only 424 22Bs were produced—400 for the Japanese market (all of which have a number plate on the center console), an additional 21 for Australia and the U.K. (no number plates), and three prototypes (with number plates reading “000/400”). Another reason they’re seldom up for auction: 22Bs can’t be imported to America, where most live auctions take place, because of the federal 25-year rule.

This 22B offered at the Silverstone Classic online auction at the end of July is #326 of the 400 JDM cars. It was imported to the U.K. in 1998, and overall, the car is in fantastic condition with 30,000 miles on the odometer. It’s been through three owners, the most recent of which owned the car for the last 16 years. Excellent documentation provides information dating back to its initial import. This type of condition is not uncommon for a 22B, considering how collectible they were the minute they were sold new in 1998. Subaru reportedly sold out of all 400 JDM 22Bs in 30 minutes.

Horsepower was rated at 276 from factory, per the Japanese automakers’ “gentleman’s agreement” to not exceed that figure on production cars, but it’s rumored the 22B produced north of 300 horsepower. This 22B has been lightly modified with an upgraded ECU and hand-built exhaust system with a massive tailpipe, resulting in 336 horsepower according to an included dyno sheet.

The auction house is listing an estimate of £70,000–£80,000 ($88,500–$101,000), but we’re expecting this 22B to sell toward the high end of that range, if not above. In 2016, car #307 sold at Silverstone for £73,125 (roughly $100,000 at the time). Though #307 was a factory stock example with only 2500 miles, it was involved in a crash that required replacement of two body parts but resulted in no structural damage. (The ownership by world featherweight champion “Prince” Naseem Hamed probably made up for any value lost in the crash.)

The 22B, with its wide-body fender flares, massive wing, and striking WRC Blue paint over gold BBS wheels is what a lot of enthusiasts picture when they think Subaru. Although Subaru has become a household name, that wasn’t always the case. In the early 1990s, Subaru accounted for less than 1 percent of total U.S. car sales. Subaru’s market share bottomed out at 0.63 percent in 1995.

As Subaru won three consecutive World Rally Championships from 1995–97, the brand’s market share increased to 1 percent. For 1998, the 22B STi was built to commemorate Subaru’s WRC success. That same year, the American market got the Impreza 2.5 RS—a watered down version of the WRX that provided the base for the 22B. By 2001, when the 2.5 RS finished production, Subaru’s market share continued to grow, and enthusiasm for the 22B and 2.5 RS convinced Subaru to offer the WRX in America. It wasn’t until the WRX STi arrived in 2004 that Subaru sales—driven largely by the Outback and Forester—started to take off. In the 15 years that followed, Subaru’s market share skyrocketed, and the WRX STi became an integral part of America’s enthusiast car culture.

Subaru is especially loved by younger enthusiasts in the U.S., who grew up as fans of Subaru’s WRC success and crazy fast, all-wheel-drive compacts. Using Hagerty insurance quotes as a sign of buying intent, millennials are major drivers of the collector Subaru market, accounting for a staggering 65 percent of the interest in the WRX STi. Gen X follows with 27 percent of STi quotes, while baby boomers show almost no interest at all. The Subaru STi is already considered a classic by younger generations and demand will continue to grow as these buyers age into their car collecting years.

Since the $100,000 22B sale in 2016, modern Japanese performance cars have greatly increased in value. In the May 2016, the value of a Concours (#1-condition) 1997 Toyota Supra Turbo (Mk IV) was only $77,500. Since then, several Mk IV Supras have sold for over $100,000 and the Hagerty Price Guide value has risen 80 percent to $139,000. In fact, the average value for an Excellent (#2-condition) 2004–07 Subaru WRX STi has increased 53 percent in that same stretch of time, from $22,080 to $33,820.

Japanese cars have been on fire in the market and show no signs of slowing down. Now is a tempting time to buy a 22B, especially before these cars begin to become legal for import to the U.S. in March of 2023. Next to the R34 Nissan Skyline GT-R, the 22B is likely the most anticipated car that is for now out of legal reach under the 25-year rule.

I, for one, can’t wait… Anyone need a kidney?

The post As a Subaru STI 22B heads to U.K. auction, 2023 can’t arrive soon enough appeared first on Hagerty Media.

We can all agree mid-engine cars are awesome. However, if you’re in the market for a mid-engine car that won’t break your budget, there aren’t many options. Among most mid-engine models, you will need to sacrifice reliability or performance to get a good deal. That’s not the case with the second-generation Toyota MR2 (SW20). Where else can you get supercar-tier performance, legendary build quality, and everyday practicality, all packaged in a timeless design?

Let’s dig deeper to figure out what makes this car so great. 

The SW20 Toyota MR2 was sold new starting in 1990, right after the original MR2 ended production. Although Toyota produced the car until 1999, North America only received the 1991–95 model years; but the MR2 we got was truly remarkable.

The original MR2 set lofty expectations, so when the time came to build a new model, Toyota had to put its hand to the proverbial plow. Toyota designers rose to the challenge, determined to address the MR2’s flaws and build on its strengths. The new MR2 was made more spacious and luxurious than its predecessor, and those improvements made the MR2 much more livable with an impressive 6.5 cubic feet^­ of cargo volume—a 30 percent increase over the original MR2.

The extra space and luxury came at a price; the SW20 is the heaviest of the three MR2 generations. The SW20 MR2 Turbo weighed nearly 2900 pounds—a whole 400 pounds more than the heaviest Mk I trim and 700 pounds above the MR2 Spider that followed. Thankfully, Toyota offset the extra weight with more power.

Engineers once again utilized forced induction to squeeze the most out of the little four-cylinder, deciding to swap the original MR2’s supercharger for a turbo. The SW20 MR2 Turbo made 200 hp and 200 pound-feet of torque from the turbocharged and intercooled 2.0-liter 3S-GTE inline-four. (Toyota diehards will recognize that engine from the Celica GT-Four, a homologation special that dominated Group A Rally in the early ’90s.) In the MR2 Turbo, the 3S-GTE was good for a 6.1-second sprint to 60 mph and 14.7 second quarter-mile—not bad for 1991.

The wedged styling of the SW20 MR2 has aged well. Even 30 years later, the car doesn’t look out of place. The popup headlights and T-top roof are reminiscent of the times but still modern. The side vents, a characteristic of most mid-engine cars, are functional—air is fed to the intercooler through the passenger-side vent, while the engine breathes from an intake in the driver-side vent.

Due to the strakes in the side vents and other Italian-derived styling cues, the SW20 MR2 was often called “the poor man’s Ferrari,” but Toyota got the last laugh. The MR2 Turbo for the Japanese market was eventually tuned to 242 hp and could lay down a 13.1-second quarter mile, outrunning the Ferrari 348, NSX, and Supra Twin-Turbo of the time. Since the North American MR2 Turbo only topped out at 200 hp, we can again complain that America didn’t get the best version of a Japanese sports car—but what else is new? We shouldn’t whine too much, because Europe was never offered the Turbo model and only ever saw a naturally aspirated MR2.

By now, you’ve probably opened a Craigslist tab to search for a good MR2. Here are a few pointers in your quest. First, don’t be shocked by the price. You can expect to pay anywhere from $8000 for a #3-condition (Good) non-turbo example all the way up to $35,000 for concours-quality turbo MR2, but it’s worth it.

Like all 1990s Toyotas, the SW20 MR2 is extremely reliable. However, if you need to do any engine work, be prepared for a time-consuming process. In order to fit the engine neatly between the axles, Toyota was forced to package some parts out of reach. A notorious example are the coolant hoses on Turbo models, which are buried deep within the engine compartment and surrounded by many other parts. They have been dubbed the “Hoses from Hell” by the MR2 community, because they essentially require an engine-out service to replace.

Even though the engines were bulletproof, the SW20 MR2 suffered a high attrition rate. The SW20 MR2 was prone to snap-oversteer, which occurs when a driver enters a corner too quickly and lifts off the throttle mid-corner, shifting the weight forward. As the rear tires loose traction, the rear weight bias of the MR2 causes the back end to swing out. If the driver over-corrects, the heavy rear of the MR2 will snap back and send the car into a spin. (Watch the black MR2 in front of the driver in this video.) Snap oversteer isn’t really a problem if you’re a Formula 1 driver like Dan Gurney (who helped Toyota engineers fine-tune the handling of the first two MR2 generations), but the MR2 was many owners’ first mid-engine car. Combined with a novice driver, an MR2’s worst enemy was a tree.

The overbuilt transaxle, large catalog of aftermarket performance parts, and “used-car” purchase price made the SW20 a prime candidate for tuning. This also attracted young, inexperienced drivers who would spin them into ditches. It can be very difficult to find a clean, unmodified example, and if you find one, make sure you know the car’s history.

In a response to the MR2’s snap oversteer, Toyota revised the suspension and added wider tires for the 1993 model year. Proving you can never make everyone happy, some journalists claimed the changes neutered the wild character of the MR2 and that snap oversteer could be handled with better driver response; after all, it’s a common issue in most mid-/rear-engine cars. Toyota stuck by its revisions, claiming that the changes were made “for drivers whose reflexes were not those of Formula 1 drivers.”

The Honda S2000 crowd argues over the virtues of AP1 versus AP2 cars; fans of the SW20 debate whether the 1991–92 or the 1993–95 MR2s are superior. MR2s produced before the 1993 revisions are considered a purer interpretation of the designers’ original intent; post-revision MR2s are less common and offer larger brakes and a viscous limited-slip-differential. Only about 19 percent of the SW20 MR2s imported to the U.S. were post-revision cars. Due to its rarity, a post-revision MR2 Turbo in #2 (Excellent) condition carries a 26.6 percent premium over a pre-revision Turbo ($23,800 vs. $18,800).

On average, naturally-aspirated models are worth a little more than half a Turbo ($12,300 vs. $22,500 for #2-condition 1993 MR2 models). Additional power and lower production numbers are the main factors in the Turbo’s premium, but this model also came with some additional features. Along with bigger brakes, raised engine vents, and fog lamps, Turbo models got an extra interior storage compartment between the two seats. Other than cost savings, there isn’t a clear reason why this compartment wasn’t offered on the naturally aspirated models.

Like the Turbo model, naturally aspirated post-revision cars are worth a little more—4 percent for a #2-condition car. For the 1994–95 model years, naturally aspirated models were tuned for an additional 5 hp, resulting in an additional 6 percent premium. Expect to pay around $13,000 for a 1994–95 naturally aspirated MR2.

The SW20 MR2 is gaining momentum in the market. Since January 2020, #2-condition Turbo models saw a 25 percent value increase in the Hagerty Price Guide. In that same time, price lookups on Hagerty Valuation Tools increased 55 percent. Using insurance quotes as a sign of interest, the SW20 MR2 has seen consistent growth over the last year, with a 22 percent increase. Millennials show the most interest, making up 55 percent of quotes—Gen-X follows at 31 percent.

Toyota didn’t officially make any limited-production versions of the SW20, but there were a few factory-modified versions that will soon be legal to import. Starting in 1998, Toyota Racing Development (TRD) offered an official body kit and tuning that transformed a stock MR2 into a widebody TRD2000GT clone—paying homage to the GT-C Japanese series race car of the same name. No two TRD2000GTs are the same, as customers could select which additional engine, suspension, and interior upgrades they wanted. Less than 50 of these cars were built, each receiving a new TRD VIN plate. It’s possible to buy a replica TRD widebody kit, but these cars won’t have a real TRD VIN.

It’s rumored that with full TRD performance upgrades, the TRD2000GT MR2 produced over 500 hp and weighed under 2500 pounds. Let me know if you’re lucky enough to find a real one.

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Until the late 1950s, the world motorcycle market was dominated by British companies. Their products were known for large, thumping single or twin-cylinder engines that marked their territory with oil drops, but this was standard 1950s motorcycle operating procedure. In the 1950s, however, another country emerged to challenge the U.K.

A new league of contenders from Japan developed a reputation for being affordable, reliable, and easy to ride—the quintessential everywoman or everyman’s motorcycle. Several of the most popular models hailed from Honda, which produced small, economical bikes such as the Dream, the Cub, and the Superhawk. These bikes were perfect for commuting or running errands around town, but in general they sacrificed speed for usability.

In 1969 Honda changed its tune and put serious power in the hands of consumers. The new CB750 Four was the first production motorcycle with an inline-four engine and disc brakes and the first motorcycle called a “superbike.” It has now become known as one of the most important motorcycles ever made and, at a time when British motorcycle values are stumbling, the long-undervalued Japanese bikes are racing ahead.

Though it would produce over 430,000 motorcycles by the time the single overhead cam (SOHC) CB750 generation ended in 1978, Honda wasn’t initially confident that the CB750 would be a success. So, the company hedged its bets and decided not to invest in expensive diecast molds for the engines. The first 7414 CB750s had gravity-cast engine cases with a rough finish, and these are now known as “sandcast” CB750s. Many owners of these first 7414 motorcycles have had to replace the bikes’ cases due to weak castings, broken chains, and other mishaps; an original numbers-matching sandcast CB750 is the holy grail of production CB750s. Other features unique to the sandcast bikes include straight-cut fender edges, nuts on the back of the mirrors (to attach to the stems), wrinkles in the gas tank below the filler cap, and 10 bolts on the clutch cover, not 11.

Honda introduced numerous changes, both major and minor, over the nine-year run of the SOHC CB750. Each new model, in fact, correlated to a given model year and was designated “K” followed by a zero (the first model, 1969) to eight (the last model, 1978). The 1969–1976 (K0–K6) models are largely similar, but the 1977 and 1978 (K7 and K8) models look very different from their predecessors. These later models are also worth about 35 percent less, despite boasting some of the lowest production numbers of the model range.

Additionally, Honda introduced the CB750F Supersport in 1975 as a sportier, updated alternative to the CB750K models, and the CB750A Hondamatic, a detuned and clutchless version of the CB750K, in 1976. Despite being the sportier model, the CB750F is now worth about 40 percent less than a CB750 K6 and 30 percent less than the redesigned K7. The Hondamatic is worth about 25 percent less than the Supersport.

CB750 values have more than doubled in the last five years, and, while some may argue the bikes are now expensive, others will content they are finally worth what they deserve. In past years, you could snag an original running and riding example for $2500; now, the same motorcycle will cost you over $6000. Unlike some of the other ’70s superbikes like the Kawasaki H2, the CB750 doesn’t carry a definite premium for certain colors, and the Honda’s values don’t fluctuate much for the K1-K6 models besides dropping a few hundred dollars for each year newer.

Sandcast K0 values have always been high, and perfect original ones have achieved $40K since the mid-2010s. The #1-condition (Concours) value of a sandcast CB750 is $44,500 or 125 percent more than a diecast CB750 K0, and this figure held fairly steady while non-sandcast values shot up in recent years. At the most recent Mecum Las Vegas motorcycle auction week (held in January of 2020), there were twenty-four CB750s on offer, six of them sandcasts.

Once again, the market proved stable. Five of the six sandcasts sold for a median price of $24,200 and a Vic World restoration broke the $40K mark, a level that seems to be the ceiling for Sandcasts over the last few years. The norm for restored non-sandcast models hovered around $12K–$13K and a K3 model even broke $17K. The current record for a CB750 is for a prototype sold at a 2018 H and H auction in the UK for $218,792.

Demand for ’70s Japanese motorcycles remains healthy. The Mecum Vegas auction sets the annual mood for the motorcycle market, and Bring a Trailer sales confirm the 2020 CB750 market is stronger than that of 2019. Across the unmodified CB750s sold on Bring a Trailer in 2020, the average price is 56 percent higher than in 2019 and there have been 57 percent more sold in 2020 so far than all of 2019.

Details can make a disproportionate difference to values of a particular model. For example, collectors look for the original four-into-four exhausts that have become one of the CB750’s most recognizable characteristics. These exhausts rusted out at the header muffler weld and many often tossed; an original exhaust adds upwards of $1K to a bike’s value. Original mufflers will be stamped “HM300” by the passenger footpeg (those on early K0 models, including the sandcast examples, will be unstamped).

Whether they are expensive now or previously undervalued, there’s no denying that CB750 values are on the rise and buyers are taking note of these Hondas’ collectability. Most enthusiasts have space for at least one motorcycle in their garage, whether they ride it or not, and the CB750 is a great candidate. It is one of the most iconic and important motorcycles ever made, and it’s reliable and a joy to ride. With values climbing, now may be the perfect time to satisfy that opening in your garage.

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Think of all the possibilities. You could haul smaller items using a kei-sized Japanese fire truck with a pickup bed, and when it comes to the more complex fire-fighting offerings of Duncan Imports & Classic Cars, you could use one to water your plants all around the estate. Red vehicles are officially faster than those sporting lesser shades, and when it comes to rarity, it’s not like your friends could roll up in a 1993 Daihatsu HiJet Deck Van fire truck.

Gary Duncan’s Virginia-based JDM heaven is perhaps America’s most well-known source of odd Japanese-market vehicles, and when it comes to small fire trucks, it’s not even a competition. Currently, Duncan Imports has nine decommissioned Japanese fire warriors for sale, priced $7900–$17,900.

How about a 1989 Mitsubishi MiniCab 4WD?

Four-speed manual, less than 4000 miles, four-wheel drive. A pinnacle of the kei class at a reasonable price. Perhaps you’d rather a 1993 Daihatsu HiJet Deck Van? Three-cylinder power with a four-speed, also available in the 1995 flatbed edition with a five-speed. Need something bigger, like a 1992–93 Toyota Hyace? Go wild, there are three waiting for you in Virginia.

Also playing in that class is a 1994 Nissan Atlas-based fire truck packing a beefy 2.7-liter four-cylinder with 9929 miles in it. However, real connoisseurs will no doubt be looking for Datsuns instead of Nissans, regardless of how cool this 1986 six-cylinder Nissan Safari 4WD is.

Behold, the equally Nissan-based and four-wheel drive 1988 Datsun fire truck. A checkered tan interior, a usable pickup bed with racks, a paint job as red as the rising sun on the Japanese flag.

Be prepared, drive small, conquer all. Frankly, it’s time you had a JDM fire truck.

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Down in southwestern Virginia’s New River Valley, there lies more than a few wonders and sights to behold. Of course, there’s Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, where 65,000 fans gather every Saturday from September to November to jump to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” for their beloved Hokies football team in Lane Stadium. The skies above the independent city of Radford are sometimes visited by fighter jets, likely looking down upon the Radford Army Ammunition Plant while pilots from the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy train to defend our great nation.

Down below, Saturday night heroes thunder around the half-mile Motor Mile Speedway in Fairdale, while new Volvo trucks roll out of Pulaski to their new homes away from the road. Over in Giles County’s Mountain Lake Lodge, no one is put in a corner while having the time of their lives in the place where Dirty Dancing was filmed, and musicians from around the country gather inside the Floyd Country Store in Floyd for a Friday night jamboree unlike any other.

And then there’s Christiansburg, “the place to be” and the place I call home. For most, the town is notable for its bustling commercial district in the north end of town. For car fans like us, though, the town of 21,000 holds the largest collection of Japanese domestic market machines in North America: Duncan Imports & Classic Cars.

“It came unexpectedly [in] December of 2015,” said Gary Duncan, the owner and dealer principle of Duncan Imports, “when I saw my first Nissan S-Cargo, and my first little fire truck. The next thing I knew, I was dealing with an importer and people in Japan. I started buying so many, the importer said, ‘I can’t handle you anymore. I’m going to let you buy straight from Japan.’”

As far as JDM vehicles go, Duncan says he sells a lot of mini trucks, like the Honda Acty and Mitsubishi MiniCab, as well as right-hand-drive vans and SUVs, which go on to move everything from hay bales to stacks of mail.

However, he also has gathered more than a few Nissan Figaros under the roof of his 110,000-square-foot warehouse. The little kei car with retro-modern styling existed for one year (1991) during the Bubble Era, with just 20,000 ever assembled. And now, you can take home a Figaro from his massive warehouse tucked a quarter-mile away from the many dealerships (including a few of his family’s) and restaurants along Roanoke Street.

“When I was in Japan [in 1989], I went to the Tokyo Motor Show,” said Duncan. “I saw the Figaro then, and knew it was going to be a winner. But I couldn’t bring ’em in for 25 years, so I now buy all I can buy. They were only made [for] one year, and [Nissan] only made 20,000 of ’em.”

Since the 25-year delay ended on importation of the Figaro, Duncan says he’s brought over 200 of the cars, including 110 currently housed in the space. Once he buys a Figaro (or any JDM car), it takes 60 days to bring them over, then another week to get them ready.

Most of the Figaros are purchased by young women looking for a cute car to drive, including the wife of NASCAR star Joey Lagano, who also love the pastel colors it wears; each of the four colors draped upon the Figaro—Topaz Mist, Emerald Green, Pale Aqua, and Lapis Grey—represent one of the four seasons as they are depicted in Japan.

All of the Figaros in Duncan’s warehouse were assembled at Nissan’s “Pike Factory,” otherwise known as Aichi Machine Industry, alongside the company’s other retro-modern wonders, including the Be-1, Pao, and S-Cargo; he has those cars in stock, too. The cars, based on the first-gen Micra, were designed by Naoki Sakai and Shoji Takahashi, the former going on to design Toyota’s own retro-modern WiLL cars in the late ’90s through the early 2000s.

Their boyfriends pining away for a Skyline, though, will have to ask for one, as Duncan doesn’t import too many of the Fast and Furious rides, due mainly to the car’s popularity, the abuse and modifications they go through in their home market, and the resulting jumps in price.

The Skylines Duncan does buy aren’t the hardcore models (which can be more than $30,000 to start) but are more affordable in the $15,000 range. Those cars, like all of the others he imports, are unmodded machines with their OEM parts intact, as he wants them “as close as they were born” as possible.

“It feels like I’m crazy,” said Duncan. “I’m not telling you it’s the smartest move. It’s working right now, but if we have a tariff, or if the demand goes away, it could end as easily as it started.”

The space for all of those Figaros, Skylines, and other vehicles was once a children’s furniture store owned by one of Ducan’s friends. Like the business in the space now, his friend’s business was an importer, bringing in goods from China and Vietnam. Following a buyout of his friend’s business from a conglomerate in 2015, Duncan bought the space to open his now-famous JDM car dealership in 2016.

Since then, the popularity of his business has spawned a second dealership, this one in Smyrna, Tennessee, not far from where Nissan builds the Altima, Maxima, and Infiniti QX60. Duncan says the location is smaller than the one in Christiansburg and is a partnership with himself and the former general manager of Duncan Acura in nearby Roanoke. According to The Roanoke Times, the new dealership occupies a 40,000-square-foot space, where 200 cars will go, nine at a time via carrier.

“We’re anxious to see, when we get near Nashville, what the difference will be,” said Duncan. “Christiansburg is off the beaten path. Unless people are travelling [on I-81], this is way out of the way. Still, we’re glad to have it here. It’s ‘down home,’ if you will, and that’s the way we are. I have had one PR guy say, ‘It’s a shame you’re not in Los Angeles or somewhere.’ That’s okay; we ship all over the country and the world, so it don’t matter.”

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A friend of mine is deep into tokusatsu and kaiju, the genre of Japanese sci-fi movies and television shows that gave us the likes of Godzilla and Ultraman. In 1967, the Tokyo Broadcasting System commissioned producer/director Eiji Tsuburaya to create a sequel to Ultraman. The spinoff was eventually named Ultra-Seven, for the team of seven astronauts (the Terrestrial Defense Force) that protected the Earth from alien invaders, sometimes with the help of superpowers and Earth’s monsters. Forty-nine episodes of the serial were broadcast, and the show remains popular.

This was the era of the original James Bond films as well as the campy Batman series starring Adam West, so, naturally, the Ultra-Seven team had a special car at its disposal. Knowing my interest in movie and television cars, my friend brought over a 1:32 scale model for me to check out.

That car was labeled the “TDF PO-1,” familiar to Ultra-Seven fans as the “Pointer 1” and known to those both inside and outside Japan as the “Japanese Batmobile.” Like George Barris’ creation for the Caped Crusader, the radically shaped Pointer was equipped with superhero-worthy options, including twin retractable Ultra Missile launchers in the back windows, each loaded with three rockets; some kind of advanced lighting called the Perspective Ray Light, which was mounted to the front of the Pointer along with a Ray Gun; and, of course, an auxiliary jet engine that allowed the car to fly for short flights and hover over land and water. As far as defensive measures went, the Japanese Batmobile sported a lightwave barrier system, a smokescreen generator, and bullet-resistant tires. Top speed was supposed to be more than 225 mph (in autopilot mode).

Since Ultra-Seven was a live-action show, the show producers had a full-size Pointer fabricated to use on screen. As with the Barris Batmobile, which started out as the 1950s Lincoln Futura show car, the Pointer was also based on a large American luxury car from the previous decade—in this case, a production 1957 Imperial by Chrysler. Since the donor car was 10 years old when the movie car was built—at a time when many cars were worn out at half that age—the resulting car wasn’t much of a runner and often had to be pushed into position for static shots by the production crew.

The original Pointer was fabricated by a bodyman at a Yokohama collision shop, based on a design by Toru Narita, a Japanese artist of some note who created the design for Ultraman and the shows’ other characters. As the Pointer could, ostensibly, travel on land and in the air, the rear fenders were shaped into horizontal wings with a vertical fin, creating a Tatra-like side profile. The front end was extensively modified, and while Narita may today be considered a highly regarded artist, the Pointer’s front end can most charitably be described as a hot mess. Despite the mashed-up Nipponese-American styling, the Pointer was popular.

So popular that if you were a Japanese boy in 1967, you were more likely to have a toy Pointer than a scale-model Toyota 2000GT. Yasushi Shiroi was one of those boys and by the mid-1980s he had a job, no dependents, and a burning desire to recreate the Pointer. The original movie car disappeared sometime after the series was canceled in 1968 and it was donated to a kindergarten. If that donation sounds a bit strange, the community center where I went to school for K-9 here in the U.S.A. had a vintage 1927 Ahrens Fox fire pumper and a decommissioned F-86 jet fighter as playground equipment. The past, as they say, is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

Getting back to the Pointer: Keeping any vintage car on the road in Japan is a challenge. Anything more than 10 years old must undergo an expensive, extensive safety inspection. In 1985 Japan, finding an almost 30-year-old American luxury sedan would not be easy, so Shiroi decided to use a Japanese car that had a similar profile, even if it lacked the Imperial’s majestic scale.

As mentioned, Japanese motor vehicle standards are rigorous, and modifications to the basic structure are generally not permitted. Meeting those standards while creating an accurate replica was costly and time consuming; Shiroi sometimes went without food to pay the bills. He was determined to recreate the car of his childhood, so he tracked down the original fabricator to determine the correct details. Finally, he finished a slightly smaller-scale replica of the PO-1. 

Still, he wasn’t satisfied. Shiroi wanted a true replica on the correct Imperial chassis. Six years after he started the first replica, he started hunting for a correct donor car. Surprisingly, it only took him three months to find a ’58 Imperial. It wasn’t a ’57, but since those two were separated only by the ’58s dual headlights, it was close enough; the headlamps would be removed in the modifications anyways. Shiroi bought the car.

He assembled a like-minded team of Ultra-Seven fans and solicited donations for the project. Again, he scrimped to cover the bills—once living on a pound of chocolate for a week while waiting for the next paycheck. The project took a year. Despite his own devotion, Shiroi is quick to credit the members of his team. “We were all in it together. This was a dream car for all of us.

Everyone cooperated to accomplish a goal. For our generations it’s like an homage… or more like… a sacred object,” he told theAFICIONAUTO. 

Meeting Japanese regulations was still a problem. All the revised body panels were fabricated from steel and, when mounted to the original Imperial, nudged the car’s weight towards the 2.5-ton mark. Top speed wasn’t anywhere near the stock Imperial’s, let alone the movie car’s 225 mph. Auxiliary jet engines weren’t in the replica’s build sheet, but that doesn’t stop people from recognizing Shiroi’s Pointer. The car gets thumbs up and photos snapped whenever he takes it out for a ride. One of the original stars of Ultra-Seven even sent Shiroi a letter of authenticity, saying that it was even better than the original, which barely ran.

Keeping the PO-1 on the road isn’t simply a labor of love for Shiroi. To encourage fuel savings, Japanese registration fees are based on engine displacement, and the ’58 Imperial’s 392 cubic-inch V-8 puts it in the six-liter-and-above class. That costs 110,000 yen a year (about $1000 U.S. today). To encourage new car sales by Japanese automakers, there is also a 16-percent surcharge for vehicles over 13 years old. Shiroi, however, believes that owning and driving the Pointer 1 is worth the cost.

His Pointer 1 isn’t Shiroi’s only vintage TV car replica. He also has a Mazda Cosmo decked out in the livery used in The Return of Ultraman, the 1971 sequel produced by Eiji Tsuburaya’s son Hajime.

Similar to some folks who own Batmobile replicas, Yasushi Shiroi often dresses the part, wearing an Ultra-Seven costume when showing the Pointer at car shows. When he first started displaying his Pointer back in the 1990s, Shiroi even hired a model to dress as the female Ultra-Seven astronaut, Ann.

Shiroi’s original plans were to enjoy the car for a while and then sell it after a couple of years. After realizing how much his Ultra-Seven replica had enlarged his circle of friends and how much others enjoyed it, though, he decided to keep the Pointer. He had even met one particularly special friend because of his superhero car.

At a 1997 show in Tokyo, the model who regularly played Ann couldn’t work the show, so her sister went in her stead. Shiroi and the sister hit it off, fell in love, and married. To this day they go to car shows dressed in character.

I was once at a concours, trying to get my standard dozen photographs of every car that my OCD demanded, when I stopped to chat with an owner. As I listened to his fascinating story, I had something of an epiphany. Cars are cool, and they have great stories, but the people who make and own them have even better stories. The Pointer 1 replica is a special car, but it exists only because Yasushi Shiroi is a very special person.

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A 21,750-mile 1971 Datsun 240Z Series I sold for $310,000 today on Bring a Trailer, establishing a new high-water mark for the beloved Japanese sports car.

The sale easily eclipsed the previous record of $124,240 paid for a 33,000-mile Franklin Mint 1970 Datsun 240Z, also sold on Bring a Trailer (BaT) in June 2019. Wednesday’s sale was five times the average value of a 1971 240Z in #1 (Concours) condition: $61,900.

“Buyers continue to pay top dollar for low-mile, impressively original, top-condition cars,” says Brian Rabold, Hagerty vice president of valuation services, “and this Z qualified on all accounts.”

Hagerty valuation information analyst James Hewitt wholeheartedly agrees. “It’s the most original Datsun 240Z in existence.”

According to BaT co-founder and CEO Randy Nonnenberg, the buyer of the 1971 240Z has only been a member for one month and this was the first car that he or she bid on. Talk about getting off to a hot start.

“Datsun 240Z’s are seeing increasing interest on BaT, but nobody anticipated that this one would be bid so high,” Nonnenberg says. “Early production examples, low miles survivors, and unrestored cars all seem to really motivate bidders on our site, and this one just had that special extra appeal for a handful of BaT buyers. There were 5 bidders at $170K and higher, which is unusual for the model.”

In addition to its low miles, the Z car retains its original 150-horsepower 2.4-liter inline-six engine, and the exterior paint is in stunning condition. According to the BaT description, “Paint meter readings taken by the selling dealer are said to show measurements of between 2-5 millimeters. The exterior was detailed by the seller, but the finish was not compounded or sanded.”

For more on this momentous Z-car moment, check out our valuation deep-dive into this sale here.

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While film-famous muscle cars stole car auction headlines the world over last week, a few sales in Japan this week had us doing double takes. At Best Heritage (BH) Japan’s Tokyo Terrada auction, a 1973 Nissan Skyline 2000 GT-R and a 1970 Nissan Fairlady Z432R sold for ¥47,300,000 ($430,483) and ¥88,550,000 ($805,700), respectively. The sales set new records for Skylines and Z cars alike, and in doing so blew their #1 (Concours) values in our Hagerty Price Guide out of the water.

The second-generation 1973 Skyline GT-R—chassis code KPGC110—is widely believed to exist exclusively to use up the remaining 2.0-liter S20 inline-six engines from the first generation “Hakosuka” (1968–72/chassis family C10) Skyline GT-R (chassis code KPGC10). The C110-family Skylines were colloquially known as “Kenmeri” Skylines, thanks to a collection of TV ads that depicted a young couple (Ken and Mary) enjoying the car in the Japanese countryside. Just 197 examples of the KPGC110 GT-R were sold, placing this white-on-black example in an exclusive crowd.

As rare as the ’73 Skyline GT-R was, the 1970 Nissan Fairlady Z432R was even harder to come by.

The Z432R is a homologation-special variant of the already-hopped-up Fairlady Z432. The Z432 cribbed the same S20 inline-six from the “Hakosuka” GT-R and was intended as a high-performance variant of the base-model Fairlady Z. The 432 badging refers to the four valves, three carburetors, and two camshafts in the S20 engine. Around 420 examples of the Z432 were built, all of which were sold in Japan and a few of which have since come to U.S. shores.

Stick with me here. Nissan then took somewhere between 30 and 50 Z432s and modified them further, using them as starting points for rally cars. The Z432R dropped more weight, thanks to a radio and heater delete, lightweight acrylic windows, and body panels that were 0.2mm thinner. The resulting car was nearly 100 kilograms lighter than a base Fairlady Z—and a member of an even more elite production run than its cousin, the ’73 Skyline GT-R.

Before we dig into the sales results, a few caveats: Given the scarcity of both of these vehicles, the Hagerty Price Guide does not have a sufficient data set for the 1973 Skyline GT-R or the 1970 Fairlady Z432R. We’ll use the Hagerty valuation data for the 1972 Skyline GT-R and the less-rare 1970 Fairlady Z432 to provide some context.

Prior to this $430,483 result for the 1973 GT-R in Tokyo, the previous record for a Nissan Skyline belonged to a 1972 H/T 2000 GT-R “Hakosuka” that RM Sotheby’s sold in 2014 for $242,000. BH’s ‘73 sold for nearly twice the prior record. That final price in Japan is also nearly double Hagerty’s $220,000 value for a #1 (Concours-condition) 1972 Skyline GT-R, the closest relevant model that we track. For background, the final sale price of RM’s most recent 1973 model-year sale, in 2015, was $176,000.

The Fairlady Z432R’s final price of $805,700 is even more impressive. The previous record for a Fairlady belonged to another 1970 example, a Fairlady Z432 that crossed the block at $253,000 at RM’s 2015 Amelia Island sale. Best Heritage’s Z432R more than triples the previous Fairlady record.

The Z432R sale also more than triples Hagerty’s #1-condition rating for a 1970 Fairlady Z432. Recall that this comparison is not exactly apples-to-apples; our rating is for a Z432, whose production run totaled 420 or so cars. This bonkers Z432R, however, is one of only 30–50 cars. That being said, our data for these non-R-spec cars still provides a helpful backdrop for just how much people value the R model’s rarity.

While these two sales register high in shock value, that doesn’t mean the prices are inexplicable. “I wouldn’t say ‘flash in the pan,’” says Hagerty auction editor Andrew Newton. “These cars are indeed very rare and very special, [fairly] new to market, and selling in their home market.” Hagerty valuation expert Adam Wilcox concurs. “[These sales] are a sign that Japanese classics are continuing to appreciate,” says Hagerty valuation expert Adam Wilcox. “I’m sure that it helped that these legendary cars were auctioned off in their home country, where the fanbase was larger.”

We’ve seen a growing appreciation for Japanese cars in recent years as younger collectors bring their tastes to bear on the larger collector car market. It’s why Hagerty’s 2020 Bull Market list contained not one but two Japanese cars from the ‘90s and 2000’s—cars that, in all but their highest variants, were dime-a-dozen cars not that long ago. But, as is the case with both the Integra Type R and a clean version of the Honda CRX Si, rarity is a collector car’s best friend.

Which brings us back to the Fairlady and the Skyline at hand—why did these cars notch such eye-watering prices?

Both cars represent the pinnacle of their respective nameplates, in period. That they share the same engine is icing on the cake. Now—at least for these two—they can also share in the satisfaction that they’re both the most expensive versions of each nameplate to ever sell at auction.

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Forget your Bird, bro. Your Limes are lame, cuz. All the fly kids want a Honda Motocompo as their urban mobility solution.

But actually, this vintage Honda is way, way cooler than any newfangled electric scooter. The Motocompo is a tiny folding scooter produced by Honda from 1981 to 1983. When doing it’s best impersonation of a guitar amp, it stood less than three feet tall and less than four feet long.

The little buzzbox is powered by a tiny, 49-cc two-stroke engine that produced just 2.5 horsepower. That’s not much, but with a 99-pound wet curb weight, there isn’t a lot there to get moving. Top speed on a Motocompo is more or less dependent on how many helpings of bacon you scarfed down for breakfast.

The Motocompo got the nickname “Trunk Bike” because it was specifically engineered to be transported in the luggage compartment of the Honda Today and the Honda City.

Yes, the Honda Motocompo had its own purpose-built transport vehicle. 

The first-generation Honda City’s luggage compartment was specifically designed to accommodate a folded Motocompo. It was a heavenly pairing, like air and fuel. Or raw fish and rice.

But more importantly, it was another example of a simple, brilliantly engineered solution to problems of urban mobility in a dense metropolis like Tokyo or Osaka. In other words, it’s the type of thinking that on which Honda built its brand for the last seven decades. 

The car-scooter combo has developed quite a cult following here in America, as well. With the first-generation cars being eligible under the 25-year import rule window, JDM fanatics have been hunting down good examples and bringing them stateside for a few years now.

The most desireable examples include the City and the Motocompo together, and clean ones are fetching serious cash. 

And as a bonus, it’s the subject of one of the greatest automotive commercials of all time, available for your viewing pleasure below. You’re gonna want to throw on those headphones, by the way.

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Long before Subaru became a triple World Rally Champion, the favorite brand of America’s dog lovers and producer of a family-hauler with 19 cupholders, it launched a tiny kei van called the Libero. You may know it as the Sumo, the Estratto, or the Combi, while the Japanese bought it as the Domingo. Yet no matter how it was badged, Subaru’s kei-sized van featured the beefier 1.2-liter three-cylinder engine from the Justy mounted at the rear, as well as selectable four-wheel drive engaged via a button on the shifter.

And since the 1983–98 Sumo was mostly bought with the high-roof option ticked, it didn’t take Subaru long to figure out how that plastic dome could be turned into something that can get you closer to a healthy dinner, as well. That’s right. Not only could your compact van tow your fancy jet ski, but it would also detach its roof so you could have a tiny Subaru-branded fishing boat at hand!

With this Subaru, just throw in a Swiss Army knife, and the world is your oyster.

When it comes to JDM factory options, up until recently, I thought it would be really hard to beat Toyota and Nissan, who offered mirror or side-window wipers on their models for 1988. That seems quite excessive, until you learn about the options list of the 1987–91 Mitsubishi XYVYX, a domestic version of the mighty Mirage with a neat rear spoiler.

As auto writer Michael Banovsky pointed out on Twitter, what the February, 1988 issue of Popular Science described as “a special sports model with a tongue-twisting name” could be yours as a panel van, or as a three-door hatchback with a twin-sliding glass sunroof. Yet your best roof option by a mile was Mitsubishi’s customizable module, which could turn into a tent, house scuba-diving an other sporting gear, or become Sony’s advanced “AV-Capsule,” an integrated mobile theater system.

Complete with its own antenna, remote control, VHS player, and multi-format tape deck, the Sony AV-Capsule was truly in-car entertainment at its best. It’s just strange you could have it with a Mirage, because while the XYVYX’s 16-valve “Cyclone” engine may sound exotic, it’s the same 125-horsepower mill Americans could get as an option in the Eagle Summit LX.

In the end, it’s hard to pick a winner between Subaru and Mitsubishi. If only Sony’s AV-Capsule couldn’t also act as a boat…

The post When Subaru and Mitsubishi put insanity on the roof appeared first on Hagerty Media.

For the past few years, Honda has been permitted to run a mid-engined race car against all the front-engined contenders in Japan’s Super GT class. From 2020 on, however, DTM and Super GT will use the same specs in order to share weekends and make the races more exciting, meaning that everybody will have rear-wheel-drive cars with 2.0-liter turbocharged engines up front. And despite its earlier plans to extend the mid-engined car’s career into the next season, Honda has just revealed its first front-engined NSX.

Proving once again that silhouette race cars can hide anything from a lawnmover’s two-stroke to a cold fusion reactor under their lightweight body panels, Honda’s 2020 NSX Super GT looks almost identical to its 2017 and 2018 GT500-spec cars, apart from the relocated exhaust ports and a few aero tweaks here and there. Not a whole lot of parts are shared with the mid-engined hybrid supercar available at your dealer in the U.S. as the 2020 Acura NSX.

Under the FIA’s Class One rules, Honda’s NSX will compete against the BMW M4, Audi RS5 and Aston Martin Vantage DTM cars, as well as Nissan GT-R and Toyota Supra GT500s. Here’s Honda’s entry next to Nissan’s and Toyota’s:

The post Meet Honda’s front-engine NSX appeared first on Hagerty Media.

When I was young and living in New York City, whenever I had money, I would go to the Carnegie Deli. Back then, the hamburger was $1.10 and the roast beef sandwich was $4.95. Well, that was like three burgers if you got the fries, too, which seemed ridiculous to me, so I never ordered the roast beef. Years later, I was playing Carnegie Hall, and I said to my wife, “Let’s go to the Carnegie Deli.” As we were walking over, I told her that since things were going okay now we should splurge and get the roast beef for $4.95. We went in and looked at the menu, and the roast beef was now $17. I said, “What!? I’m not paying 17 bucks!” To this day, I’ve never had the roast beef. I can’t bring myself to pay that much for a sandwich.

There’s a screwy logic here that I have on occasion applied to cars. For example, when Toyota 2000GTs were $150,000, it seemed crazy. I appreciate Toyota’s shapely stab at building a Jaguar E-type, but Toyota’s version has a vinyl interior and a Yamaha engine, and when you boil it down, it’s just a really nice Datsun 240Z. The 2000GT and the 240Z even have the same design roots. Look closely, and you’ll see the commonality in designer Albrecht Goertz’s lines. Plus, I was over in Japan once, and they let me drive the James Bond 2000GT convertible from You Only Live Twice. The car is pretty small, and I just felt like a circus bear in it. The windshield came up to about my nose.

Well, then I read about the car a bit and got a little excited, so I said to myself, “All right, fine, I’ll pay 150 grand if that’s what it takes.” But by then the cars were going for $250,000. I stewed about it for a while, vowing I would never pay that. Then, once I decided that I would pay it, they had jumped to a half million. Not long ago, they peaked at a million, and I still don’t have one.

Japan has produced some amazing collector cars that are now coming to be appreciated, but it’s a relatively small portfolio. And not all of them appeal to me. I admit I was never really grabbed by the Nissan GT-R, especially the latest model. It seems like information overload. I don’t know, maybe I really should be aware of the differential housing temperature at all times, although I don’t really want to. That said, I do have a couple of Japanese cars that are fascinating in a way only a Japanese car can be.

I have a 1970 Mazda Cosmo 110S because it’s hilariously weird. When the Cosmo came out, nobody had ever heard of Mazda; the car had an engine, a rotary Wankel, developed by a Nazi. It looked half Thunderbird, half Alfa Romeo, and it cost as much as a Corvette. The ads were such a 1960s riff on Western culture. Japanese guys are standing around with Beatles haircuts strumming guitars while girls in go-go boots gyrate around the car. The translated owner’s manual is full of lines like “Beware of the dog in the road” next to a picture of a tiny car and a dog that is the size of a two-story building. Underneath, it says, “Sound the horn melodiously.”

I also have a 1964 Honda S600, and I say without reservation that if that car had a Porsche badge on it, it would be worth a million dollars. People think it has a motorcycle engine. No, it’s an engine that was developed for that car, with overhead cams and a roller bearing crank. It makes 57 horsepower from 600 cc, meaning it’s about half the size of a contemporary MG or Triumph mill but makes roughly the same horsepower. And it’s got a 9500-rpm redline. It literally screams. The S600 is the most fun slow car you can drive. You wind it out thinking you’re shattering the sound barrier, and you look over, and there’s a girl putting lipstick on in the Civic next to you.

It reminds me of the time I was driving my Morgan three-wheeler and came flying around a corner only to see a cop standing there with a radar gun. I pulled right over figuring I was nailed, but he didn’t move. So I went back and asked him how fast I was going. He said, “I had you at 37. This is a 40 zone, so you’re fine.” You have to love any car that thrills the pants off you at legal speeds, even if you feel like a circus bear while driving it.

The article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe to our magazine and join the club. 

The post I appreciate Japanese collector cars, just not necessarily what’s appreciating appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The Japanese Automotive Invitational show, organized annually by Infiniti and Motor Trend, is a welcome break from the high-zoot, high-dollar festivities taking place during Monterey Car Week. Held in Pebble Beach, a stone’s throw from the Concours d’Elegance, it’s where you’ll find friendly, knowledgeable enthusiasts who became collectors to follow their life-long passion, rather than the advice of their life-long banker.

The hand-selected group of cars displayed during the 2019 edition of the event showed the many facets of Japan’s car industry. Japanese firms have peddled back-to-basics off-roaders, supercars that left Formula 1 drivers speechless, and everything in between. Here are the cars that stood out.

1960 Datsun SPL212

Datsun’s popular Z cars all trace their roots to the SPL212. While it’s not the company’s original sports car, that honor goes to the fiberglass-bodied SP211, the first Datsun sports car sold in the United States, of which only 20 were built. Introduced in 1960, it looked a lot like its predecessor, but it came with a steel body and a bigger, 1.2-liter four-cylinder engine tuned to deliver 47 horsepower. The four-cylinder was also found in the 220-series pickup truck that helped Datsun gain a steady foothold in America.

The drop-top was known as the SPL212 internally and in official sales brochures, but it was more commonly called Fairlady. Nissan chairman Katsuji Kawamata chose the name after seeing the Broadway play My Fair Lady in 1958, according to the firm’s archives department. 

The SPL212 and its successor, the SPL213, ended up in fewer than 500 American driveways between 1960 and 1962. The example displayed at the Japanese Automotive Invitational hasn’t had an easy life, but it’s one of the very few unrestored examples left, and it was made during the first year of production.

1966 Hino Contessa 1300S

The 2019 edition of the Japanese Automotive Invitational wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting without the participation of Ohio-based collector Myron Vernis. Some of the most fascinating cars we spotted at the event came from his eclectic collection, including this 1966 Hino Contessa 1300S.

Hino developed the original Contessa to replace the Renault 4CV it built and sold under license starting in 1953. The company kept the rear-engine, rear-wheel drive layout it had become familiar with, and topped it with a more conventional three-box body designed in Italy by Giovanni Michelotti. The water-cooled four-cylinder engine remained closely related to the 4CV’s, however.

The Contessa in Vernis’ collection is a second-generation model and one of the rare coupes made. If it looks familiar, it might be because Peter Brock raced one in the Trans-American Sedan Championship, and—to everyone’s surprise—won the 1966 race held at Riverside International Raceway. Also penned by Michelotti, the second-generation Contessa looked much more up-to-date than its predecessor, and it had real export potential. Production started in 1964, but it ended prematurely in 1967 after Toyota purchased Hino and began weeding out overlapping models. The Contessa and the Corolla were completely different technically, but they competed in the same segment, so Hino’s entry got axed.

1971 Mitsubishi Colt Galant GTO MR

The GTO nameplate has appeared on a diverse selection of cars. Ferrari and Pontiac models wore it well, but the Mitsubishi Colt Galant tried briefly tried it on for size during the early 1970s. The acronym denoted the range-topping model in the line-up, and the MR suffix signaled the presence of a 1.6-liter four-cylinder engine that relied on two carburetors to serve 125 horsepower. Many criticized the design, which looked like a muscle car that irreversibly shrank in a clothes dryer, but Mitsubishi proved it could build a seriously quick car capable of keeping up with big-name competitors from Europe on a twisty road.

Mitsubishi sold the Colt Galant GTO in a handful of right-hand drive global markets, including the UK, but most examples stayed in Japan. It goes without saying that the model was never sold in the United States. Myron Vernis owns the bright orange, Japanese-spec car displayed in Pebble Beach.

1972 Isuzu Bellett GT-R

Also owned by Myron Vernis, this 1972 Bellett GT-R represents the era during which Isuzu still had high hopes of becoming a full-range automaker. The Bellett range included two- and four-door sedans, a pair of coupes, a two-door station wagon, and a pickup. Motorists could haul firewood during the week and go racing on the weekend while remaining loyal to Isuzu’s bread-and-butter model.

The GT-R variant made its debut in 1969, six years after the standard Bellett. It was an evolution of the GT model powered by a 1.6-liter, 120-horsepower four-cylinder engine borrowed from the bigger 117. Emblems, decals, alloys, and a black hood complemented the power hike. While the Bellett was sold in a surprising number of countries around the globe, most of the 1400 GT-Rs made stayed in Japan.

1972 Suzuki LJ20

The LJ20 evolved from the LJ10, an off-roader Suzuki designed to fill a gap in the market. It looked like a rival for the Toyota FJ, but it was much smaller in order to fall within the strict kei car regulations established by the Japanese government in 1949 to reward motorists willing to think small. The LJ20 released in 1972 gained a handful of visual modifications, including a new grille with vertical slats and an available metal hard top. Suzuki also made a bigger, water-cooled engine available as it prepared to export its pocket-sized off-roader to countries that had never heard of a kei car.

The American market wasn’t on Suzuki’s short list, at least not initially. Instead, a California-based company called Intercontinental Equipment Corporation imported about 3400 examples of the LJ10 and the LJ20 until it was bought out by Suzuki in late 1973. The Samurai that’s still popular among off-roaders and the modern-day Jimny both trace their roots to the LJ20.

1984 Honda CRX Mugen

In the 1980s, Honda and tuner Mugen wanted to offer buyers a spicier variant of the CRX without resorting to dropping a bigger engine between the coupe’s fenders. Pilot Parker Johnstone helped identify the areas that could be improved, and the two companies unveiled a prototype in 1984. The hot-rodded CRX gained a redesigned cylinder head, a limited-slip differential, an improved intake system, and a free-flowing exhaust system. The transformation also brought a full body kit, specific alloy wheels, and over half a dozen Mugen Power emblems tacked on for good measure.

The CRX stayed at the prototype stage, much to the chagrin of enthusiasts forced to take the matter into their own hands, and it remains in Honda’s collection as of 2019. The Japanese firm later applied the lessons it learned from this exercise in tuning theory to Si– and Type R-badged members of its line-up.

1986 Subaru XT GL-10

All it takes is one look in a sales catalog from the early 1980s to understand the impact the XT had on the Subaru range when it made its debut in 1985. The Japanese firm offered two-door cars, but they were nearly as utilitarian as their four-door counterparts. The XT proudly broke with tradition by putting a bigger focus on performance, design, and technology than any Subaru before it. It laid the foundation for the performance models that defined the firm’s image during the 1990s.

While upmarket variants of the XT later received a 145-hp flat-six engine, the example displayed at the Japanese Automotive Invitational is fitted with a turbocharged, 1.8-liter flat-four engine that sent 112 horsepower to the four wheels through Subaru’s time-tested all-wheel drive system. An electro pneumatic suspension with height control made the XT more advanced than many cars that cost twice as much money. Subaru ended XT production in 1991 and replaced it with the unloved SVX.

1991 Toyota Sera

Released in 1990, the Toyota Sera looked like a cross between a glass-bottom boat turned upside down and a first-generation Paseo that went to the gym. Its most unusual feature was the butterfly doors that allegedly inspired Gordon Murray when he developed the McLaren F1. The futuristic body hid a 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine tuned to make 104 horsepower and 97 lb-ft of torque. While the Sera could credibly pass as an MR2 off-shoot, it was closely related to the aforementioned Paseo (which was on the same branch of the Toyota family tree as the Tercel) so it was only offered with front-wheel drive.

Toyota made nearly 16,000 examples of the Sera from 1990–95, and an overwhelming majority of the production run was registered on the Japanese market. The model was never sold in the United States, likely because it was too small, but a handful of enthusiasts have taken advantage of the 25-year rule to bring early examples into America.

1992 Nissan Pulsar GTI-R Nismo

Neither GTI nor GT-R, the Nissan Pulsar GTI-R Nismo is one of the most obscure hot hatches made during the early ’90s. Released on the Japanese market in 1990, it was an evolution of the humble, Golf-fighting Pulsar hatchback upgraded with components borrowed from Nissan’s rally parts bin. The bulged, vented hood hid a 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine turbocharged to 227 horsepower. To add context, that figure is on par with the one posted by the Volkswagen Golf GTI in 2019. The GTI-R was more Golf R-like because its turbo four spun the four wheels via a five-speed manual transmission.

Nissan released the Pulsar GTI-R Nismo to homologate it in Group A racing. The company put its hot hatch in the hands of experienced pilots like Tommi Mӓkinen, but it never managed to win an event and shuttered the entire program after the 1992 season. GTI-R production continued until 1994, though the car was never officially sold outside of its home country. Quick and quickly forgotten, Nissan’s rally-bred terror retired without a direct successor.

2000 Isuzu VehiCROSS

Giving the VehiCROSS the proverbial green light for production required a tremendous amount of courage for an automaker like Isuzu. It was known for making straightforward off-roaders that eschewed style in favor of functionality. The VehiCROSS was based on the two-door variant of the Trooper, so it remained highly capable off-road, but it became the first head-turning Isuzu in decades when it made its debut in Japan in 1997. Sales on the American market started for the 1999 model year.

Baldwin Chiu owns and cherishes the VehiCROSS displayed at the Japanese Automotive Invitational. “It drives like a sports car on the road, and it turns into an SUV off-road,” he told Hagerty. Isuzu made approximately 6000 examples of the VehiCROSS during a five-year production run, but Chiu’s is unique because Shiro Nakamura signed it during the Pasadena Art Center’s 70th birthday celebrations.

The post These rare, friendly cars from Japan were underdogs of Monterey 2019 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

A black-over-black 1997 Toyota Supra has sold at Barrett-Jackson’s Northeast 2019 auction for  $176,000 (including commission), a rather remarkable price for a Supra with almost 70,000 miles on the odometer.

One could argue that the high price is justified because this is a particularly rare car. It’s an Anniversary Edition, which was only available in 1997, and it is one of only 376 Anniversary cars in black with a Targa roof. The Supra has two previous owners and the photos show a clean body and interior, complete with Anniversary Edition badging on the shifter surround, and a relatively clean engine bay. Still, with an aftermarket exhaust and lowered springs, it’s not the kind of pristine, original, low-mileage car that you’d expect to fetch record bidding.

We checked with Hagerty valuation expert Greg Ingold for more insight: “This is an incredible price for a Mk IV Supra. Prices like this are generally reserved for cars with little to no miles.”

It is, however, the second Gen IV Supra to recently get big money. Just a few months ago, a fourth-generation 1994 Supra sold for $173,600 at RM Sotheby’s Amelia Island auction. However, that car had been driven for just 11,200 miles since new and, rated to be in 2+ condition, it was considered to be in much better overall condition than the ’97 model that just sold.

In Ingold’s opinion, “This [$176,000] price is an outlier, but time will tell if this is indicating a continuing hot market or just Barrett-Jackson’s ability to bring big money for average cars.”

If anything, it’s confirmation that the Supra hype is far from over—expect more big sales to come in the year ahead.

The post 1997 Toyota Supra fetches $176K at Barrett-Jackson appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Petersen Museum’s biggest event of the year, the Japanese Car Cruise-In, brought hundreds of customized cars and spectators to the top floors of the museum’s parking structure. Turbocharged inline-sixes and high-revving rotaries joined finely tuned and detailed four-cylinders on display for the massive crowd. A couple of swapped Chevy V-8s even managed to sneak in as stowaways under the hoods of a pair of Nissans.  

It was all to celebrate the wide-ranging impact of Japanese automobiles on American culture, from 4x4s and commuter cars to luxury sedans and the much-loved sports and GT cars. The show was presented by Bring a Trailer and sponsored by Super Street Magazine, so it was appropriate that some of the hottest collector cars on the market were in attendance, including one of the custom import scene’s most beloved Mk IV Supras, Enrique Munoz’s stunning single-turbo masterpiece.

The show brought plenty of cars worthy of consideration, but there are examples of Japanese automotive design inside the museum, as well. The Hollywood Dream Machines exhibit includes two pod-shaped autonomous cars from Minority Report and T’Challa’s battle-scarred LC 500 from Black Panther, both from Lexus. A wide-ranging exhibit showcasing the history of Japan’s automotive industry that opened in time for last year’s Japanese Cruise-In has been replaced, although there’s still a section dedicated to automotive tuning that includes several influential Japanese customs and display engines. If you’re a fan of Japanese cars and you missed the show, there’s no need to wait until next year’s gathering to take in the sights at the Petersen.

This stripped-down and minimalist Starlet was powered by a Black Top 4A-GE, a 20-valve, 163-horsepower 1.6-liter engine that never made its way into a North American production car.

Toyota brought a 2020 Supra Launch Edition and placed it prominently among examples of all four previous Supra generations.

One of the most well-represented engines was Toyota’s venerable 2JZ inline-six.

Datsun’s beautiful, simple, and boxy 510 continues to be a popular tuning platform.

Enrique Munoz’s Supra was customized by Eric and Marc Kozeluh and is one of the most beautiful ever built. It’s on loan to the Petersen and can be seen in person if you opt to take a tour of the Vault.

The post Highlights from The Petersen Automotive Museum’s Japanese Car Cruise-In appeared first on Hagerty Media.

You meet the nicest people on a Honda. Or, should you own a Honda N600, you inevitably meet Tim Mings.

“Now’s not good, I’ll get back to you later,” he growls into a phone, before cutting the conversation short and turning back to me. “Just breaking in a new customer.”

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the tiny, two-cylinder Honda N600 arriving in the U.S. The friendly-faced tin insect with a 600-cc engine had the overall lifespan of, well, it was cheap and disposable. For $1200, you got a 35-hp air-cooled engine, a four-speed manual transmission, and a car straining at the seams to contain the irrepressible spirit of Soichiro Honda himself.

Before the bean-counters intervened and the Civic arrived to commercial acclaim, Soichiro ran his engineers ragged with constant demands, rarely suffering fools. Likewise, Mings has an air of cheery contrarian about him. He describes himself as “unemployable.” He has the largest store of new old-stock N600 parts in the country, but he probably won’t sell you anything because he thinks you’ll just install it wrong. Not for nothing, his cramped shop in Duarte, California, is known as Merciless Mings. In the end, though, anyone seeking the fountain of N600 knowledge ends up here.

“I’m the narrow end of the funnel,” Mings explains. “Sooner or later everything passes into my hands.”

He’s not exaggerating. Mings claims to have owned something like 500 N600s over the years, and the handful of cars in his tiny shop have historical value that far outweighs their Jiffy Pop curb weights. In a space that would hold perhaps two Ford Mustangs sits a restoration project that still has the original plastic on the door cards and sun visors, Honda American Motor Co.’s very first Baja racer, a mid-five-figure restored example that used to belong to Bruce Willis’ makeup artist, and one of the four surviving prototype N600s that landed here in 1967.

As you’d expect from any early Honda shop, there are also floor-to-ceiling motorcycles. Mings doesn’t restore or sell these, but he wrenches and races for his own pleasure. He campaigns a 1962 Honda CB77 Superhawk in American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association (AHRMA) racing, where he was skilled enough to dice it up with Dave Roper, the only American to win at the Isle of Man TT races. Mings eventually ran out of talent and high-sided the bike, though Roper crashed out just moments later, too. Tim’s wife, Kathleen, made him a flipbook of his own crash.

“I needed some parts, and found my way here,” she says, in response to how the two met. Kathleen bought her Z600 in the Midwest in 1973, and drove it out to California. Today it’s parked right out front—bright blue, well-loved, and still regularly driven.

A parcel arrives from Japan. Tim rips it open like a kid at Christmas, pulls a couple of glossy magazines out, presses them to his nose, and inhales deeply. “There’s nothing like the smell of Japanese magazines,” he says.

He thumbs through the pages, read right to left, before he gets to the feature article written on his shop. Nondescript and seemingly crammed hodgepodge with parts, Merciless Mings is nonetheless a world-famous institution. But Tim doesn’t just want to jabber about what he does here—he wants to show it off.

“I’ve got the full Honda N600 experience here,” he says with a grin, “You ready to go drive stuff?”

1967 Honda N600 Prototype

In the fall of 1967, Honda sent 50 prototype cars to California. Each one was based on the Honda N360 kei-car, with an engine upgraded to 600 cc. Honda drove the cars to and from Minnesota for winter evaluation, then unceremoniously disposed of them.

Bob Hansen, one of the first Americans to work for Honda, at the time had set up motorcycle dealerships in the Midwest. He was in charge of the winter testing convoy and, on orders from headquarters in Japan, sent them off to be crushed at a scrapyard across the road. The next day, Bob got a shock to see one of the 50 Hondas go tootling down the road.

This particular one is serial number 45, and it still bears the hammer strikes on its engine from the scrapyard. The dashboard is also filled with broken glass from when the windshield was smashed. As one of the very first cars, and a more than five-decade-old all-original Japanese economy car, it’s brittle, delicate, and in these halls, invaluable.

Mings hops in to properly warm up N600 number 45 and then promptly thrashes the absolute bejesus out of it.

When it’s my turn behind the wheel, I understand why he throttled it so hard. The prototype cars have more power than the eventual U.S. production version, with 45 hp from their all-aluminum two-cylinder engines. A 1200-pound curb weight, sand-cast engine parts, high compression, and a redline at 9000 rpm mean that this zippy econobox scorches its tires in second gear and scampers off down the road like a biscuit tin filled with bees.

With no sway bar, the car corners all roly-poly like teenagers making out in a canoe. Serial 45 locks up a wheel on braking, pulls a U-turn in a distance seemingly equal to its own length, then buzzes off back to the garage.

Miraculously, Mings also found Serial One, the very first car. And he did it quite by accident. He paid $1000 for the car sight unseen, when purchasing another early N600, and it languished in the back of the garage for a couple of years before he cleaned the gunge off the VIN and got the shock of his life. It’s since been restored, displayed at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, and it will eventually be displayed at Honda’s American headquarters in Ohio.

1970 Honda N600 Baja racer

Rescued from a damp Seattle garage, this battered old bruiser is Honda’s very first American racing car.

“Like it or not,” Mings says, slapping the fender, “The story of Honda American racing begins here.”

The N600 Baja seems composed mostly of dents and rust. Possibly botulism, too. But it’s been fitted with a new fuel cell, and sparks to life eagerly with an unholy racket. With the chunk of 2×6 functioning as a parking brake removed, off I roll, hunching forward in a seat intended for a much taller driver.

This car was anything but a success. Campaigned at the Baja by desert racing pioneers Dave Ekins and Bill Robertson Jr., its CV axles came apart every time it hit a jump. Eventually, the exhausted racers called it a day, the car was brought back and welded together, and then forgotten. Mings recovered it based on a tip.

With a welded driveline, zero insulation, and a bunch of hopped-up parts to try and overcome the weight of the chunky tires, the two-cylinder engine is effectively blowing a raspberry into the business end of a trumpet. The N600 Baja is insanely loud, hot, uncomfortable, and every exposed surface bristles with tetanus-laden potential injury.

After 15 minutes of blasting around the neighborhood, lowering property values, I couldn’t have been more in love. Hopefully, this scruffy museum piece finds its way onto a fitting plinth somewhere.

U.S.-spec 1970 Honda N600 and 1972 Honda N600

“Be careful,” warns Mings, “This is the second-most expensive N600 in the world.”

The first, of course, is Serial One, which took more than a year to restore. Likewise, this canary-yellow 1970 N600 is essentially perfect, the result of a more than $50,000 restoration effort. It feels impossibly substantial for something that was never intended to last. As a rolling display of Mings’ skill, it’s impressive. Solid. Flawless.

It’s also nowhere near as much fun as his personal 1972 runabout. His ‘72 is the genesis story of Merciless Mings itself—the family car that started all this Honda-fueled madness.

“My uncle worked at Larry Lilley Honda when the N600 came out,” Mings says, “With a couple of kids, my dad couldn’t afford a new one, so he bought a used one and fixed it up. He figured out how to keep them going and it became a side business for him.”

When the Civic came out, neither Honda’s motorcycle nor car dealers wanted to work on the N600. It required major servicing every 2000 miles, and engines would usually only last 20,000 miles before a full tear-down. The cars became orphans, and people would stop Hubert Mings, Tim’s father, in the street. After a stint in the army, Tim took over his father’s business.

Mings advises I take it out on the highway to stretch its legs. “You can put your seatbelt on, but I wouldn’t bother,” he says, “I always think, what’s the point?”

Minutes later, I’m on an onramp in a 50-year-old, 35-hp garden shed, about to join six lanes of drivers who, while travelling at 75 mph,  are probably checking Instagram to see how many likes their breakfast burrito got. Merciless Mings, don’t fail me now.

Of course, it was a blast in a fantastically sorted little monster. After all, the N600 is all Mings fixes, restores, lives, breathes, and eats. The difference between an N600 parked up on bricks and one actually driving down the street is, most often, a Merciless Mings sticker on the back window.

The Californian sun beats down, indifferent traffic chugs along, and an orange-hued marble of Honda history buzz-bombs the masses at 7000 rpm. Thinking of merciless, irascible Tim Mings, I smile. Honda’s first brazen assault on the U.S. car market deserves to be defended by such a renegade spirit.

The post Mings the Merciless and the Honda N600 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

We’ve all had that thought, laying awake late at night: What if… what if I imported a car from Japan. Brilliant! Imagine the look on the face of the McDonald’s drive-through attendant as you lean over from the right-hand seat to grab your Egg McMuffin. Priceless!

For a lot of car enthusiasts (especially those that grew up on Gran Turismo and Initial D) Japan seems like the promised land, a magical place full of miniature Kei cars, micro-vans and twin-turbocharged monsters that roam Mt. Fuji and the highways of Tokyo Bay.

So how would this work? Friends, lean in close to the warm, blue glow of your computer screen, and drink deep from this beginner’s guide to importing a car from Japan.

We sought expert guidance from Michael Kent, who has imported nearly 10,000 cars from Japan and elsewhere into the United States and Canada, as president and founder of RightDrive, a licensed dealership based in Toronto, Canada.

How does the used car market work in Japan?

It’s very similar to many places in North America, with a few key differences. The used car market in Japan is largely unregulated, so: buyer beware. “It’s a little bit like the Wild West,” Kent says. There’s no reliable equivalent to a Carfax report. The JUMVEA (Japanese Used Motor Vehicle Exporting Association) is an independent organization set up to help prevent the export of stolen or illegally rebuilt vehicles and give buyers some peace of mind. Seek out dealers and exporters that are JUMVEA members.

What’s the basic process for getting a Japanese car on the road in North America?

There are three main paths you can take:

1. Do it yourself. It will be cheaper, but time consuming and potentially riskier. Find a car online, find a reputable exporter, then organize shipping, importation, and registration in your province or state. When dealing with an exporter, try to find one with a long history in business and hundreds of cars in their inventory, Kent advises.
2. Buy through a licensed dealer in North America. It will be more expensive, but with a good dealer you’ll be confident you’re getting a legal, plated car that is ready to drive. A dealer should also be insured so you can back out of the deal if the car is not as advertised.
3. Buy through an importer in North America. These are not licensed car dealers, so be cautious. You’ll still need to get the car inspected and registered yourself.

What are the options for shipping a car to North America?

Again, there are three main options:

1. Thrifty: RoRo (roll-on, roll-off). Your car gets driven onto the boat and driven off, and driven onto a train carrier. Cars are exposed to the elements, and cars with lowered suspension may not fare well on the ramps.
2. Moderate: Shared container. Your car gets put into a shipping container with other goods. The container may be loaded and unloaded several times, but your car won’t be exposed to the elements.
3. Pricey: Single-car carrier. Your car is by itself in a container. Not exposed to the elements, and not disturbed on-route. “We did this recently for a Jaguar XJ220,” Kent says. “The car was bubble-wrapped the whole way.”

What vehicles can you can register in North America?

There are exceptions, but generally any vehicle at least 25 years old can be registered in the U.S. In California, emissions regulations mean it can be prohibitively expensive to make imported “grey-market” vehicles built after 1967 road-legal. In Canada, vehicles only need be at least 15 years old. However, Quebec and P.E.I. don’t allow the registration of right-hand-drive cars unless they’re at least 25 years old or being used for mail delivery, Kent says. Check with your province or state for detailed information.

What kind of cars can you find good deals on in Japan?

If you’re looking for value, look for Japanese cars that were produced in reasonably high numbers: Toyota MR2s or anything with a 1JZ-GTE straight-six, fast Hondas, Nissans, Mazda RX-7s, Mitsubishi Lancers, and hot Subarus. “Just don’t try to buy champagne with beer money,” says Kent. Which is to say, Japanese dealers know the value of a clean NSX.

Why does there seem to be an infinite supply of cool used cars available in Japan?

“Japan is a very highly-fueled car culture,” says Kent. Japan is smaller than California with a population of 126 million people and several major OEMs. Patriotism plays a role, he adds, with many drivers looking to support local automakers and aftermarket tuners.

How come there are so many low-mileage cars available?

There is taxation in Japan based on mileage, so drivers pay a slightly higher tax to keep older cars on the road. “But there are a lot of old wives’ tales about how they have to get rid of cars at 60,000 km or something,” says Kent. That’s not true; there are also plenty of high-mileage cars. If Japanese drivers put less mileage on vehicles, it’s probably because the country is relatively small and many people commute by public transit.

Do they use road salt in Japan?

Yes. Look out for cars that have optional winter packages installed, which on trucks can mean a second battery.

Where should you start searching for the Japanese import of your dreams?

Start with Goo-Net Exchange. It’s a big Japanese classifieds site that’s great if you want to see the dazzling variety of cars available and get a feel for prices.

Happy right-hand-drive adventuring!

The post A beginner’s guide to importing a Japanese classic appeared first on Hagerty Media.

If the average car enthusiast were asked to conjure up the image of a small convertible, a Miata might be the first car that comes to mind. In the late ‘60s, that stereotypical sporty roadster would have likely been of British origin. Even then, however, there was a Japanese alternative that offered up clean lines, tight handling, and top-down adventure: the Datsun Roadster. And these days, Datsun prices are right in line with the Brits.

Like its coupe successor, the 240Z, the Datsun Roadster was called the Fairlady in other markets. The 1500 Roadster debuted in the United States in 1962 with an 85-horsepower, 1,488-cc inline four. In 1966 it was superseded by a 96-hp, 1,595-cc version, and in mid-1967, a 135-hp, 1,998-cc model marked the final displacement, lasting until 1970. While harder to find than the 1500 and 1600, the 2000’s potent inline-four made it a successful SCCA racer and even more fun to drive than earlier models.

Beginning in 1968, the 2000 Roadster added a taller windshield, headrests, and other mandated safety equipment, making the 1967 the last of its kind. Consequently, the most desirable is the 1967 2000 with a #2-condition (Excellent) value of $44,100. If that sounds a bit pricey to you, moving from a 2000 to a 1600 will save 29 percent on average and the 1500 will go for an additional 10 percent discount based on median #2 values.

The highest price for a Datsun roadster at public auction came at the 2018 Northeast Barrett-Jackson auction, where a beautifully restored 1967 1600 went for $55,000.

Aside from the outliers like the aforementioned top sale, the median value for all years of Datsun Roadster is $29,050, putting it right in line with its contemporary British competition. For comparison, the median #2-condition (Excellent) value on a TR4 is $32,000 for the ’65-’68 cars.

Demand for the little roadster has kept prices solid. In the last year, the median #2 value increased 3.25 percent, while the largest increase in value came in five years ago when the median value of a #2 condition roadster increased 22 percent.

The only downside for fans of the Datsun is that its British competition tends to have a much larger aftermarket and therefore those cars make easier candidates for restoration. Consider looking for the best, most complete example possible. That’s true of nearly any car of this vintage, but especially in the Datsun Roadster’s case due to its lack of an easily accessible parts network.

The post Datsun’s classic 1963-70 Roadster is still keeping up with the Brits appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The Subaru WRX STI S209 is the first in the legendary S-line of cars developed by Subaru Tecnica International to reach our shores. Those who miss out on the roughly 200 examples that arrive could (with great pains) build their own, because the wizards at STI appear to have used many parts readily available in the aftermarket.

One of the biggest changes from the standard WRX STI is the increase in power from 310 horsepower to 341. STI accomplishes this with a combination of forged internals, a larger turbocharger, and a more aggressive engine tune.

Unfortunately, it’s not clear what forged pistons and rods STI installed, but the pistons are likely 4032 aluminum alloy, which is better suited for street cars. (Aftermarket manufacturers like Cosworth use 4032 and similar alloys because they allow for consistent dimensional integrity over long periods of time.) The fact the S209 keeps the same 8.1:1 compression ratio as the Type RA means they probably share pistons.

The forged pistons and rods provide a strong foundation for the power increases, which come courtesy of a larger turbocharger with a 65mm compressor wheel and a 56mm turbine wheel. That makes it an exact match for the turbocharger in the WRX STI TC 380 released in Japan last year. This model uses the HKS GT III RS turbocharger found in the STI Sports Turbine kit, part number 11004-AF013. It seems very likely that the S209 uses this kit with a few modifications.

STI adjusted the ECU tune to go along with the new turbocharger, and boost pressure climbs 1.8 psi. Increased air flow requires increased fuel, so the S209 receives a larger fuel pump and injectors. These may also come from the HKS catalog, which offers a drop-in kit that supports about 420 horsepower. The finishing piece on the power side is an intercooler sprayer system with nozzles under the hood and a tank in the trunk. This is similar to systems we’ve seen on a variety of STI models, and it is controlled by paddles behind the steering wheel that look to me like repurposed shift paddles form the CVT-equipped WRX.

Moving on to the suspension, we find a flexible strut bar under the hood. This piece has been around for a few years and saw duty on the STI Nurburgring race cars. You can find it in the STI catalog for around $370. The flexible draw stiffener in the rear is a new piece as it has been moved to the trunk; previous ones available in the STI catalog went under the car.

The S209 is further stiffened by solid pillow ball rear suspension bushings, which are likely part of the trailing arms available from the STI catalog for around $380. The Bilstein dampers from the Type RA have been revalved and put in use on the S209 along with springs that increase in rate to match the new valving. The brakes come over from the Type RA as well but use a pad compound modified to reduce fade.

The lightweight 19-inch BBS wheels are a custom version (1 inch wider) of the forged CH-R series that BBS sells. The wheels are the main factor in the 15mm increase of track width for the S209. The standard STI wheels are 19×8.5 inches with +55 millimeters of offset; adding a half inch of width while keeping the same offset gives us an increase of 12.8 millimeters of track width. That means the S209 wheels probably are modified a bit more to have an offset of +54 millimeters, yielding a track width increase of 14.8 millimeters. That matches what Subaru is advertising for the S209. The standard STI wheel weighs around 28.5 pounds and the aftermarket 19×8 BBS CH-R comes in at 24.6 so we can expect that the S209 drops at least 3 pounds on each corner. Going along with the new wheels are 265/35R19 Dunlop GT600A tires specifically developed for this application.

There are many functional aerodynamic pieces all around the S209 which give it a 1.7-inch increase in width along and help in performance. The only aero piece that is carried over is the rear wing, taken from the STI Type RA. Along with the rear wing, the S209 also picks up seats and the carbon fiber roof from the Type RA while the steering wheel comes from the S208.

A few cosmetic and cooling details complete the package but the rest of the car is mostly a standard WRX STI. Although many of the changes don’t seem overly drastic, STI engineers clearly put a significant amount of time in tuning the engine and the chassis. The hard work resulted in a lap time that is 5 seconds faster than the STI Type RA around Virginia International Raceway even though the S209 is almost 100 pounds heavier than the Type RA.

The lesson here is not that everyone should go out and try to build their own S209, but that Subaru was able to massage even more from the current platform and the EJ257 engine that STI has used since 2004. While it will be fairly easy to replicate most of the car using these parts, the exclusivity comes from having a factory-tuned vehicle that features all of these parts and a warranty.

The post How STI builds the S209 like the ultimate factory tuner appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Turns out, Datsun was not Peter Brock’s first foray into the land of the rising sun. Several years before Brock teamed up with Datsun, he campaigned a different, more-obscure Japanese matchbox, the Contessa 1300, in the California Sports Car Club region of the Sports Car Club of America.

It began in 1961 when Japanese car manufacturer Hino ended its eight-year run manufacturing the Renault 4CV, and launched its own thimble-sized whip, the Contessa. A few years later, Hino used the scratch from the early Contessas to buy into the whole “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday” adage with hopes to enter the U.S. market with a bang. Hino hired automotive omniscient Brock to champion the efforts and nicknamed the works crew “Team Samurai.”

Brock proved that Hino was legit with a victory in the 1966 Trans-American Sedan Championship at Riverside International Raceway. Hino was so impressed that it forked over the cash for Brock to build a Le Mans racer called the Samurai. The prototype was gorgeous—designed by Brock, built by Troutman-Barnes. But the car never competed under Brock’s name, and it was eventually sold to Terry Hall of Ontario, California, where he ran it in select events at Riverside.

We owe Hagerty member Eric Seltzer a large debt of gratitude for sending us these exceptional photos that he took while in his 20s while attending races at Riverside. The avid photographer and historian has attended races since the ’50s. He also competed in SCCA road racing from 1972–77 in the Formula-B and Formula-Ford classes.

In our most recent issue of the Hagerty magazine (Don’t have it? Get it here), we asked members to submit any vintage automotive photos they may have lying around, with the small caveat that they must own distribution rights for the photos. Select photos will be featured in the magazine’s new “Back in the Day” section. So far, the response has been overwhelming, so we started this weekly online version to publish submissions at a faster clip.

Whether the moments are captured by a professional photographer or an amateur voyeur, we want to them. Send your submissions via email to tips@hagerty.com or add them to our forums on the Back in the Day board.

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Back in the 1980s, long before automakers went back to the future with new Beetles and Minis and Thunderbirds, Nissan did the retro thing with four adorable little cars that looked like something you’d find in a video game. These Pike cars came in bright colors like pumpkin orange and offered whimsical features like a sushi tray, and Japan went absolutely nuts for them. No, really. So many people wanted them that Nissan held lotteries.

Nissan made no more than 50,000 examples of these limited-run rebodies, and they have to be the cheapest limited-edition collector cars you can own today, provided you can find one and navigate the regulatory maze of bringing it back to the U.S.

In building the Pike cars, Nissan took its bread-and-butter Micra/March (a car as ubiquitous as it was boring) and turned it into something fun. Embracing the design ethos of gadgets like the Nintendo Gameboy probably seemed crazy at the time, but people loved Naoki Sakai’s retro-futuristic combination of modern design, toylike simplicity, and bright colors. New York Times design critic Phil Patton called them “the height of post-modernism.”

Nissan introduced the idea with three concepts at the 1987 Tokyo auto show. They were such a hit that the company decided to build at least one or two of the boutique cars.  Meant to be hip little city cars that made a statement during a time when Nissan was producing mostly boring rolling appliances.

Sakai designed four cars. The Be-1 looked a bit like a startled Mini with its almost comically oversized headlamps. The Pao drew inspiration from the Mini and the Citroen 2CV, and featured exposed door hinges, flip-up side windows, and a split rear tailgate. The most endearing had to be the S-Cargo, a tiny little delivery van that resembled a snail (Escargot … get it?) and had the bug-eyed face of an Austin-Healy Sprite. The Figaro looks like a lean, updated Autobianchi Bianchina from the late-1950s.

All of them were based on Micra/March platform, with a 90-inch wheelbase, rack-and-pinion steering, front disc brakes, and a three-speed automatic or five-speed manual. A tiny 987-cc engine powered the three cars, while the S-Cargo got a 1.5-liter engine. Nissan built them at its Pike factory, hence the name “Pike cars,” and offered them only in Japan through its Nissan Cherry Stores. The cars were devoid of Nissan branding, and even the marketing material made scant mention of Nissan.  

The Be-1 popped out of the chute first in 1987 at the Tokyo Auto Show, becoming available in 1988. The five-passenger hatchback was an immediate hit, and Nissan had to hold a lottery to determine who would get one of the 10,000 cars slated for production. The car’s immediate success prompted Nissan to greenlight the S-Cargo, which, among other things, featured a removable sushi tray. It also received the larger 1.5-liter engine. Production started in 1989 and depending upon who’s telling the tale Nissan built between 8,000 and 12,000 in two years.

The S-Cargo appeared alongside the Pao, the most popular of the Pike cars. The name is said to be Chinese for “Mongolian portable dwelling.” No, we did not make this up. The entire production run of about 51,000 cars sold out in just three months and a Pao could only be ordered in those three months through a reservation process. Some customers had to wait until 1991 to finally receive the Pao they ordered in 1989.

The Figaro appeared in 1991. The two-seater, designed by Shoji Takahashi, looks like a convertible, but the roof is fixed. A canvas center section retracts. Bakelite knobs and chrome-trimmed gauges bring the retro vibe into the cabin. Nissan planned to build just 8,000 but bumped that to 20,000 to meet demand–and even then, had to assign cars to buyers by lottery.

With fewer than 100,000 Pike cars built, finding one won’t be easy. It doesn’t help that Nissan never officially exported them (although many have made their way to Britain). On the plus side, new laws governing the importation of cars that don’t meet federal EPA and safety regulations exempt “classic cars” at least 25 years old. Importers specializing in these adorable cartoon cars make the process a breeze if you don’t want to go to the hassle of tracking down a car, filling out the customs paperwork, and paying fees and bonds before shipping it home.

Ready to step up? Prices from private parties range from a bit under $10,000 to almost $20,000 for a lightly used Figaro with 50,000-80,000 miles. Clean examples of a Pao are in the $8000-$16,000 range, with S-Cargo deliveries in that same range. Rusty examples can be purchased for much less, but as with any car exhibiting rust, buyer beware.

Prices seem to be holding steady over the last two-three years. There are few daily driver cars you can drive for 15,000 miles a year that maintain value, so while collectors would like to see their cars appreciate think of these as drivable collector cars that beat buying a new Honda or Toyota. Also, there are dealers specializing in Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) cars now that desirable models like Nissan Skylines various Type R Hondas are legal to import.

Before going to all the trouble, though, remember, these are tiny little city cars with tiny little engines. And the steering wheel is on the right. Left-hand conversions are expensive, and converted Pikes are the unicorns of collector cars. Even if you find one, you’ll pay a hefty premium for it.

In this age of characterless, appliance-like electric and hybrid pods, Nissan’s quartet of Pike cars are full of personality.

The post Nissan’s 4 Pike microcars are tiny Nintendo-like ’80s delights appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Infiniti is backing out of western Europe, a market that never warmed to to the brand, and ditching diesels in favor of electrification under a restructuring plan Nissan announced today.

Under the plan, Infiniti will focus on North America and China, its two biggest markets, and stay the course in eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Giving up on western Europe almost certainly means Infiniti will drop the QX30 compact crossover, which is built at Nissan’s factory in Sunderland, England. The pullout is planned for next year.

Underneath, the QX30 is a Mercedes-Benz GLA250, produced under partnership between Infiniti and the German automaker. The two companies currently share resources at a common factory in Aguascalientes, Mexico. In January 2017, Infiniti canceled its plans to utilize a new jointly-funded luxury car platform slated to be built at the facility, in part because Infiniti sales were underforming. Changing customer preferences for more SUVs, particularly in North America, also factored into the decision.

Infiniti will stop offering diesel engines as it shifts its focus toward electric drivetrains in 2021. It also plans to bring more SUVs to the United States and offer five new models in China. The automaker says the restructuring will lead to “more synergies with Nissan Motor Company,” which could mean we’ll see less differentiation between the two brands and more models that are largely the same beneath the body.

The company says it is working to find other jobs for anyone adversely impacted by the plan, and will provide training and support for transition “where appropriate.” It also must begin negotiating with dealers to end franchise agreements. The plan calls for keeping dealerships open until Infiniti develops a plan for providing service and meeting warranty claims.

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As ’80s and ’90s cars continue to heat up in the collector market, Japanese sports cars from this era are experiencing a major renaissance. Today’s buyers remember these stylish and technologically innovative dynamos from when they were just kids playing Gran Turismo, but these tuner favorites are now gaining traction as legitimate classics. Case in point: these seven Japanese classics that are sure to capture people’s attention at the 2019 Amelia Island auctions.

1996 Nissan 300ZX Turbo

Lot 102 (RM Sotheby’s)

Pre-sale estimate:$30,000–$40,000

Compared to a lot of other Japanese performance cars from the 1990s, people have overlooked the Nissan 300ZX Turbo. When it came out in 1990, the Z32-generation ZX was one of the first cars of its generation with advanced technology like four-wheel steering. The Turbo’s twin-boosted V-6 made an impressive 300 horsepower, which helped propel the top-spec ZX to top speed of 155 mph and a 0–60 sprint of 5.6 seconds.

This example on offer at Amelia shows a stunningly low 2719 miles, which is believable given that this car looks like it just rolled off the production line in 1996. Records show it sat at a Texas dealership, north of Houston, for three years before it was sold.

Prices for the 300ZX are flat, following a big bump for top-quality #1-condition (Concours) and #2-condition (Excellent) cars in 2018. Average price for Concours cars is $41,100, so this estimate is right on the money with the market. Still, Z32 Turbo ZXs still lag behind Supras, FD RX-7s, and NSXs. Only the 3000GT VR4 is priced similarly—maybe it’s the four-wheel steering?

1993 Mazda RX-7

Lot 101 (RM Sotheby’s)

Pre-sale estimate: $40,000–$45,000

The FD-generation RX-7 is the stuff of rotary-powered dreams. Sequential twin turbos, 255 hp, and an appetite for consuming oil are all part of the raw sports car experience, and the tuner favorite has been climbing the collector car ladder for a few years now. People love the FD’s wide stance, sleek profile, flip-up headlights, and full-width taillights, but the car is a sharp handling machine as well. These cars are tricky to keep running properly, particularly if you’re having issues with the turbo control module that controls the sequential boosters. Clean examples like this are hard to come by, and no doubt this example looks extremely babied.

RM’s pre-sale estimate is perfectly reasonable for such a clean FD with only 13,600 miles. In the last few months, values are up 8 percent for an average #1-condition (Concours) price of $49,400, so we might even see a result that beats the high end of the estimate.

1989 Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R

Lot 220 (Bonhams)

Pre-sale estimate: $50,000–$60,000

If there’s any car that most exemplifies the recent surge of in-demand Japanese classics, it’s Godzilla. The straight-six-powered, 276-hp, all-wheel-drive coupe was never sold in the U.S., and as a result it was long lusted after by fans of Japanese car culture (and Gran Turismo players). Although R32 GT-Rs are not exactly rare, they’re hard to come by in the U.S., where only in the last several years have they become eligible for import under the federal 25-year rule. These cars are said to be delightful to drive and more than capable of keeping up with modern traffic.

Stock examples that are this well-kept are especially tough to locate. According to Bonhams, this car was purchased two years before it was legal for import, and then passed through customs when it became legal to do so. It’s had a bit of recent freshening, all done with the goal of keeping the car as true to the original as possible.

Given the 25,000 miles and original condition, this pre-sale estimate lines up with the high end of our #2-condition (Excellent) price for a stock Skyline GT-R—about $45,000. That seems about right. Bonhams previously sold a 1992 example for $86,900 at The Quail in 2017, but that car had tasteful NISMO performance upgrades and showed only 4000 or so miles on the odometer. It was also exceptionally clean.

1991 Acura NSX

Lot 266 (Bonhams)

Pre-sale estimate: $55,000–$75,000

The Acura NSX is widely considered the seminal Japanese supercar of the 1990s. Not only was it fantastic to drive—as Ayrton Senna professed—but the NSX was mechanically robust and usable day to day in a way that most exotics of the time were not. The car had technology baked into it that trickled down from the Formula 1 program, and the 3.0-liter V-6 benefited from dual overhead cams and variable valve timing to help make its 270 hp. Honda built the five-speed mid-engine marvel with an all-aluminum monocoque and aluminum suspension components to minimize curb weight. The NSX was imbued not only with impeccable balance, but also timeless style.

While the modern hybrid-power NSX isn’t the hit Honda hoped it would be, the market for the vintage NSX is strong. Prices are on the rise for later NSXs more so than the early cars, owing mostly to their larger 3.2-liter V-6s and six-speed manual gearboxes.

This ’91 black-on-black NSX bears a reasonable 39,000 miles on the clock, which suggests it was driven somewhat regularly in its 28 years since production. Cars in similar #2 (Excellent) condition average $61,500, which is right in the meat of Bonhams’ pre-sale estimate. Whoever buys this car should have no guilt about driving and enjoying it as intended.

2005 Acura NSX

Lot 109 (RM Sotheby’s)

Pre-sale estimate: $100,000–$120,000

This later NSX, a six-speed, stick-shift, targa-top model looking lovely in red, is expected to command quite a bit more than the 1991 car at Bonhams since 2005 is the most valuable year for the NSX—it’s the last year of production, and it’s only 14 years old. From 2002, NSXs received revised front and rear bumpers and disposed of the flip-up headlights, while Honda also reworked the suspension for improved performance. Showing 9200 miles, this is about as pristine a late-model NSX as you’ll find.

1994 Toyota Supra Turbo Targa

Lot 106 (RM Sotheby’s)

Pre-sale estimate: $100,000–$200,000

Way before Paul Walker made the Mk IV Supra Turbo world famous in The Fast and the Furious, tuners were already marveling at the absurd durability and capability of Toyota’s iron-block 2JZ twin-turbo inline-six. In stock form it made 320 hp and could sprint from 0–60 mph in 4.6 seconds, but there are plenty of verifiable claims of tuners summoning 1000+ hp from the Supra Turbo. These cars were immediately recognized for their excellent performance and impressive dynamics, but their high price made them slow sellers. That’s not the case now.

Prices for the Mk IV Turbo have been steadily rising since 2014, and in the last few months values are up 6.3 percent to $93,900 in #1 (Concours) condition. Sport-roof (targa) models like the one crossing the block at RM bring a few grand less than the equivalent coupe, but the auction house clearly has high hopes for this car if the estimate is any indication.

The Supra has only 11,200 miles on it, and the black-over-tan color scheme has aged very well. While six figures might seem totally insane for a Toyota from the ’90s, people are clearly willing to pay that much for super-clean, low-mile examples. Just a couple of months ago, Bring a Trailer sold a red 7111-mile Supra Turbo for $121,000.

1969 Nissan Skyline 2000 GT-R

Lot 304 (Bonhams)

Pre-sale estimate: $150,000–$180,000

Looking at this list, this 1969 Nissan Skyline GT-R “Hakosuka” is an obvious outlier. That said, a lot of people consider the original GT-R to be a foundational figure of Japanese sports car culture. The S-20 inline-six, good for 160 hp and a 7500-rpm redline, was based on the Nissan R380 race engine. This high-revving, triple-carb six-cylinder was only used in one other car—the Fairlady 432. “Hakosuka” is a portmanteau in Japanese, where hako means boxy and suka is a shortening of sukarain—a type of mountain road. Naturally, the GT-R was more than capable on a twisty road and even proved its mettle on the racetrack with 52 races won in its three years of competition.

Bonhams’ Hakosuka on offer is a rarer sedan, rather than the more well-known coupe. Nissan made 832 four-doors of the 2029 total GT-R production from 1969–72, although today the sedans are less valuable. Still, this GT-R is a majestic example of Japanese performance, and it includes upgrades like racing cams, stainless-steel exhaust, Weber carbs, an aluminum radiator, and a Nardi steering wheel. The car is the same one featured on Jay Leno’s Garage last June. And given that the Skyline impressed Jay Leno, it’ll certainly make its next owner happy every time that straight-six fires up.

The post 7 Japanese classics invading the 2019 Amelia Island auctions appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The new fifth-generation Toyota Supra follows the traditional recipe of rear-wheel drive and a powerful, front-mounted, inline six-cylinder engine. Some Toyota fans, though, are upset that the finished dish tastes more like spaetzle than ramen. That inline-six is a BMW design, assembled in a BMW factory, thereby putting off some Toyota purists.

The inline-six most closely associated with the Supra nameplate is Toyota’s famed 24-valve, DOHC, JZ family engine. In twin-turbocharged form, that engine was designated the 2JZ-GTE and it provided the foundation for much of the Supra’s lore in the 1990s. For Toyota fans who want a little more Japan and a little less Bavaria in their Supra, California-based tuner CX Racing will soon be taking pre-orders for kits to swap the 2JZ-GTE into the new Toyota sports car.

Toyota enthusiasts and others have complained that the new Supra is more of a BMW than a Toyota. Fair criticism—the Supra and BMW Z4 are indeed closely related and share a platform, and although the finished cars have completely different exteriors, just about every internal piece of the Toyota has a BMW part number. CX Racing’s conversion project is a big step in making the Supra more true to its heritage, although we can’t imagine it’s going to be cheap.

The post Tuning shop already planning 2JZ swap for new Supra appeared first on Hagerty Media.

When the mighty twin-turbocharged R32 Nissan Skyline GT-R laid waste to a field of Fords and Holdens during its first foray into Australia, a local journalist dubbed the car Godzilla. The name stuck, and would become synonymous with the fire-breathing 2+2.

But the car’s reputation was established more than two decades before with a small, almost nondescript coupe that looked a bit like a boxy Nissan 240-Z and went like hell. Nissan’s engineers referred to the car by its internal chassis designation KPGC10, but true believers know it as Hakosuka. The name is a portmanteau of hako, meaning boxy, and suka, which is short for sukarain, the type of Japanese mountain road from which the car takes its name.

Which happens to be where I drove one.

But first, a little history for the uninitiated. Although Nissan introduced the Skyline at the 1969 Tokyo Motor Show, that car was a successor to a sedan of the same name built by Prince, an independent automaker that merged with Nissan in 1966. Prince was something of a premium manufacturer that offered the snappy little Prince and the larger, more powerful, more luxurious Gloria.

The GT-R’s family tree starts with the Prince Skyline Sport built from 1957 until 1964. But things got really serious when Prince stretched a Skyline by eight inches, stuffed the Gloria’s 2.0-liter inline-six under the hood, and entered the 1964 Japanese Grand Prix. The car took second behind the then-new Porsche 904 GTS, which was in its own right a very successful mid-engine race car. (As it happens, the Prince was driven by Tetsu Ikuzawa, who would later become Porsche’s only Japanese factory driver.) Despite the Prince’s relative heft and crude engineering, Ikuzawa overtook the Porsche to lead the race for a spell, bringing the crowd to its feet and proving the Japanese could run with the best. Two years later, Prince took the win with the 200-horsepower mid-engined R380, a car powered by a great engine — literally, as the engine code was GR-8 — based on Skyline’s straight-six.

The victory so impressed Nissan that it brought most of the Prince’s racing engineers aboard, including Shin’ichiro Sakurai, the demanding engineer who led development of the Skyline. Nissan put him in charge of developing the Nissan Skyline GT-R sedan.

The small, boxy sedan that debuted in 1969 (the coupe came two years later) was powered by a 2.0-liter straight six based on the engine found in the R380. It featured double overhead cams and three Mikuni carburettors, made 160 horsepower, and sounded like heaven when you got on the gas. The car quickly proved itself a fierce competitor, winning 52 races—49 of them in succession—during its first three years of production.

It only took a little time on the mountain roads of Hakone to understand how the car became a legend. It’s not just the racing heritage, it’s the smell of oil and hot metal, the way the carbs honk under full throttle, the smoothness of the power. The driving experience is somewhere between nimble Datsun 510 and revvy 240Z and early BMW 6 Series, with the added experience of having nearly everyone you pass point and stare.

Clouds obscure Mount Fuji’s’s usually visible snow-capped peak as I thread the Skyline along a narrow single-track road. Given that I’m seated on the right side of the car and driving on the left half of the road, the experience feels a bit like piloting a Jaguar around some particularly leafy and uncharacteristically mountainous part of Britain, but the Skyline is no torque-rich E-type. Its small-displacement inline-six needs plenty of revs, which also yields a glorious-sounding intake howl from under the hood. The ultra-heavy steering is a workout for your forearms. Grip is decent thanks to a fully independent semi-trailing rear suspension, but the Skyline nevertheless takes focus to hustle along these narrow lanes.

The payoff of the car’s sound, sublime handling, and analog feel is worth the effort. The straight-six has a uniquely raspy tenor, the steering has the typical woolly imprecision of an old car but still provides feedback, and you feel every ripple of the pavement through the rigid suspension. Yet even in its old age, this GT-R feels potent.

Despite the car’s prodigious power, gorgeous styling, and racing success, the GT-R didn’t sell well. The oil embargo hurt high-revving sports cars as much as it did big-displacement muscle cars, and buyers tended to favor fuel-efficient compacts.  The last one rolled off the line in 1973, and Nissan didn’t revive the model until introducing the R32 in 1989. The car has grown faster and more technologically sophisticated with every generation, and although they’re all known by the nickname Godzilla, the first deserves to be called something more: A legend.

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Do you still think the manual-transmission, minimal-complexity sports car is a losing proposition in today’s automotive market? Then you’ll be surprised to hear that Mazda’s 30th Anniversary Edition Miata sold out within hours of its announcement. That doesn’t mean that it sold out to dealer-stock orders, as is usually the case when a manufacturer announces a “sold out” run. Every single one of the 500 production slots is spoken for by an individual.

Mazda is still offering places on a waiting list to would-be purchasers who missed the boat. The real question for Miata fans is: Should you get on the list and wait for a slot to open, or should you take a different route to roadster nirvana? Let’s take a look at the pricing and value aspects of the 30th Anniversary Miata and examine the alternatives.

Pricing is set at $34,995 for soft-top and $37,595 for RF variants, assuming you want the manual transmission. It’s important to understand that most trackday sanctions consider the RF a soft-top for purpose of rollover-protection rules; as an example, if you can’t pass the infamous head-clearance “broomstick test” at VIR with the RF’s top down, you are not permitted to drive in open-lapping sessions.

There are some aspects of the 30th Anniversary car which cannot be had on any other Miata at any price. The Racing Orange paint, the special trim on the Recaro seats, the RAYS wheels, and the serial plate are all exclusive to this car. All 30th Anniversary Editions will be fitted with Brembo brakes, finished in the same Racing Orange.

Compare that to the price of the mechanically similar 2019 Mazda Miata Grand Touring with GT-S Package. You don’t get RAYS wheels or Brembos, but even with extra-cost exterior paint and the $200 upcharge for a brown roof it still comes in at $31,480 before destination. You’ll also find some room to haggle—up to $1500 in some cases.

What could you do with that $5000 difference? The Flyin’ Miata Wilwood big-brake kit is $939 plus shipping. In my testing at Laguna Seca, these brakes proved measurably superior to the factory Brembo option, particularly in terms of pad-wear consistency. Another $1600 will get you O.Z. Allegerita wheels. These are favored by SCCA competitors for their feather-like weight and surprising durability.

Last but certainly not least, Blackbird Fabworx has the ND-RZ Roll Bar. Painted to match your car for $1395, this rollbar meets SCCA and NASA regulations and is constructed in a manner that is more artwork than craft. Expect to spend at least a grand installing it; the process is both involved and complex.

Add it up, and you have a track-ready ND-generation Miata that matches the 30th Anniversary for features while offering the additional benefit of first-rate rollover protection. Even better, you can buy it right now.

Should you skip the line and go right to the head of the 181-horse roadster class? Maybe not. The 30th Anniversary car is almost certain to retain significant value compared to a standard Miata; that’s been true ever since the British Racing Green Special Edition of more than 25 years ago. It will also be quicker and easier to sell.

There’s also the additional gratification of having a special edition sports car, which applies to this variant the same way it applies to a McLaren 675LT or a Ferrari 458 Speciale. It gives you another reason to take the car out to meetups, trackdays, and owners’ club events. Thirty years from now, people will still recognize the 30th Anniversary car on the streets. There’s a value to that which cannot be found on a spreadsheet but which is still very real.

Our recommendation? If you’re patient, get on the waiting list. If you aren’t, pull the trigger now on a Club or Grand Touring with GT-S package. In this case, we’re going to put our money where our mouth is; my wife, owner of an NC-generation MX-5 Cup, an NC MX-5 Club, and an NC MX-5 Sport, is on the list for a 30th Anniversary soft-top manual-transmission car of her own. She’ll be swapping on the Wilwoods, adding Flyin’ Miata’s brilliant Fox suspension, and having Blackbird paint a rollbar in Racing Orange to match. If you want to join her in this relatively exclusive club of owners, the time to act is… now.

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Acura is celebrating 30 years since the debut of the original NSX with a video that highlights its 1989 Chicago Auto Show reveal. It opens with the show floor but quickly transitions to showcase the mid-engine machine doing what it does best, carving corners. The video is chock full of synthesizer, drum machine, and ‘90s guitar riffs with some chromatic aberration thrown in for a hint of vaporwave aesthetic. The tone changes when a second-generation NSX arrives and the two run side-by-side through the curves as a drone follows. It shows just how far the car has come in 30 years and how much the two generations differ.

The original NSX was a game-changer that proved a car with great handling didn’t have to come with a Ferrari-sized price tag or Lamborghini-sized maintenance bills. Although the NSX was never a big seller, it served as a halo car for Acura and Honda, and received several performance and style upgrades through its long first-generation run. Its long-awaited second generation carries the mantle with the same driver focus, albeit with new technology, vastly improved performance, and a dazzling design, but maybe not all the charm of the three-pedal, pop-up headlight original.

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In the hunt for a wicked fast car, Jim Belosic cobbled together a mix of OEM parts from three different manufactures. And getting them all to play nice with one another was no easy task. Is this the future of hot rodding?

The textbook definition of a hot rod is any vehicle rebuilt or modified for high speed and fast acceleration. It is tough to argue the 1981 Honda Accord that Jon has built is anything but. Fat drag radial tires jut out from the rear fenders while the front end sits high and proud in what seems to be a 1950s-gasser-inspired stance. Except it’s all-electric. And it’s called a “Teslonda.”

Yes, this Accord lost its hydrocarbon-fueled heart and now creates clouds of tire smoke with nary a sound, thanks to a Telsa drive unit paired with Chevy Volt batteries. Why not use the full Tesla battery pack? Similar to the reason most engine swaps use the GM LS series rather than the Ford Coyote, it came down to power density. Belosic found the Volt battery pack to be much smaller and easier to fit into the small Accord chassis, while not losing any of the amperage that makes this car a land-bound e-missile.

Goofy-looking it might be, but this machine is runs 0–60 in 2.43 seconds and does the quarter mile in 10.5 seconds, according to Belosic. That would put it on par with the McLaren 675LT, a $350,000 supercar. In the most recent trip to the dragstrip, he and the car were kicked out for achieving ETs quicker than he was licensed to run.

It was all assembled at home, and Belosic figured out each challenge as it came, just like the early hot rodders and land-speed racers. It might look like some sort of Mad Max science experiment now, but so did belly tankers with flathead V-8s. Hot rodding is not going anywhere. It’s just going to evolve.

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The very first 2020 Toyota Supra just sold for $2.1 million at Barrett-Jackson’s 2019 Scottsdale Auction. Now, before you go all crazy thinking the new Supra is worth that much money, pump the brakes. The sale was a charity car with the proceeds benefiting the American Heart Association and the Bob Woodruff Foundation, a charity for post-911 impacted veterans and their families. That said, the figure was a new record for a Japanese car at public auction.

The previous record for a Japanese car at auction, and still the record holder if you put an asterisk on the Supra sale, was $1.7 million for a Nissan R90CK race car sold at the 2018 Tokyo Auto Salon BH Auction. The R90CK was Nissan’s car for the 1991 24 Hours of Daytona. A later evolution of the car, the R90CP, would see Daytona Victory a year later.

The Supra outsold one of the other big charity lots of the weekend, the first 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500, which took in $1.1 million dollars. The 2019 Ford GT Heritage Edition (another first-of-production car) went for $2.5 million to benefit the United Way of Southeastern.

Are any of these cars worth millions of dollars? No. Will they ever be? Maybe the Ford GT, eventually. Early VINs carry a premium, of course, but odds of the Supra appreciating more than 35 times its sticker price are slim.

But for a car that’s seen mixed response, with critics complaining about the lack of a manual transmission and the car’s BMW underpinnings, this sale shows that there is some interest in Toyota’s new sports car. Or, at the very least, the last two bidders are willing to spend a whole lot of money for a new car and a good cause.

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Nothing stirs up a car debate quite like a good ol’ engine swap. We even posed the question of ultimate motor transplant on the Hagerty Forums last week, receiving a wide range of responses. No one, however, dreamed up the unpredictable combination within the 1994 Mustang GT featured on Matt Farah’s channel The Smoking Tire. Lurking beneath the battleship-gray hood isn’t an American V-8, but Toyota’s legendary 2JZ inline-six. And with all the questions around the new 2020 Toyota Supra being more or less a BMW underneath, this wild build is a visceral reminder of why the twin-turbo Toyota straight-six is considered such a beast.

Why go through the trouble of not only replacing the old 5.0, but making the entire thing California-legal? Like the swap itself, the reasoning isn’t straightforward. After the original V-8 bit the dust, the owner, Stephen, decided a heart transplant was in order. And his time spent working at a performance shop specializing in Toyota Supras made the choice in donor vehicle pretty clear.

This Mustang is more than just a cobbled-together project—it’s truly a cohesive and well laid out build. The engine itself is 2JZ-GTE twin-turbo inline-six, complete with fully-functional stock emissions equipment. The inclusion of these items means that this car is California smog legal, no small task for a new car, let alone a 25-year-old Mustang with a Japanese engine. A few bolt-on modifications boost power from the stock 320 horsepower, to around 350.

The rest of the car follows the same attention to detail. Power is sent through a Supra’s Getrag V160 six-speed manual gearbox, and distributed to the rear tires via a 2003 Mustang SVT Cobra independent rear suspension (replacing the stock live axle). A suite of Maximum Motorsports suspension components keep the ’Stang planted and a 2000 Mustang Cobra R steering rack removes slack and adds feedback to the steering wheel. The interior is surprisingly untouched, with functioning stock gauges, cloth bucket seats, and tan wheel all looking straight out of 1994—only a keen eye would notice the revised shifter for the new transmission.

From what we see in the video, all of these parts appear to have completely transformed the car into a quick and well-sorted canyon-carving machine. And while a bit surprising at first, the turbo-six noises coming from the Mustang don’t actually seem out of character for the car, bringing some import flavor to an average Mustang.

What are your thoughts on this Japanese engine transplant? Was it the right choice or a missed swapportunity? Let us know in the Hagerty Forums below.

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Subaru’s big reveal at the 2019 Detroit auto show this year was something American enthusiasts have long lusted after—a vaunted S-line performance model built by STI. The 341-hp WRX STI S209 is the ultimate expression of Subaru’s performance heritage, and in the past such models were never offered in North America. Right on stage with the S209 was a clear reminder of that fact: the legendary 1998 Subaru Impreza STi 22B. And even after the cover came off of the new car, the gorgeous 22B still stole the show.

So why does anyone care about a 21-year-old Subaru that never even appeared in U.S. showrooms? Because the 22B was the car that Subaru built to honor its 40th anniversary, as well as its third consecutive World Rally Championship titles in 1995, 1996, and 1997. The 22B combined everything Subaru had learned into one absolutely brutal package, sending off the Impreza in a blaze of WR Blue and gold glory.

Based on the contemporary Impreza WRX Type R STi, the 22B featured a bored-out 2.2-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine that Subaru said made 280 hp. That’s what it said, anyway. At the time Japanese automakers had a kind of handshake agreement to cap output at 280 hp in the Japanese domestic market, but given the Type R STi was rated at 280 hp from its 2.0-liter engine, and Subaru almost certainly turned up the wick in other ways as well, most believe the 22B made more like 300 hp.

As in the new S209, Bilstein provided the shocks for the ultra-stiff 22B. Other performance upgrades included a twin-plated metal and ceramic clutch to better hold up to the heat and abuse of rallying and repeated launches. The 22B’s aero kit featured unique front and rear fenders, hood, and an adjustable rear wing, all which harkened to the Peter Stevens-designed WRC race car.

The example used as part of the S209 reveal at the Detroit auto show  is one of two examples in the United States, and it belongs to Subaru of America. The other apparently lives in the collection of a—very lucky—Subaru dealer.

Many Americans became enamored with the 22B STi by driving the virtual version in the Gran Turismo franchise. That’s because only 400 examples were made in real life for Japan, and the other 24 made it to either the UK or Australia. Although Hagerty editor-in-chief Larry Webster did have the chance to get behind the wheel back in his days at Car and Driver, and he said the 22B was a riot. “Get yourself on a deserted, winding dirt road, and you can have the sort of fun reserved for guys with Finnish last names,” he said in the 1999 review.

That’s still true of the WRX STI, but it was in part enthusiasm for the 22B (and the American-spec Impreza 2.5 RS) that convinced Subaru to bring the first STI to North America in 2004. And the rest, they say, is all-wheel-drive history.

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Vintage Nissans are more and more gaining attention from collectors and driving enthusiasts alike, but one model—the 240SX—is attracting a whole different kind of collector. In this space you’ll find enthusiasts who want a more pure, unspoiled taste of what is perhaps Japan’s most beloved drift car.

When Nissan brought the 240Z stateside, it changed perceptions of what Japanese sports cars could be. The evolution of Nissan sports cars brought an evolution of Z cars to market leading up to the modern 370Z. During the 1990s, Nissan had two sports cars: the 300ZX, which had slipped upmarket into an aspirational GT car, and the 240SX, a four-cylinder model that was far simpler and had a fantastically nimble chassis.

Today the 240SX doesn’t carry the gravitas of a flagship model like hte Skyline GT-R, Supra, or NSX, yet it’s still difficult to find one in great shape. Even the tired-out cars command honest money. The 240SX has a strong following, but its followers aren’t collectors investing in the hatchback and coupes hoping for returns at auction. They’re driving enthusiasts.

The 240SX was produced for the U.S. market from 1989–98, split into two generations S13 (1989–94) and S14 (1995–98), and it’s the go-to platform for drifting enthusiasts. The 240SX has been an enthusiast go-to for well over a decade, making aftermarket support strong. However much of that aftermarket support is for modification, rather than restoration. A large number of cars have been extensively modified or crashed as a result, leading to high demand and limited supply of clean examples. Enter the Drift Tax.

Unmodified and well-preserved cars command a premium. S13-generation cars in average condition easily reach $10,000, while S14s in the same condition can reach $20,000. Even rough-condition cars are rarely seen for less than $5000, forcing some enthusiasts who have been priced out of the market to begin searching for another rear-wheel-drive platform to fulfill their driving fix.

The simple explanation is that drifting and other motorsports have elevated the popularity of the 240SX to the point that supply and demand became a real concern for serious shoppers. Base model or non-highly optioned cars are often subjected to questionable high-angle steering kits and turbochargers, but even hardcore drift enthusiasts seem to live by a certain code; rare, clean 240SXs don’t become drift cars.

The rarest and most appreciated 240SX examples are those equipped with factory two-tone paint. The two-tone paint only appeared on first-generation (S13) cars and only in three flavors—Creamy Yellow, Silver Green, and Bluish-Silver. No convertibles got the desirable paint scheme.

Got a sweet 240SX or a story about driving one? Tell us about it in the Hagerty Forums, if you catch our drift.

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JDM lovers, rejoice! On January 11, BH Auction will hold its second annual auction ahead of the Tokyo Auto Salon. Increasing its lot count from 16 last year to 50 this time around, BH shouldn’t have a problem eclipsing last year’s total sales of $4.05 million.

A number of important modern race cars will cross the block, along with European sports and exotics and numerous JDM cars rarely seen on our side of the Pacific. Here are five cars of particular interest.

2002 Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec II Nur

The most enticing of the JDM forbidden fruit, the R34 Skyline is without a doubt one car that has American enthusiasts chomping at the bit to get their hands on. For the one or two people who aren’t keeping track, we only have five years to go. For now we have this Millennium Jade unicorn to salivate over.

While the R34 Skyline is a special car on its own, the V-Spec II Nur turns the already good GT-R up another notch. Most notably, the standard RB26DETT engine was upgraded to the desirable N1 specification with a reinforced block, pistons, rods, twin ball bearing turbos, improved oiling, cooling and more. This car represents one of the most sought after R34 GT-R’s out there. The 4000-kilometer example is expected to fetch between $175,000–$230,000. The nagging question is, where will values on these cars be when they’re finally available here?

1995 BMW 320ST

One of the highlighted race cars is this amazing BMW 320ST. Developed to compete in the STW racing series and fitted with the S42 race engine, this BMW works car has an impressive overall race history. It placed first at the 1995 24 Hours of Nürburgring and first again at the 1996 and 1997 24 Hours of Spa. Very few of these cars exist making this a perfect addition to any serious modern race car collection. This one carries a pre-auction estimate of $230,000–$277,000.

1972 Nissan Skyline GT-R

This is where it all began. The Hakosuka Skyline. The GT-R was fitted with Nissan’s legendary S20 engine, derived from the GR8 engine from the R380 race car. Tie in the fact that the GT-R was highly successful in the period in the touring car circuit, the Hakosuka has some serious credit to its name. In the U.S., GT-R Coupes sell at auction anywhere from $176,000–$242,000. This unrestored example is one of five Hakosuka GT-Rs in the BH sale and is expected to fetch $166,000–$203,000.

1971 Nissan Fairlady 432

Without a doubt, the Fairlady 432 is the ultimate early Z-car. The combination of Nissan’s well-balanced S30 chassis and powerful 2.0-liter S20 engine from the Hakosuka GT-R has made these among the most desirable Nissans out there. An estimated 420 examples were produced for the Japanese market. Only three examples have ever been offered at auction in the U.S., with prices ranging from $170,500–$253,000. This example is expected to bring $138,000–$194,000. If Tokyo is a bit too far, another one will be offered the following week in Scottsdale, Arizona.

1959 Mitsubishi Jeep CJ

Post World War II, the advantages of producing a small 4×4 multi-purpose vehicle for the civilian market was all too clear. Just after the war’s end, Willys began to produce the Jeep for the American market. Not too long after, the Land Rover was introduced to the UK. The Japanese market was not without demand for a Jeep-like vehicle as well. The main obstacle remained the Japanese Government’s policies protecting domestic industry prohibited import of the Willys.

In 1953, Mitsubishi began to import and assemble Willys CJ-3As, labeled as Mitsubishis for domestic sale. This later transitioned to domestic production of the CJ by Mitsubishi. Estimated at $16,600–$23,000, this is a bit higher than what a standard Jeep CJ would sell for in the U.S., but it is helped by a rare single-digit number plate. The Mitsubishi CJ proves without a doubt that everyone loves a Jeep, no matter where you live.

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To say that Japan loves cars would be a massive understatement. On a recent trip through the Land of the Rising Sun, we saw that veneration for mechanical art of the automobile with our own eyes. It’s not limited to museums or domestic brands. Despite new car sales peaking way back in 1990, Japan’s automotive culture is alive and well. Here are some of the highlights from a recent trip. You can also check them out on our Instagram account.

Why should the Porsche 911 have all the Safari craze fun? Tucked away in Nissan’s Zama Heritage Center (click here for the Japanese website), these ex East Africa Safari Datsun Zs have true rally pedigree and wear their dents with pride. Does it make you want to build an all-terrain Z-car tribute?

This car might look a bit like an Acura NSX, but it’s not. Instead, it’s a look at a Japanese supercar that never happened: the Nissan Mid-4 II. Equipped with a 330-hp twin-turbo V-6 mounted amidships, and all-wheel drive, this concept debuted in 1987. A production version might have been legendary.

You’re not seeing things: that really is a 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1 Cobra Jet wearing full Japanese prefectural police livery. Check out our story on the brief history of Mustangs exported to Japan.

Talk about big in Japan: this Escalade ESV wouldn’t get a second glance in Los Angeles, but here it absolutely dwarfs the rest of the traffic and dominates the parking lot.

A sad little Lotus Europa looks like it needs a bit of care to get back to fighting strength. This one we found tucked behind a racing team garage at Motegi Twin Ring circuit.

Where it all started for Honda: the original auxiliary power unit converted from Allied radio generator to people-mobilizing moped in post-war Japan. The Honda Collection Hall at Twin Ring Motegi is a must-visit for any Honda fan, filled with hundreds of significant vehicles.

Not all the displays at Motegi’s Honda museum are static. This NSX-GT raced in Super GT racing in the early 2000s, and features a 3.5-liter V-6 engine that makes more than 500 hp. During out visit, Honda’s curators fired it up to the appreciation of the fans.

Daikoku parking area in Yokohama is a popular hangout spot for car enthusiasts, especially on the weekends. At night, the kids with glowing Lamborghinis show up. On Sunday morning, it’s the classics crowd.

The Lamborghinis were here too this morning, some of them wildly modified. A herd of about a dozen rampant bulls were headed out for a run on the smooth, broad toll road that sits high above Tokyo.

The emperor of Japanese speed, the original Nissan Skyline was a force to be reckoned with on the racetrack. Called Hakosuka (roughly translated as Box Skyline) for their boxy shape, their high-revving straight six made them legendary. More than a dozen were out on this sunny day, ranging from carefully preserved originals, to modified screamers.

Japan’s streets are filled with boxy little vans, which make a lot of sense given the tight side streets and limited parking. What makes less sense is the curious Japanese subculture where owners modify their vehicles to look like little Chevy and Dodge vans.

Even with Japan’s strict road inspections and high road tax on older cars, you still see plenty of classic cars out and about in Tokyo and its suburbs. Still, you might not expect to see is a nearly-perfect AMC Pacer.

Maneuvering these big American land yachts around the narrow Japanese streets has got to be a real handful. The hot-rod Lincoln, on the right, still bore the faded paintwork indicating it had been part of a desert rally in Nevada about a decade ago.

Locked up tight near the trendy Shibuya shopping district, this flawless Volkswagen 21-window bus was well-cared for. A surprising number of classic VWs can be seen around Tokyo, always in left-hand drive.

Godzilla’s lair! At Nismo (Nissan Motorsports) Headquarters, you can sit down with a tech and have your Skyline GT-R or Fairlady Z serviced and modified by the same people who build Nissan’s racing machines.

Even if you haven’t packed along your R32 Skyline GT-R in carry-on luggage, Nismo is worth a visit for its small museum. Here, mounted at the entrance, is the R390 GT1 racing car that competed at the 1997 and 1998 24 Hours of Le Mans.

This Lada Niva raises more question than it answers. How did it get here? Where does its owner get parts? Who would be willing to put up with Eastern European reliability headaches in a country filled with similarly boxy and capable tiny-SUVs from Suzuki and Mitsubishi? Enthusiasm of all types, even the inexplicable, can be found everywhere in Japan.

The Japanese road safety inspection process, Shaken, is known to be quite rigorous. Even so, well-heeled owners somehow manage to get all manner of craziness past the red tape. This is a Ferrari Maranello in full Japanese Grand Touring Championship specification, and following it is a Lamborghini Diablo SV-R, both racing-spec machines never intended for street use.

If you visit Hiroshima, Mazda has a small museum and factory tour that’s very worthwhile. The rotary-powered Cosmo in the foreground is just one of the ways Mazda’s innovative approaches helped keep this small Japanese marque afloat.

Without a doubt, this is the nicest first-generation Miata in the world. The first car from Mazda’s in-house factory restoration effort, this 1992 Eunos Roadster (the Japanese home market name) has a little over 30,000 kilometers on the odometer, and has been through a complete disassembly and restoration process. Check out our in-depth story on the process.

Almost every Porsche 911 you’ll see in Japan is left-hand-drive. It’s not that the cars weren’t offered in right-hand-drive specification, it’s just that the enthusiast community prefers their European cars to be “correct.”

No racing machine has ever screamed louder than the 1991 Le Mans winning Mazda 787B. Here at the appropriately-named Sound Of Engine historic races, all four rotors spun up to perforate eardrums in the best way possible.

Japanese car enthusiasts enjoy a very wide array of interests. In this photo, you can see everything from modern Alfa-Romeos to classic Triumphs to the Japan-only Mitsubishi EVO wagon variant.

Mini is a very well-respected brand in the Japanese market, and remains the top import even now. Japanese-spec cars were sold into the early 2000s, so importing a British 1960s version and converting it to more modern spec keeps the passion going.

This particular Mini has ditched its Rover engine for a 1.6-liter Honda VTEC engine and added a limited-slip differential. The Honda engine barely fits, and turns the pint-sized Brit into an absolute rocket.

Keeping things stock is not the Japanese way. This 1960s Nissan Skyline “Hakosuka” has a single overhead cam engine bored out to 3.2 liters and converted to fuel injection, mated to a six-speed transmission swapped in from a late-model Nissan Silvia. It makes more than 300 hp and revs to 7500 rpm.

Who would have thought that a humble Toyota Corolla would be one of the most famous and rare cars in Japan? This panda-colored Trueno wears the livery of Initial-D, a popular animated series about a young mountain racer. Analogous to the rear-wheel-drive North American Corolla GT-S from the 1980s, it’s rare to see them now as so many have been wrecked on the narrow hillside roads.

No, that’s not a Jaguar Mk II, it’s a Mitsuoka Viewt. Neo-classic cars are quite popular in Japan, and Mitsuoka is the king of blending the old and the new.

A Formula 1 car sits ready to take to the track for a demonstration race at Sound Of Engine. The founder of Shadow racing, Don Nichols, made his start selling tires in post-war Japan.

This Countach is as rare as they come. It’s the first of the three prototype built for Canadian racing legend Walter Wolf, who ran a F1 team in the 1970s, employing the likes of Jody Scheckter and James Hunt. It’s the first Countach to wear those big 345-series tires and that iconic wing.

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Mazda’s best-selling car, the compact Mazda 3, is not the company’s best seller in North America. As with every other mainstream brand, Mazda has been run over by the crossover freight train, and the company sells more than two CX-5s for every Mazda 3 it moves. Even so, that hasn’t stopped sporty-minded Mazda from bringing forth at the 2018 L.A. auto show an all-new Mazda 3, a refreshing shot of driver-oriented excitement into a class of vehicles that is under threat as companies such as GM and Ford (and even Toyota) contemplate slashing their car offerings.

Set to hit dealerships in early 2019, the Mazda 3 returns about the same size as before and again as both a sedan and a small wagon (which Mazda prefers to call “the hatchback” because the word wagon is sales poison). A 2.5-liter engine of around 185 horsepower will be the only powerplant in the U.S. at launch, the base 2.0-liter being dropped. The SkyActiv-X, a mild-hybrid homogenous-charge combustion engine (basically a gasoline engine that works like a diesel for better fuel economy) available in a year or so. All-wheel drive will come to the U.S. Mazda 3 as an option for the first time, and the transmissions will be a six-speed automatic or six-speed manual, the latter likely only available in the hatchback.

The smoothed and more shapely styling of the new sedan evokes the larger Mazda 6 but with its own athletic proportions, while the hatchback evokes—well, uh, the old Mazda 3 hatch but with a bit of a peanut-butter cookie habit. Give credit to Mazda for being bold, but the hatchback seems to have put on a few pounds in the hips as designers shrank the rear door glass as well as the hatchback glass, creating an enormous C-pillar. It looks spectacular from the rear three-quarter, less so from the side as the heaviness contrasts with the low, sleek hoodline to unbalance the design. And we’re told that this is the slimmed down version of the hatch; an earlier concept looked even heavier in the back.

Elsewhere, Mazda follows current industry fashions by pasting on a huge grille with an oversize brand badge. The hatchback has a Zagato-like double-humped roof, a cool styling embellishment that was apparently added at the last minute. Mazda earns props for paying special attention to the rear end, where, among the other lovely touches, the new taillight treatments are finessed with beautiful details. Coincidentally, Mazda’s stand at the L.A. Show was directly opposite Alfa Romeo’s, where the overall handsome vehicles nonetheless have generic rear ends that look phoned-in, an industry plague affecting many brands.

Underneath, the new all-steel structure is noteworthy for ditching a rear multi-link suspension in favor of a simpler twist-beam, an unusual feature on a car also offering all-wheel drive. According to Dave Coleman, a vehicle development engineer at Mazda R&D in Irvine, California, and the company’s defacto U.S. spokesman on all things to do with dirty bits, the twist-beam outhandles the old multi-link. “We focused on the fundamentals of tuning, getting the roll center where it needs to be, working with the bushings and shocks to get the car more neutral.” Coleman acknowledges the switch was partly a cost-savings measure, but it was also inspired by the current CX-3 small crossover, which also has a twist-beam but proved to be a willing handler.

Coleman cited more sound insulation, the company’s proprietary power steering system software, plus the overall computer integration of the steering, stability control, engine, braking, and all-wheel-drive components of its G-Vectoring Control Plus system as areas of the new 3 that Mazda is most proud. The goal is to make the new 3 feel Miata-like, especially in the way it lift-throttle oversteers into corners. To do that, the computer takes data from accelerometers as well as the steering and throttle, then anticipates the subsequent tire loading and then begins working the throttle, brakes, and all-wheel drive coupling.

So, Coleman says by way of example, as you steer into a corner, even if you don’t lift the gas, the computer will relax the throttle slightly to load weight on the tires. If it’s an AWD model, the electronic clutch in back will decouple, making the rear end more prone to move sideways and help turn the car into the corner. The inside rear brake will also drag slightly to help aim the car. As the driver unwinds the steering out of the corner, the AWD system will engage again to help drive the car out of the turn. The seamless integration of all these elements took a lot of work and added massively to the car’s software coding.

Does it all work as advertised? We’ll have to wait until we get a chance to drive one.

The post The 2019 Mazda 3 is a car for car people appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Wait, are those wedding bells we hear? Is comedian Byron Bowers finally ready to settle down and commit to his “forever car”? Could a wedding-dress-white R35 Nissan GT-R be the one? We have a good feeling about this.

Sure, Byron has been difficult to please on this season of Donut Media’s Miracle Whips. Yes, he’s had plenty of nice things to say about all the vehicles his friend James picked out on DriveShare, a lineup that includes a 1964 Lincoln, 1969 Camaro SS, 1974 Bronco, 2011 Bentley, and even a K.I.T.T. clone, among others. But when faced with that forever question—If you could drive just one car for the rest of your life, would this be it?—his answer has always been “no.”

(As Byron reminds us in every single episode, cup holders are important!)

This time might be different, however. Byron is love struck from the start. The GT-R has it all: good looks, great personality, and amazing power. “Never in my wildest dreams (did) I think I’d be sitting behind the wheel of a Nissan GT-R. And I’ve had some wild dreams. That’s why I can’t go into PetSmart no more.”

Byron praises the car’s responsiveness—“When I put my foot down, oh sh*t!”—but he admits it makes him a little uneasy. “I can’t lie. This thing is scary! This car has 220 on the dash. No weird rattles or nothing. My adrenaline is high right now. It’s like your friend with that crazy-ass dog. I’m scared, but he’s calm. The car is the calmest thing. The car is calm.”

He applauds the look of the gauges. Plays with the buttons and the performance options. He stretches for more and more adjectives to describe how much fun it is to drive. In a nutshell, he’s blown away.

But Byron has three concerns: “(First,) the only people that’s going to complement you about this car are people that know about this car. (Second,) will I have enough self-control to keep it in automatic calm mode, or will I always want to drive it in beast mode? (And third,) I probably can’t work on this car myself. That’s a major concern for me. I don’t want to be broke down on the side of the road.”

Byron concludes that “this car is an enabler … it makes me irresponsible… it has a mind of its own!” And although it does indeed have cup holders, he complains they’re “too damn big!”

Byron contemplates the situation. “Even with all that going against it, this is one of the most fun car experiences I’ve ever had. So I have to ask myself, ‘Is the Nissan GT-R my Miracle Whip?’”

You just HAVE to watch and find out for yourself. The ending does not disappoint.

Looking for your own Miracle Whip? DriveShare, available online or in the Apple app store, is a great way to enjoy your dream car without having to purchase it. And if you already own a sweet ride, you can rent it and help finance your next project.

The post Is a R35 Nissan GT-R your Miracle Whip? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The imports are coming. We have been watching the sun rise on Japanese cars from some time, knowing that they couldn’t remain cheap forever. The Honda S2000 has been on the front of the wave as values have shot up for the best examples of particular models.

Arguably one of the best S2000s to come up for sale in recent history, a New Formula Red soft top just sold on Bring a Trailer for $48,000. If you just raised your eyebrows, scoffed, or yelled at the screen, settle down and let’s talk about why this number could have been even higher.

This particular convertible had one big thing going for it—low mileage. It has just 1001 miles on the odometer. There were more than 400 photos too, which presented the car in flawless, as-delivered condition. The hang tag airbag warning on the dash is intact, for cryin’ out loud.

This is not the only super-low-mileage S2000 out there. Heck, it’s not even the only one to appear on Bring a Trailer recently. So that somewhat quashes the “try to find another one” argument that can drive up prices. The 2000 model year was also the first for the S2000, so this car holds to the general belief that cars from the first and last years of production are more appealing to collectors.

This is a benchmark sale, no doubt, but even more noteworthy is that there are a couple of things that might have pushed the price even higher: the right color combination and a factory-option hardtop.

First off, while the New Formula Red paint and black interior makes for a visually great combo, from a production standpoint it isn’t rare. According to the research of a member on s2ki.com, we can see that the black interior was the most popular pairing with the four exterior color choices. The other option would be the red interior. Only 384 cars received Berlina Black exterior and red interior, making that combination the rarest in 2000. New Formula Red with black interior was chosen by 2116 buyers.

Another factory fit that would have boosted value is the OEM hardtop. Rarely ordered, those tops tend to stay with cars and are very difficult to source. Aftermarket hardtops do exist, but they tend to be less desirable than the factory-fitted pieces.

We aren’t about to state that this car was a bargain, but it is indeed hard to imagine a cleaner example. The main takeaway is that appreciation for Japanese cars has been on the rise and shows no signs of slowing. When it comes to these rare-opportunity cars—price doesn’t matter when someone wants it bad enough.

The post Here’s how a Honda S2000 sold for $48,000 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The non-Mk IV Supras live in an odd space. A great example of Toyota’s application of technology to create a sports car, they will long live in the shadow of the infamous Mk IV cars that rose to fame thanks to The Fast and The Furious movies. That doesn’t mean they aren’t great cars, and as the Mk IVs continue to climb higher, the interest for the earlier cars seems to be rising too.

Let’s dive into the Mk III and see what’s happening with the closest sibling to the star car.

What it is

The Mk III was the first Supra to separate the Supra nameplate from the Celica lineup, and thus was the recipient of an all-new chassis and bodywork. While many competitors were transitioning their cars to front-wheel drive, Toyota kept the Supra rear-drive. Angular and understated, the Supra reflected the late-1980s design model and looked good doing it.

The MK III didn’t just look good, however. Toyota packed it with technology. The turbocharged engine option was Toyota’s first use of coil-on-plug ignition, banning the distributor from under the hood. Also standard on the turbo models was the Toyota Electronic Modulated Suspension (TEMS). This allowed the driver to adjust the shock firmness between “normal” and “sport,” something that so many late-model production cars list as standard.

Who is buying

So who is buying these less-desirable siblings of the Mk IV? Short answer: younger folks. Millennials comprise 50 percent of all Hagerty quote activity, with Gen X-ers marking 25 percent and Boomers coming in third at 22 percent. This is a significant shift from the market in 2014 when it was a 30/30/30 split between the same groups. Non-surprisingly, these relatively late-model imports have never been a favorite of the pre-Boomer group, as they have yet to eclipse more than 12 percent of activity.

Which one is popular

There are two paths should you choose to pursue a Mk III Supra: the turbocharged or naturally-aspirated engine. The NA cars leaped in value in 2013 (15 percent) and 2014 (10 percent), but they’ve been largely flat since. By contrast, the turbo saw a 16-percent climb in 2013, followed by 10 percent year over year until a flat 2017 and then a 20-percent gain in 2018. The Turbos will likely hold a higher value than the NA cars from here on out.

“The Mk III will always live in the shadow of the Mk IV cars, which is perfectly fair, but some people priced out of the later cars have turned to the perfectly good Mk IIIs,” says Hagerty Valuation Analyst Andrew Newton. “They’re no longer a big bargain in terms of sports cars from this era, but still a pretty decent value in terms of performance, appearance, and name recognition per dollar.”

The NA features a 3.0-liter DOHC inline six-cylinder making 200 horsepower and 196 lb-ft of torque. The turbo bumped output to 230 horses with 246 lb-ft. Of course, either engine could be had with a five-speed manual or four-speed automatic, with preference shown for the manual transmission in most cases.

Recent sales

With a combination of so many of the desirable traits, this 1990 Turbocharged model brought $44,000 at Barrett-Jackson’s Scottsdale auction in January 2018, setting the highest auction result we’ve seen. A #2 car, it presented well and had covered just 3300 miles. Oddly, silver BBS wheels were fitted to the car when it was sold new. Even with that change, the other options line up to make it the right one to buy for an investor—which it seems like was the seller was an investor also. Mecum sold the same car for $20,935 in 2011.

A 1991 Turbo with light modification brought a more palatable $11,000 at Barrett Jackson’s Palm Springs sale in April 2018. The right-hand-drive car, paired with some tasteful changes, held to our #3 value.

The post Toyota’s Mk III Supra is a lovable older brother appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The Nissan 370Z is old. Practically ancient when you consider that the life cycle for most cars is about 5 years. The Z is approaching 10 years of production, a time span that has seen three generations of Honda Accord. At the 2018 SEMA show, however, the Nissan Project Clubsport 23 has many excited about one of our favorite living fossils. Under the hood is a 400-horsepower, twin-turbo V-6—50 more hp than the stock 370Z. Power is an automotive cure-all. Look no further than the Dodge Challenger, which is older than the Z and still relevant thanks to the 707-hp Hellcat.

But back to the Z car. The 23, by the way, is a reference to the two syllables of Nissan is in Japanese (ni = two, san = three). Like most SEMA builds from car companies, the one-off car is a combination of factory aftermarket parts you can order and fabrication-shop fantasy. Don’t expect a crate version of the VR30DDTT engine, borrowed from the Infiniti Q50 and Q60, anytime soon. There are a few bolt-on parts that are available or will be available soon to  for the 370Z, like the 18-inch Rays wheels, Nismo HC Street/Track brake pads, and Nismo suspension components.

Nissan also says it may offer a “builder kit” to help customers build their cars to track-prepped specification. But we’ll stop right there because we’re thinking the same thing you’re thinking. Put this engine in the production car, right? 400Z has a nice ring to it. And even if that’s just wishful thinking, you did get excited about the 370Z for a minute there, and when was the last time that happened? Like we said, a healthy dose of horsepower tends to solve a lot of problems. Including memory loss.

The post This 400-hp twin-turbo SEMA car proves the Nissan 370Z isn’t dead yet appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Nearly 50 years ago, a small Japanese car company eager to expand its footprint in the United States made the fateful decision to do what no other automaker in its home country had ever attempted: tackle the European sports car heavyweights head on with a model that would not only best them dynamically, but prove to be far more reliable than anything hailing from Germany, Italy, or England.

The result was the Datsun Fairlady Z, a car better known simply as the Z car by American enthusiasts (or its S30 chassis code for true JDM nerds). The first 240Z—named after its 2.4-liter straight-six engine—was shown off at the Pierre Hotel in New York City in the fall of 1969, and the majority of sales took place the following year. The popularity of the car was both instant and enormous, driving significant volume for Datsun and making it a common name anywhere sports cars were raced or appreciated.

The S30 would remain in production until the late 1970s, undergoing a series of running drivetrain changes and trim updates until it left the scene at the end of the ’78 model year. This lightweight, affordable, and well-engineered coupe proved that the “built in a shed” ethos that had long driven the Little British Car industry was truly outdated—and forced every would-be competitor to step up their game.

Today, the Datsun Z remains an inexpensive way to own a classic sports coupe. With so many examples having been produced, the cars are far from rare, which has helped to keep prices reasonable. While a mint condition early 240Z will fetch $65K at auction, a driver 280Z can be had for less than $10,000, and you’ll find an entire universe of options below the $20K mark. Their simple mechanicals are friendly to DIY owners and shops alike, but at the same time, the use of thin ’70s-era steel hasn’t done the Z any favors in terms of resisting the tin worm, which means not every S30 survivor is one you’d want to own.

How can you tell the difference between a Datsun that’s a keeper and a 20-footer that should never grace your garage? To get the scoop we spoke with Ryan Gardner, owner of ZCar Depot; Mike Hanson, manager of Whitehead Performance; and Dave Epstein, who founded Arizona Z Car. It also helps that I went through the Z buying process myself a few years ago, and have gathered a fair amount of hard-earned wisdom to impart about the dos and don’ts of owning a classic Datsun.

Meeting the players

Although there were three distinct versions of the Datsun S30 exported to the U.S. during its initial 1969–78 run—the 240Z, 260Z, and 280Z—all were largely similar. Only details and drivetrains set them apart. Still, when it comes to pricing, desirability, and parts availability, the distinction between one model and another (including the date it was born) is fairly important.

The earliest Datsun 240Zs were built from October 1969 through January 1971, and they are referred to as Series I cars. It’s important to note that only 543 of these Series I cars were produced in 1969, and of those a mere handful were sold as ’69 model year vehicles, making them the rarest of the early cars.

As a whole, however, 1970 Series I cars are the holy grail of S30 collectors due to their relative scarcity (16,215 sent to America for that model year, compared to 33,684 the year after), and as such you can expect them to command the highest dollar when found in good condition. The Series II 240Z was built between February and August 1971, followed by Series III (August 1971–September 1972) and finally Series IV cars (September 1972–September 1973), totalling just under 150,000 240s in the United States.

Immediately following the 240Z was the 260Z, a short-lived tweener that arrived just after the 240 and pushed engine size up to 2.6 liters. An 18-month American production run was split between cars that fell into the ’74 model year and those that crept into the first three months of 1975 (sometimes called ’74.5 cars). The 260Z was also the first model to offer a 2+2 four-seater option on a long-wheelbase chassis, a relatively unpopular option among Americans that remains supremely affordable to this day as a result.

Here’s where things get a bit weird. In the rest of the world, the 260Z would continue on until the S30 platform was retired at the end of 1978, but in the U.S. a fresh 280Z (with, you guessed it, a 2.8-liter engine) hit the streets for 1975 and hung around till the end.

This makes it tough to figure out just how many 260Zs were actually built versus the 280Zs, due to how Datsun reported its yearly sales numbers. Estimates vary from 50,000 or so 260Zs for 1974, with maybe 10 percent of that number offered during the brief ’75 appearance. Roughly 228,661 280Zs were sold in the U.S. from ’75–78,  which represented about 90 percent of global production. All told? Close to 450,000 Z cars made it across the Pacific from 1969–78.

If you’re trying to find the build date on an S30, there are two ways to do it. First, you can check the data tag on the door jamb, which should include the year and month the car was born. If that plate is missing, you can snag the car’s VIN, which, in addition to being on the tag can also be found on the driver’s side dashboard as a metal plate that can be read through the windshield, as well as on a data tag located on the strut tower, passenger side, under the hood.

American-market 240Z and 280Z coupes feature a VIN that starts with HLS30 (H representing a 2.4-liter or 2.8-liter engine, L for left-hand drive, and S30 the chassis code), followed by numbers indicating the vehicle’s rough sequence on the production line (a 260, however, will show RLS30, with R representing the 2.6-liter engine). There are several online registries available that can place your car’s VIN in the right spot alongside those already reported to help you figure out its production date.

The engine-bay plate also features the car’s original paint code. The S30 was offered with a wide variety of hues, ranging from 901 (Silver Gray) to 920 (Safari Gold) in the first year alone. White, blue, red, orange, brown, bronze yellow, and green were all available, along with a number of metallic variations of the same. Interiors were predominantly black or a mix of black, beige, and brown, but red, white, and blue were also available.

The engine itself will feature a number stamp with a serial number, essentially either L24 (2.4 liter), L26 (2.6 liter), or L28 (2.8 liter) followed by identifying digits that should match the engine bay data plate’s engine number.

Telling them apart

From the above you’ll have noticed considerable overlap between not just the 260Z/280Z in terms of model year, but even the Series I/Series II 240Z. Fortunately, there are a number of ways you can visually spot the model year you’re looking at when inspecting a potential purchase. Remember, Datsun made running changes to the car on a continual basis, sometimes even within the same model year, so feature variations can and will be found on certain models (although styling is largely locked in).

The Series I 240Z is easily distinguished by the air exhaust vents built into its hatch, a design cue that disappeared with the Series II cars when the vents became circular and were relocated to the C-pillar (with the car also gaining larger sun visors, swapping in a speedometer starting at 0 mph rather than 20 on the earlier cars, and a few other minor updates). Series III cars looks like Series II externally, but feature a different center console design and a dash-mounted cigarette lighter, and features such as a seatbelt warning buzzer. Series IV cars received steel headlight buckets rather than fiberglass, a new dash layout, and larger bumpers mandated by federal regulations.

The 260Z, being somewhat of a mongrel in terms of features and design, offers either rubber overriders on the same bumpers found on the Series IV 240Z, or full diving-board bumpers (that would carry through the 280Z to the end of S30 production). It’s important to note that although you may see the 260Z and 280Z listed as longer than the 240Z, it’s the bumpers that are adding the extra six inches—the bodies are exactly the same in almost every dimension.

Other differences for the 260Z included moving the turn signals from underneath the bumper to just above and inside the grille, displaced from their lower fender roost by the giant steel 5-mph bumpers hanging off the car. The 2+2 body style includes a longer, flatter roof, a larger rear quarter window, and of course a set of child-only rear seats to take advantage of the close to 12 inches of extra wheelbase.

“It takes a special owner to buy a 2+2,” Mike Hanson says. “There are so many unique parts for the four-seater, inside and out, and they’ve fallen so far by the wayside, that you almost need a complete parts car alongside your restoration candidate to have any hope of completing the project. The market value for these models is very low.”

The 280Z is mostly a visual match for the 260Z, save for crimped rubber bumper extenders and louvered hoods that were added to the mix in 1977. There were a few special edition 280Zs out there, but not many have survived to present day. They included the ZZZap Z, which in ’77 paired its all-yellow paint, black stripe, and rear window louvers with its own custom arcade game (surely a first in automotive history).

This was followed by the Black Pearl the year after which was, well, a black Z (albeit the only black S30 produced). Between 1000–1500 were sold. Used a part of a test program to see how much Datsun owners wanted a black car, it would spawn the Black Gold 280ZX when the car was refreshed for 1979, inspiring moustache fantasies throughout the ’80s thanks to the over-the-top masculinity embraced by its ad campaign.

Under that long hood

We’ve already established that the 240Z, 260Z, and 280Z each featured different engines, but the details of what motor and transmission was available with which car are somewhat fluid from one year to the next.

At the very least, things are simple in the transmission department. In America, the 240Z and 260Z were only ever offered with a four-speed manual or a three-speed automatic (despite the existence of a five-speed in Japan and overseas). The 280Z would add an optional five-speed to the mix in 1977, which featured almost identical gear ratios to what was offered in the 280Z’s four-speed with the addition of an overdrive gear.

The L24 2.4-liter six is a different story. Originally, the single-overhead cam motor was good for 150 horsepower and 146 lb-ft of torque, and came with a pair of Hitachi-made SU-licensed round-top carburetors (which featured three different designs depending on model year). This was more than enough output for the relatively lightweight (2300 pounds or so) Z platform, giving it a 0–60-mph sprint of just under eight seconds.

By 1973, however, the EPA’s looming emissions regulations caused the 240Z to switch to flat-top Hitachi carbs, which have garnered a much poorer reputation for reliability and tunability within the Z community (where they’ve been nicknamed the “boat anchors”). It’s not unusual to see round tops, or even aftermarket units, replacing the flat tops on ’73 model year cars. While you can make flat tops work, they are complex and more difficult to source parts for or find knowledgeable help with.

“We used to bust the flat top’s off of the intake with a sledgehammer because they were faster to remove that way,” Dave Epstein says with a laugh. “These carburetors were undrivable, but the earlier SUs were better. We make a manifold that lets you use an Edelbrock or four-barrel Holley, which are cheaper to maintain and rebuild, don’t leave you stranded, and avoid synchronization hassles like you have with a dual-carb setup.”

When the 260Z appeared in ’74, it kept the flat top SUs but mated them to a larger 2.6-liter six that was down to 139 horsepower (but up to 157 lb-ft of torque) due to even greater emissions choking.

The 280Z also boosted displacement (to 2.8-liters), installed a new head (the N42) with desirable square exhaust ports, and added Bosch L-Jetronic electronic fuel injection—an effort that would result in 170 horses and 163 lb-ft, enough grunt to fight off the extra 300 pounds or so that the model’s larger bumpers and additional features and chassis bracing had added to the platform. The 1977 model year would see the introduction of the N47 engine head, which swapped in diamond-shaped exhaust ports that some enthusiasts feel offers poorer flow.

A well-maintained L28 fuel injection system and an L24 with round-top carbs are well-understood, hassle-free setups that are reliable enough for daily driving. “The motors are basically bulletproof,” Epstein confirms. “Even if they were only maintained with a once-in-a-blue-moon oil change. You’ll sometimes see the aluminum heads eaten up if bare water was used instead of an antifreeze mix, but that can be repaired.”

The key phrase here is well-maintained.

“I get a lot of calls from those with fuel injected cars that are running rough, or just won’t start. Everything is so interconnected on the Bosch system that it can be a bit of a hassle to diagnose what, exactly, is causing the problem,” Ryan Gardner says.

If you’re looking for more power there’s really nothing to be gained from modifying an injected L28, unless you move to a complete stand-alone engine management system, as its computer controls are too primitive to tune. It’s not unusual to see L28s that have been converted to run on carbs like their L26/L24 brethren, and there’s a healthy aftermarket supporting all L-series engines with camshafts, carburetors, and intakes. Other popular power adders in the Datsun community include P90 heads from the later ZX S130 car, as well as aggressive camshafts and forced induction (with the ’80s-era L28ET a common swap).

One last note on the Datsun S30’s mechanicals. As a result of the car’s unusual aerodynamics, driving with the windows down creates a vacuum inside the car area, which sucks exhaust fumes in through any crack in the hatch seals, taillight seals, or floor that might be lurking.

“Sometimes, the drain plugs in the bottom of the hatch area can even drop out because of age and brittleness, providing easy entry for fumes,” Epstein confirms. “It’s very common to get out of one of these cars after a long drive and smell like gasoline.”

Rust is real

Although the S30 Z’s susceptibility to corrosion was casually mentioned early on in this buying guide, this is the part where it gets underlined in red ink about 50 times, then highlighted, then set on fire. It is very, very difficult to find a rust-free Datsun Z, even in traditionally dry spots like California. On the east coast, it took me a full year of searching before I was able to personally snag a clean 280Z, and I had to wade through some genuine nightmare cars in the process.

“In all of the places where the car was spot-welded together, there’s no paint or primer from the factory,” Epstein says. “If they had dipped the car when brand new it would have lasted forever, but there’s a lot of unprotected metal. It was meant to live for three years in Japan, but here we are 40 years later.”

Where will you most commonly encounter rust on a Z? “Check the dogleg just in front of the rear wheel arch, the rear arch itself, the deck lid under the hatch, and the rocker panels, especially where they meet the back of the front wheel well. Harder to spot are holes in the frame rails and floorboards (you’ll want to lift-up the carpet and put the car on a lift to be sure), as well as the battery tray (remove the battery for inspection). There’s also a sponge under the wiper cowl panel up front that soaked up moisture and trapped it against the metal.”

The good news is, almost all Datsun body and frame panels can be found either used (thanks to the huge number of cars that were manufactured), or reproduced.

For example, frame rail kits that weld in on top of the stock units, and actually connect the front and rear subframes, are available from a number of suppliers at reasonable prices, as are floor pans. This means if you find a car you like, and the rust is restricted to non-structural areas—aka not the unibody, or the rear quarters (a troublesome repair)—you’ll most likely be able to replace what you need to.

“We get a lot of customers looking to replace sheet metal—it’s probably the most common call we get, aside from engine maintenance items,” Gardner explains. “Most sheet metal, like front fenders, for example, will swap from a 240Z to a 280Z, but things like doors are another story. The cutouts on the later cars, where you’d attach the interior door panels, are completely different, and in ’77–78 they went to a unique latch. You can make it work, but if your plan is to keep it all original, you might not want to go through that kind of hassle.”

Mike Hanson continues:

“You can’t get full rear quarters anymore, just the arches. A lot of the time, it’s not just rust that’s the problem—we have to go in and undo previous repairs to try to find enough clean sheet metal to work with. Original metal is a lot easier to work with. This is also true of the area under the battery tray—you can’t get replacement panels, so it has to be done custom—and that means poorly-executed past repairs can be a real problem.”

The running changes mentioned throughout this guide (which also include different floor pan sizes, rear end mounting position, and spring rates) have also made it somewhat difficult to find certain interior trim parts (knobs, switches, etc), as well as electrical components.

“Ninety percent of these cars had black interiors, which means any color trim—tan, white—isn’t being reproduced,” Gardner says. “You can dye it, but it’s being molded black. If I had a wish list of parts I could snag right now, I’d add a universal wiring harness to it, because right now you’d need about 20 different harnesses to cover the full range of all the updates they made to the S30 over the years.”

Fortunately, the interiors are relatively simple, and the Datsun community is getting better at reproducing small batches of hard-to-find parts. This includes dashboards, which frequently crack with age and exposure to the sun, but which can now be purchased new from some vendors—albeit expensively—or covered for much less money.

Dave Epstein also cautions buyers to do their homework before they start buying restoration parts:

“Make sure you have someone inspect the car and tell you what you’ve actually got, rather than just relying on what it says on the registration,” he explains. “I’ve seen people that have a 280Z with three stock strut housings and one 240Z housing from a junkyard, and then they can’t understand why their new shocks don’t fit all around. The same is true of brakes, suspension components, etc. Even head swaps are common enough that you need to double check. These are old cars with long, potentially clouded histories. I often tell customers we have to unfix what an amateur mechanic has done to their vehicle in the past before we can move forward with the actual repair.”

Hanson agrees. “The absolute most important thing is a thorough pre-purchase inspection, inside and out, by an expert, no matter how good the seller says the car is. That $120 or so can save you from bringing home a money pit. It’s also worth noting that we’re seeing more and more of these cars show up with cheap modifications, including low-end coilovers, or old lowering springs that drop the cars to the point where the ride and handling are compromised.”

Get in before it’s too late

A rust-free, well-tuned S30-generation Datsun Z is one of those rare affordable collectible sports cars that can be enjoyed in modern traffic without feeling like you’re a rolling road block. Quick enough to be exciting, with direct (unassisted) steering and a predictable suspension system, the car is perfect for a joyride in stock form, as well as accommodating to extensive suspension updates for those who want to extract as much handling as possible from the Z’s lightweight platform.

It also happens to feature a design which seemingly has only gotten better with age, proving that Datsun’s decision to incorporate the best visual elements found in contemporary Jaguar and Ferrari exotica was a winning strategy. There aren’t many Japanese cars from the Z’s era that can make a legitimate claim at being sought-after classics, but this is definitely one of them.

Just make sure you snag one before everyone else comes to the same realization.

The post What to look for in a Datsun 240Z, 260Z, and 280Z appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Recent auctions have proven that imports are on their way up. Since a rising tide lifts all boats, not just the sporty coupes are seeing an increase in value. At the same venue where an Acura Integra Type-R sold for record money, three Toyota pickups went for eye-opening prices as well, including one for $55 grand.

Toyota pickups have traditionally commanded a premium over their utilitarian counterparts, no doubt due in part their owners’ ongoing love affair with these hardworking and durable smaller trucks. Compared to domestic competitors of the era, many of these Toyotas look as if they were built three-quarter scale. But history shows they were no less capable, as proven by many farmers and on television shows since they were introduced.  

With three different trucks selling for serious money at the recent Barrett-Jackson Las Vegas sale, could it be that the time has finally come for these little trucks? Hagerty Valuation Editor Andrew Newton says it depends.

“As is the case with ’90s tuner cars, the old Toyota pickups could really take a beating and many of them did, so a truly nice one is a lot rarer than the production numbers would lead you to believe. Playing a supporting role in a massive film Back to the Future doesn’t hurt, either.”

Even lacking its stock wheels and tires, this 1986 Toyota 4×4 brought more than $20,000, likely due to its 44,000 miles and immaculate interior. “For pickups that are bringing the highest prices, off-road-oriented mods don’t seem to matter as long as they’re tasteful, and the truck has to be in remarkably good condition, be it a thorough restoration or a pampered original,” Newton says.

This 1980 Short-bed 4×4 underwent a full restoration prior to rolling through the auction block and sports a 2.2-liter four-cylinder 20R engine connected to a four-speed manual transmission. New 31-inch tires with Cragar wheels match quite nicely with the chrome roll bar in the bed. When bidding closed, it realized over $26,000.

The Toyota that really stopped us in our tracks was a 1983 Toyota SR5 4×4, which came equipped with the more desirable combination of larger 22R 2.4-liter four-cylinder and five-speed manual. Even with multiple modifications completed during its restoration, this truck found a new owner to the tune of $55,000.

Trucks and SUVs have been trending up for some time now, but the market seemed to have a focus on domestic and European models along with older Land Cruisers. These sales don’t make a market, but they certainly signify that the import trucks are no longer being ignored by collectors.

The post What’s the deal with Toyota pickups lately? appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Remember the Integra Type R? It was a sport compact dream, with nearly 200 horsepower from a hand-built 1.8-liter VTEC four, limited-slip differential, extra handling goodies and lighter weight than the already splendid Integra GS-R. Just 3850 made it to our shores from 1997-98 and 2000-01, and some call it the best-handling front-drive car ever. (Unless you think that crown belongs on the new Civic Type R.) Oh, and it cost about 24 grand when it was new, or about 38 grand in 2018 dollars. One just sold at Barrett-Jackson’s Las Vegas auction for $63,800. If you weren’t sure already, there can be no denying factory-tuned sport compacts have officially arrived on the collector car scene.

The car in question is a 1997 model showing 1191 miles at the time of the sale. It’s bone-stock, looks like it just rolled out of the factory, and it’s finished in gleaming Championship White (the only available color for the initial model year) paint. It’s a one-owner example with the window sticker, original bill of sale and all its original books and tools. Just 320 of these came here in 1997, and this is car number 37. It’s practically a new Type R, and even though it’s barely 20 years old, that makes it a real unicorn.

We’ve already noted how good unmolested ‘90s hot Hondas like Civic Sis and Integra Type Rs have been trading at big numbers lately, and there’s good reason for that. They’re a lot rarer than you might think. Even when new, the majority of these cars got beat on. People modified them, raced them, wrecked them, reenacted their favorite scenes from The Fast and The Furious, you name it. My own ’00 Civic Si was stolen and chopped for parts, which was another not uncommon fate. I’m still bitter about it.

Hot Hondas have never been fair-weather cruisers that lived in a three-car garage, got polished obsessively and had all scheduled service done early at the dealer. Most served as daily drivers and racked up a lot of miles. Attrition took lot of them off the road. The Integra Type R may have been on the expensive side when it was new, but plenty of them led a similarly tough life. That’s why coming across a low-mile, clean, stock example is such a rare occurrence, something that piques the interest of folks like me who have fond memories of getting up to no good with some VTEC in our younger days.

That said, $63,800 is still a curve-bending price. For sure it’s the most anybody has paid publicly for one of these cars—by quite a bit, too. It seems like crazy money, and it sort of is when you really think about it, but consider the fact that other clean Integra Type Rs have been selling the low-40s on Bring a Trailer for about a year now. Those were 30,000- and 40,000-mile cars. This car has 1200. One owner. It’s not a car that somebody is going to drive as much as round out a collection.

The Vegas bidders knew their chances of finding another Integra Type-R this mint are slim to none. As they say, something is only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it, and in this case it’s more than the cost of a new Corvette.

The post Import invasion: 1997 Acura Integra Type R sells for shocking $63,800 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The irony of the annual Japanese Classic Car Show, or JCCS as the locals in Southern California call it, is that it celebrates exactly the kind of cars that the state government of California hates. It’s not that Sacramento has anything against the land of the rising sun or its eight native major automakers. Indeed, California is where most of these companies got their first hooks into America and where, until fairly recently, most of their U.S. subsidiaries based their headquarters. And this year’s JCCS, which drew around 600 cars onto an idyllic oceanside lawn in Long Beach just south of downtown LA, opened at 9:00 a.m. to a line of eager showgoers that stretched a long city block.

The problem is that the cars that are at the top of the Japanese collecting heap, besides superstars like the 1960s Toyota 2000GT and Mazda Cosmo, are right-hand-drive domestic-market models from the 1980s and ‘90s. Cars like the gullwing-doored 1992-1995 Autozam AZ-1, a mid-engine two-seat minicar built by Suzuki and sold through Mazda’s upscale retail channel Autozam. Or the 1991-1996 Honda Beat, another mid-engine munchkin built only for Japan’s unique 660-cc Kei-class minicar segment.

And while the AZ-1 and the Beat and the Nissan Skyline and the many forms of hot, home-market Honda Civics and others built up to the year 1993 are now legal to import to the United States under the federal government’s 25-year rolling exemption, they are nonetheless effectively banned in California. To preserve the sanctity of the state’s clear-air regulations, the California Department of Motor Vehicles steadfastly refuses to issue titles and plates to any car built post-1967—when the state adopted the nation’s first vehicle emissions rules—that was not originally manufactured and labeled in compliance with California’s air regulations at the time.

It makes no difference whether that car would pass a modern smog test today. Or indeed that the Honda Beat’s modern 660-cc fuel-injected three-cylinder engine uses probably one-quarter the fuel of 1991 Camaro IROC Z28, which is perfectly legal to bring over state lines. La-La Land just says no.

California also says no to the kind of hot-rodding that earlier generations of car nuts did freely on their 1950s and ‘60s American cars. Yes, tuner companies make all kinds of performance parts to juice a Toyota Supra or Nissan 300ZX or Mazda RX-7, but don’t have that stuff on your car when you go for the mandatory smog check for cars built after 1975. State law says the engine and emissions equipment must be completely stock at smog-check time or no registration renewal for you.

Yes, the state where the most Japanese car collectors and tuners live, where Japan’s auto industry first began its climb to the lofty heights it enjoys today, also happens to be the state where it is the most difficult to practice the passion. The older folk at those shows where they play the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean on the loudspeakers would throw up their hands, shake their heads, brush it off as typical California government overreach, and walk away.

But here’s the thing: the JCCS crowd is so young—younger and more ethnically diverse than any crowd at any car show you will go to this year, guaranteed. And young people are used to modern-day rules and regulations, as well as computers and black boxes and OBD ports. And they don’t let it stop them.

Walking around the show, you see that the disciples of JDM sneak around with out-of-state plates or somehow obtain dealer plates which are not assigned to specific vehicle registrations and thus can be put on anything. Or the owners just throw on actual Japanese license plates and leave the bystander to guess at the car’s legal status. Tuners simply take their cars off the grid, deregistering them or doing heaven-knows-what to fool the state into believing the car is stock. Some will tell you they “have a guy” who can get anything registered, just send over the paperwork and the dough and don’t ask any questions. Don’t ask them any questions; most don’t want to talk about it.

Well, that’s one part of JCCS. The other part is the bone-stock cars that were sold in California and elsewhere by the hundreds of thousands in the 1970s and 1980s (the show will take cars up to 1995) but are now rarer in Los Angeles than Ferraris. Like a brown 1982 Datsun B210 automatic, a two-door commuter capsule sold on reliability and fuel economy. Or a Honda CVCC, the original Civic hatchback. As with most cheap Japanese cars of that era, they were driven deep into six figures by their first owners—at a time when it was notable for a car to last over 100,000 miles—then sold on to people who managed to milk even more life out of those reliable and fuel-efficient engines until they finally expired from some terminal catastrophic failure and were scrapped.

The few well-preserved survivors of a once mighty nation of cut-buck Japanese imports that ruled California’s roads are to be seen at JCCS. Plus other oddities like the original 1985 Toyota van, a spacey lunchbox hurriedly pulled from the Japanese home market to answer the Chrysler minivan (two were at JCCS). Or the Daihatsu Charade, a fittingly named car considering Daihatsu’s actual prospects in America. Or the Subaru SVX, a sleek Italian-designed, all-wheel-drive grand tourer that proved an expensive failure for Subaru.

The like the crowd itself, the JCCS is an amazing melting pot—of illegal JDM cars next to tented and manicured automaker booths next to wild Bosozoku and stanced monstrosities next to drift machines next to iconic utility trucks next to the cheap mass-produced appliances of an earlier age. And someday the young people circulating in the crowd will be pulling the strings for state of California, and we’ll see if a few laws don’t just ease up a bit.

The post The Japanese Classic Car Show thrives, despite California’s car regulations appeared first on Hagerty Media.

If Acuras and Hondas are the quintessential attainable performance cars of 1990s youth, then the Acura Integra Type R is the Holy Grail of that era. That makes the low-mileage, showroom-fresh 1997 Type R headed to Barrett-Jackson’s Las Vegas Auction in September a pretty big deal.

Maybe crazy big.

The one-owner Barrett-Jackson car is the 37th of 320 first-year Integra Type Rs produced. It is unmodified, wears its original Championship White paint with black suede interior and red stitching, and best of all, it has only 1191 miles.  

Hagerty auction editor Andrew Newton says it is not uncommon for Integra enthusiasts spend $30,000–$40,000 for solid examples on Bring a Trailer, but this one could go for $50K or more. It is listed without reserve.

“People tend to bid high at Barrett-Jackson. Plus, that’s crazy low mileage for an Integra,” he says. “These were not weekend cars bought by wealthy people. They often served as daily drivers, and many were modified, driven hard, or wrecked—or all three.”

The front-wheel drive Type R is equipped with a normally aspirated 1.8-liter four-cylinder VTEC engine that has been hand ported by factory Acura tuners to produce nearly 200 horsepower. Other performance enhancements include a close-ratio five-speed manual transmission, the addition of a limited-slip differential so both front tires pull their weight, larger anti-lock brakes, larger sway bars, and additional body bracing to reduce body flex for improved handling.

Hagerty Underwriter and Japanese car enthusiast Darold Mulvaine says “most magazines and journalists regard the Type R as the best-handling front-wheel-drive car of all time.” He added, “Some other ‘nerd facts’ that make this car special compared to even the Integra GS-R models is that the engine is completely hand-assembled, and the chassis is bespoke and stitch welded. They even went so far as to make the windshield 10 percent thinner to trim weight. With all of these changes separating it from lesser models, Honda lost money on every single Type-R sold, but deemed it necessary to maintain the brand’s performance image.”

The auction car also has air conditioning; power steering, brakes, windows, door locks, and mirrors, as well as a six-speaker stereo system with CD player. Included in the sale are the Integra’s original paperwork and bill of sale, window sticker, unopened special Type R key, spare key set, and owner’s manuals in a leather Acura binder along with a courtesy air gauge and flashlight.

If bidding for the stunning Type R climbs to $50,000 or beyond, it wouldn’t be the first time that a Japanese modern classic brought seemingly crazy money. It happened just a few months ago, in fact, when someone forked over $24K for a 12,000-mile 1999 Honda Civic Si.

The post This 1997 Acura Integra Type R is the Holy Grail for 1990s youth appeared first on Hagerty Media.

We’ve talked before about 1980s domestic cars doing surprisingly well on the market and how high-tech Japanese performance cars of the ’90s have a bright future in the collector car hobby. But what about the Japanese cars of the ’80s?

Although cutting-edge and frighteningly quick cars like the Acura NSX and A80 Toyota Supra were still a decade away, the ’80s provided plenty of handsome, fun, and reasonably fast cars in a time that wasn’t exactly the golden age of car building. Given the recent value growth for 1990s Japanese high-performance cars, it’s natural that more eyes are turning to some of the older ’80s models than had in the past. With more humble performance and styling, these vehicles are always going to be a step down from the later, greater stuff—and the prices tend to reflect such—but plenty of them have seen rising prices and increased buyer interest.

The Hagerty Market Rating is a good indicator of ’80s Japanese cars that are shining the brightest. Based on a 0–100 scale, the HVR is driven by market data and takes into account the number of vehicles insured and quoted through Hagerty, along with auction activity and private sales results. A 50-point rating indicates that a vehicle is keeping pace with the market overall. Ratings above 50 indicate above-average appreciation, while vehicles below a 50-point rating are lagging behind the market.

Vehicle
1986–92 Toyota Supra	92
Average value: $3400–$26,900 The fourth-generation Supra from the 1990s is one of the hotter vehicles on the market now and has been for a while, so with that much attention it’s not surprising that people have started turning to the third-generation model that rolled out in the 1980s. It was the first Supra completely separate from the Celica line, it’s handsome wedge styling has aged pretty well, and it could be had with a turbocharged engine good for 230 horsepower. That’s not far from what Corvettes were making at the time. It will always live in the shadow of the fourth-gen A80 Supra, but the third-gen (A70) has seen a surge in buyer interest, and values have increased considerably over the past year. Good unmodified examples are hard to find these days, however, and plenty of them were equipped with an automatic.
1984–89 Nissan 300ZX	82
Average value: $3900–$15,800 The original Datsun Z-Cars of the ’70s turned the performance car world on its ear, and the last twin-turbo 300ZX of the ’90s was a high-tech 300-hp wonder. The original (Z31) 300ZX that sits in the middle just wasn’t as big of a deal, and was a little bloated and soft. That said, it features Nissan’s first V-6 engine that makes 200 hp in turbocharged form, it’s pretty good looking if not all that distinctive, and T-tops are just plain cool. The cars are also still really cheap to buy even though prices have gone up a bit. Buyer interest is way up over the past year and more are being added to Hagerty insurance policies.
1979–85 Mazda RX-7	80
Average value: $2500–$17,400 The FD twin-turbo RX-7 of the ’90s is a pretty amazing car, but the original RX-7 was arguably an even bigger deal when it came out. Mazda really got rotary engine technology fully developed and just right with the RX-7, and in addition to its novel powertrain, there wasn’t much else on the market that was as fun to drive. Mazda built nearly half a million of them and they’ve been labeled as cheap sports cars for years. But people are starting to take them more seriously as collector cars lately. Prices have been creeping up for a couple of years and more are being added to Hagerty insurance policies. Meanwhile, the second-generation (FC) RX-7 of 1985–88 isn’t getting as much love; it has a rating of 44.
1984–89 Toyota MR2	78
Average value: $3700–$18,700 The MR2 is another one of those cars that got a lot prettier and faster in the ’90s even though there was nothing particularly wrong with the ’80s model. The doorstop styling might not be for everyone, but even after more than 30 years it’s still one of the only affordable mid-engine cars you can buy, and it continues to draw people to it. Prices started creeping up at the beginning of last year and there have been some strong auction results for good examples.

The post These 1980s Japanese cars on the rise appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Want to turn heads? Skip your favorite 1950s finned fantasy and bypass the muscle car you’ve longed for since high school. Don’t even think about that high-horsepower exotic car shaped like a door wedge. What you really require is a 1991 Nissan Figaro.

A trend setter

Cuter than a basket of puppies, the Figaro is notable for predating retro-styled cars from Volkswagen, Ford, Mini, and Chevrolet.

Debuting at the 28th Tokyo Motor Show in 1989, under the theme “Back to the Future,” the Figaro joined the Austin Mini-like Nissan Pao, the pun-intended S-Cargo van, and the period-styled micro Nissan Be-1. Response was so enthusiastic, Nissan launched Figaro sales in Japan on Feb. 14, 1991. Limited to 20,000 units, Nissan officials expected demand to outstrip supply. They were right. Figaros were delivered, using a lottery system, in three allotments: an initial 8000 units, followed by two batches of 6000 cars later in 1991.

What buyers received was a two-seat convertible coupe built on the Nissan Micra K10 platform, a banal economy car never sold in the U.S., but offered in Canada.

Timelessly appealing design

Styled, according to Nissan, to convey “a delicate feeling of stylish elegance in everyday life” while satisfying “a zestful desire for a good time,” this cutie’s charms puts you, your passenger, and every onlooker in a good mood. It’s a happy little car, one that timelessly pays tribute to vintage Italian, French and Japanese microcars. It’s remarkably ageless, retaining its bouncy charisma despite being 27 years old. Best of all, the top folds into the trunk so that it doesn’t detract from the Figaro’s voguish lines—although the side rails and rear roof pillars remain in place.

Notably, the Figaro’s front fenders are made of a thermoplastic resin to save weight and resist corrosion. It comes in four colors, one for each of the four seasons: Lapis Grey for winter, Emerald green for spring, Pale Aqua for summer, and Topaz Mist for fall. Name your car accordingly.

The inside story

Inside, the white interior and seats are covered in leather with contrasting piping. A special paint is used on top of the dashboard to make it feel soft, while a flat instrument panel places two large chrome-trimmed dials in front of the driver. The left one is the speedometer with smaller inset gauges for fuel and engine temperature; the right a tachometer with a small inset clock.

The climate controls feature a chrome back plating, four sliders, and Bakelite-style knobs that resemble flower buds. The AM/FM radio is mostly useless stateside since it was engineered for Japanese frequencies, but there is a cassette deck for your INXS tapes as well as a CD player.

What’s it like to drive?

A 1.0-liter turbocharged version of Nissan’s four-cylinder engine generates 76 horsepower and 78 pound-feet of torque through a three-speed automatic transmission; a manual transmission wasn’t offered. The chassis employs McPherson struts up front and a four-link coil spring suspension at the rear. Steering is rack and pinion, stopping is courtesy of front ventilated discs and rear drums.

Unless you regularly drive diminutive cars, nothing prepares you for the Figaro’s size. If you’re trapped in traffic and the only shortcut is across the golf course, you’ll find the Figaro easily fits on a golf cart path. Trust me on this. Yes, it’s a very maneuverable city car. If you can’t parallel park the Figaro, you should be walking.

And its city car cred goes beyond size. After all, if you’re an urban dweller, style matters as much as anything, and this car has it in spades. The Figaro’s granny-thin steering wheel is on the right side of the cabin, meaning its turn signals are on the right-hand stalk, and the windshield wipers are on the left-hand stalk. So when it’s raining, you’ll turn off the wipers when signaling a left turn. Charming? Hell yeah.

Once underway, however, you’ll quickly discover the Figaro’s economy car roots. Power is a relative thing. Off the line and poking around town, you’ll find the Figaro has perfectly adequate power, but little more. Flooring the throttle requires patience to reach highway speed, but given the engine and road noise, a long distance road trip is not idyllic anyway. The Figaro’s quick, agile manners are more a function of size and weight than true sporting dynamics, and there’s the expected body lean through corners, but it’s not excessive. And don’t dream of adding dubs; standard wheels are 165/70 R12s.

You won’t notice; you’ll be smiling and giggling at the car’s charisma. This car has that effect.

The market

The Figaro’s biggest allure is its cuddly vintage style, modern amenities, and reliable Japanese mechanicals.

“It’s more reliable than the older cars it harks back to and it looks as if it runs on milk, not gasoline,” says Dave Kinney, publisher of the Hagerty Price Guide. Kinney advises to look for rust, which he’s seen on many samples.

Naturally, there are dealers who specialize in Figaros, including Duncan Imports & Classic Cars of Christiansburg, Virginia, which supplied the test car. Expect to pay closer to $20,000–$25,000 for one in mint condition with low mileage, although it’s not unusual to find a well-worn Figaro at less than $10,000 on sites such as Bring-A-Trailer.

Kinney doesn’t expect the Figaro to see noticeable price appreciation, although you should be able to sell it for what you paid for it. “It’s the perfect fifth car to have,” he says. “There’s no real reason to own one other than it’s the perfect beach car.”

Stats

Price, 1991: 1,870,000 yen / $16,960 ($31,570 adjusted for inflation)

Engine: Turbocharged 1.0-liter OHC inline four-cylinder

Horsepower: 76

Torque: 78 pound-feet

Top speed: 106 mph

Transmission: Three-speed automatic

Wheelbase: 90.6 inches

Length: 147.2 inches

Width: 64.1 inches

Ground clearance: 4.7 inches

Curb weight: 1786 pounds

The post Why you should want the adorable Nissan Figaro appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Japanese sports cars from the ’90s are all the rage right now, especially among younger buyers. Leading the charge is the long-lusted-after Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R that became legal to import from Japan in only the last few years. Look past the GT-R, though, and Nissan has a rich history going back to the earliest days of Datsun splashing onto the sports car scene in the 1960s and early ’70s. And from the purity of the ’63 Datsun 1500 roadster to the advanced technological trickery of the 1990 Nissan 300ZX, there’s plenty to enjoy at a price just about any collector or enthusiast would find reasonable.

Here’s the scoop on what’s hot and what’s not in the world of Datsun and Nissan.