When finding a Nissan GT-R felt like striking gold

Having dedicated a column to reminiscing about early evo road trips to Italy, this month my mind has randomly settled upon the cars we seemingly drove all the time, but have now been consigned to history.

Foremost amongst them are the rally-bred Subarus and Mitsubishis (not to mention the occasional Type R Honda) that defined the 1990s and early 2000s. By the time we’d got the magazine up and running, the Cossies, Integrales and Quattros were long gone, at least so far as showroom-fresh models were concerned. Fortunately the void was filled by an apparently endless succession of Imprezas and Lancers, most of which came in from Japan unofficially via the still active but largely forgotten ‘grey import’ route.

> 'Do I crave a manual in a Porsche 911? Absolutely. But in a Nissan GT‑R? No way.'

We relied on a small, slightly underground network of specialist importers. I can still remember the names: Simon Lerner at Rare Imports in North London, John Kirkham at Ralliart UK in the Midlands. Oh, and a young lad by the name of Iain Litchfield. Back then we didn’t have Google to do the legwork for us, so these contacts were the result of carefully nurtured relationships from back in Performance Car days. In an otherwise sparse fast car landscape, the earliest possible access to these exotic Far Eastern machines was gold dust.

In a funny sort of way, I think it helped that evo wasn’t part of the magazine establishment. What’s clear is that as the Evos, STIs, Type Rs and GT-Rs grew in stature, so we rode the wave. It seems mad looking back, but such was the competition to be the first to bring a particular model to the UK, grey importers were flying cars from Japan in order to offer them to the hungry motoring press.

Honestly, I miss those days. Things could be chaotic, but that’s where opportunities lay. It’s hard to explain the buzz of anticipation that coursed through the office knowing that we’d secured what we believed to be the first UK drive of the latest Impreza WRX STI Version 6 Type R V-Limited Spec-C Banzai Edition. Things would often come right down to the wire, with customs clearance or registration delays pushing us to hold our breath right up to deadline day.

Of these I still remember managing to secure what we believed to be the first R34 Skyline GT-R in the UK from Rare Imports. It took weeks of calls, but the planets aligned sufficiently for us to commit the cover of issue 009. It meant John Barker and I collecting the car from Simon Lerner’s house in Hendon early on a Saturday, then driving straight to North Wales and the now ruined (then yet to be christened) ‘Evo Triangle’, where we would meet photographer Gus Gregory and his trusty Citroën BX.

After a full day’s driving and dozens of rolls of Fuji Velvia, we then turned the Skyline’s bluff nose back towards London, where we handed the unicorn back to its owner before heading up the A1 towards Peterborough to complete the longest of days. It was worth it. I can still see the cover in my mind’s eye now, the menacing grey R34 looking every inch the new-age techno supercar. All 276bhp-worth of it.

Despite the laughable (by 2025 standards) power output, that car was impossibly special. Packed with unfathomable tech and equally befuddling acronyms (how does Super High Capacity Actively Controlled Steering, or Super HICAS, grab you?) it more than lived up to the myths and legends forged by the earlier R32 and R33 Skylines. The way it tackled those challenging Welsh roads belied its lack of power, and few cars before or since have such distinctive dynamics. The gearshift action in particular remains unforgettable, the gearlever moving through the gate like honing a heavy blade on a whetstone.

Such was the proliferation of these exotic Japanese cars that for a while they were the lifeblood of the magazine. And yes, there were times when we probably became overly reliant on them. Yet as times changed and the fast-car gene pool became more homogenised, the absence of these uniquely capable and attainable cars definitely changed evo’s vibe, at least for a while.

In truth, and much like the demise of that other evo stalwart, TVR, the void they left has never been adequately filled. It’s surely no coincidence that the values of these cars are skyrocketing now that they are old enough to be considered classics. Part of me struggles to comprehend how a 22B can have leapt from £30k on the used market in the mid to late noughties to now regularly exceeding £200k at auction. Then again, we’re living in an age when someone has just paid almost £600,000 for an RS500 Sierra Cosworth. I know what I’d have. And it definitely ain’t the Cossie.

This story was first featured in evo issue 308.