Some say that the 1960s were the golden era of of cars and car design, but I’d argue the automotive world of 25 to 30 years later stands a reasonable chance of challenging that statement – and we have Japan to thank for it.
The 1980s were boom times for the automotive industry, and pretty much everyone wanted a piece of the feel-good grand touring category. After all, while history records that the Porsche 928 sold poorly in its last few years, in the mid-1980s it was actually a prime seller for Porsche, if not quite the 911 replacement its makers hoped it would be. Further down the Stuttgart hierarchy, the 944 was actually doing the business in terms of volume sales, rather than the 911. As you can imagine, the Japanese were watching.
Come the late 1980s and 1990s, every Japanese manufacturer wanted a piece of the lucrative GT market. The most famous, and currently most valued from this era, is the Toyota Supra MkIV. While it reached infamy through the late ’90s tuning scene and the Fast and the Furious franchise, most of the cars sold were automatics, and in standard form they are pure GT cars. Albeit with a twin-turbocharged V6 capable of enormous horsepower with a few choice mods …
The other two Japanese heroes of the era approached the European market from different angles – Honda took aim at the Ferrari 348 with its mid-engined NSX, while Nissan benchmarked the Porsche 959 to take aim at the flaggin four-wheel-drive replacement for the 911 Turbo. The resulting Skyline ended up beating the Australian and European touring car elite, before going on to infamy through the modding culture of the late 1990s. All three are attracting high prices as the American market opens up to them, particularly manual cars.
However, you can still find genuine Japanese performance cars for a lot less than these. Among our collection you’ll find twin-turbocharged V6s, a flat-six and a turbocharged four-cylinder that comfortably out-punches a Ford Escort RS Cosworth and Lancia Delta Integrale, and has genuine competition success class. Which one would you take home?
Nissan 300ZX Z32
This stunning GT car was seen as one of the most important cars of 1989’s Japanese wave – with 300bhp on tap in twin-turbocharged form it offered all the pace of a Porsche 928, but around half the price. Like the Porsche it had a swoopy interior (though perhaps not quite as exotically coloured…), a mixture of manual and automatic options and smooth shape that was instantly on another level to the Z31 300ZX before it. Legend has it that Toyota were so astounded by just how good the Z32 was, it pulled its Supra replacement from late in the development stage because it simply wasn’t good enough, and started again.
The success of the Skyline, thanks largely to that car’s relative ease to modify compared to the more awkward 300ZX, has meant that the Z32 is a fraction of the price of its more famous GT-R brethren. There are a lot of fairly miserable-looking aesthetically modified cars out there, but good-quality UK market manuals can be found, and attract a premium. The days of three grand examples are long gone – and deservedly so. These were highly praised cars in their day – Autocar memorably viewed it as a supercar alongside more exotic fare from Ferrari, Porsche and Aston Martin. High praise indeed – and it certainly looks the part. With the right exhaust, it sounds it too…
We found several 300ZXs for sale in the UK in the £20,000 to £25,000 market, including the desired UK manual specification cars.
Mazda RX-7 FD
One of the prettiest cars of the 1990s, let alone one of the prettiest Japanese cars? The RX-7’s swoopy style is only matched by its handling prowess – and the unique pleasures of its rotary engine. It’s also surprisingly lightweight, tipping the scales at just 1300kg.
Some might argue that this is hardly an underrated gem. After all, it’s become a legendary computer game car, and it’s also been a key part of the Japanese modifying scene. While it’s certainly not quite as heralded as the Holy Trinity, it is well known among Japanese car enthusiasts. So why has it struggled to garner the same market interest?
For all its scene adoration, the RX-7 is also known for its rotary engine being somewhat of a consumable item – which has certainly depressed values compared to NSX, Supra and Skyline.
For example, we found a Type-RS for sale in Essex – pretty much the equivalent to the tastiest, most special variants of the NSX and Skyline. While the NSX-R and Skyline V-Spec models command prices in the six figures, this particular RX-7 was available for £39,995.
That represents whopping value and according to owners, as long as the car is treated with the care and attention needed via rotary specialists, the running costs need not be as horrific as internet legend might suggest.
The biggest problem will be finding one that’s be saved from bodykit bodging – they are out there, though you may have to pay for the privilege. I’m not going to lie to you and say that rolling the dice on an RX-7 is not without risk – one owner once cheerfully confided that he’s happy for just one engine rebuild every four years. However, the passion and enthusiasm among the RX-7’s owners proves that the juice is worth the squeeze.
Mitsubishi 3000GT/GTO
If you’re a regular reader of a certain British enthusiast motoring magazine, the Mitsubishi GTO/3000GT is something of the opposite of a cause celebre. Does it really deserve its poor reputation from such esteemed helmsmen?
If you judge the way it drives by the way it looks, then it’s always going to be a disappointment. Other than a Maserati Shamal and perhaps some Koenig-fettled Ferraris, there are few cars that offer such sensory overload from the era. It looks like something that’ll carve up a racetrack – its character is fundamentally different, however.
This is really a comfortable GT car at its heart – sat within, you have all the toys, plush leather and supportive seats. You also have four-wheel steer, four-wheel drive, two turbochargers and a host of active aerodynamics – very ahead of its time.
It’s also very heavy, which did blunt its cornering abilities. That, plus the four-wheel steer, makes throwing one about an awkward experience unless you’ve gelled with the car over a long period. You can probably see why that particular magazine, for which power oversteer is probably just a means of getting to the shops, didn’t like it.
However, plant your head firmly in the inter-continental GT missile mindset and there’s much to enjoy about the GTO/3000 GT. It looks stunning, for starters, and it really is phenomenally quick in-gear, thanks to its 3.0-litre twin-turbocharged engine.
However, if you do want a slightly more hardcore version, Mitsubishi did have a solution. Produced for Japan only, the MR lost some of the gizmos and shed some weight for a more focused drive. Despite being supremely rare even in Japan, we found an MR version in, of all places, Essex. You’ll need a smidge under £25K, though ‘normal’ GTOs and 3000GTs can be had for £10K and up.
Subaru SVX
Much is made of the sporting versions of the Legacy and Impreza introducing then-uncharacteristic vim and vigour to Subaru’s usual range of hardy farm-friendly vehicles, but its slick two doors of the 80s and 90s are perhaps even odder.
The XT is an eye-swivelling oddity that deserves its own plinth in a museum dedicated to alternative automotive thinking, and compared to that strikingly strange car the SVX could be seen as somewhat prosaic. To anything else, the SVX can boggle the mind.
Most of that is down to its existence at all. The XT was hardly the booming sales success hoped for, yet Subaru signed off on a follow up and roped in ItalDesign’s Giorgetto Giugiaro to pen a curvy, yet somehow also un-curvy two-door. Power came from a 3.3-lite horizontally opposed flat-six, the largest engine ever produced by Subaru at the time, mated to an automatic transmission and either two-wheel drive or an innovative all-wheel drive system that featured two different variable torque distribution systems.
Compared to the other high-performance Japanese super-coupes of the era, the SVX’s flat six wasn’t quite at the races – whereas most had around 280bhp+ (usually more, but hidden due to a gentleman’s agreement among manufacturers not to boast of higher performance figures), the SVX offered 231bhp and 7.3-second 0–60mph time.
The SVX might not have been the swiftest of the Japanese six-cylinder coupes, but it was arguably the best appointed, with lashings of Alcantara inside. It feels special to be in – and as a GT cruiser it’s a wonderfully smooth place to be. If you like thinking differently – and like the idea of driving a flat-six without having to buy a Porsche gilet to go with it – then SVX is worth a look. They’re also great value compared to their GT peers – we found two for sale in the UK at the time of writing, one for £3495 and another for £6500.
Toyota Celica GT-Four
Our final coupe deviates from the six-cylinder template, but we couldn’t ignore it simply due to the amazing value for money it represents compared to its contemporaries.
Though the Mitsubishi Evo and Subaru Impreza came to dominate the World Rally Championship in from the mid-1990s onwards, it was Toyota that broke the domination of Lancia, providing a drivers’ championship for Carlos Sainz in 1990 and 1992, and Juha Kankkunen in 1993 and Didier Auriol in 1994. It also took home manufacturers titles in 1993 and 1994. That’s quite a CV of motor sport excellence, and the kind of homologation special glitz that’s seen the prices of Lancia Delta HF Integrales and Ford Escort Cosworths ascend to six-figure entry costs. It even formed part of arguably the greatest arcade racing game of the 1990s – Sega Rally.
Okay, so being caught cheating in 1995 probably doesn’t help, but if you look at the GT-Four package in its most potent form – the ST205 GT-Four it makes the roadgoing versions of the Escort and Lancia look somewhat tepid. The Escort coughed up 224bhp while the Lancia maxed out at 212bhp – the Toyota’s 2.0-litre 3S-GTE turbo four pot kicked out 239bhp, and 252bhp in Japan.
Even compared to the Impreza and the Lancer Evo, the Celica has largely been forgotten, which is a shame. It does mean that they represent excellent bang for your buck; while a minter we found in Leicestershire was £21K, higher-mileage examples of the ST205 example could be had from as little as £14K. An Escort Cosworth will cost you more than three times for the grimmest of examples …
I met a keen SVX owner and he mentioned that gearboxes are virtually consumable items.
Nonetheless that would be my pick.