The Petriws live on a quiet street some distance from the city center, their yard ringed by tall evergreens. Dad Mark is an old autocross champion, previously running a Honda CRX in CSS/CSP. Mom Sandra drives a stick-shift Legacy GT wagon. Sons Dean and Chase are big Fernando Alonso fans. Uncle Yarko has a hillclimb record at Knox mountain. Aside from a mild obsession with motorsports, they are a nice, normal family. A nice, normal family with a sixteen-story-tall mutant atomic iguana in the basement.
Godzilla. You know the legend of course, the name given by an Australian journalist shocked by the complete annihilation of the touring car competition by Nissan's Group-A juggernaut. When the Skyline GT-R returned in the late 1980s, it was destined to become an icon, a return to the dominance of the Hakosuka original.
But there is a difference. At time of writing, the air-cooled Porsche 911 market has gone absolutely apeshit. The E30 M3, once an accessible way to take box-flared DTM action to the street, is now priced like post-impressionist artwork. Everything is on the way up, an inflationary crisis that cuts the average enthusiast owner out, with speculators chasing dollars more than passion.
Yet somehow, the R32 GT-R remains relatively affordable. It's rare, but not so rare that you can't import one. It was never intended for our shores, but day-to-day ownership isn't onerous. Every gearhead knows what those four round taillights mean, but the price of Skyline admission is less about how much money you have, and more about how willing you are to spend time finding the right car and doing a little light wrenching yourself.
Mark's GT-R is a 1992, and is slightly unusual. The Canadian grey market is a decade more advanced than the US, so Japanese Domestic Market cars are a common sight here in Vancouver; all modern generations of the GT-R are present from R32 to R34, and even the related Stagea RS260 wagon.
The dark blue color here is a rarity for the R32-chassis Skyline, with most cars painted in the immediately recognizable gunmetal grey. The mix of modifications present is relatively light, with Nismo's S1 package supported by Tokico struts and a Trust turbo-back. However, at the front of the long straight-six is a small plate indicating that this is a Ōmori factory-tuned car.
But it's when you start talking about the R32 that Tamura's professional shell really cracks wide open. He still has the 1989 model he bought as a young man, taking a very un-Japanese twenty-five year loan to afford it. It looks factory-fresh, but makes around 600hp; the eagle-eyed will spot a silver decal on the front bumper referencing the Midnight racing club, a secretive and illegal club that used to blitz the Wangan highway between Tokyo and Yokohama.
The original Nismo factory is now closed, with Nismo operations moved closer to Nissan HQ in Yokohama. Yet even though the new tuning division is in Tsurumi, such is the lasting power of the legend that the place is still referred to as "Ōmori factory." The original site where the factory-supported first-generation GT-Rs were tuned , Ōmori factory predates Nismo, and was a Mecca for the Nissan faithful for decades.
Like Mercedes' AMG and BMW's M-division, before they became marketing tools to sell crossovers, Nismo originally operated as a tuning division supporting privateer racing teams and modifying street cars. You could take your R32 to the factory, sit down with a performance consultant, and have your GT-R tailored to fit. Petriw's R32 wasn't just cut-to-fit at the original Ōmori location, a little sleuthing reveals that it first belonged to one of the engineers that worked there.
And when let off the leash, it's just wonderful. Even in factory trim (an underrated 280hp) the GT-R is still a very quick car. The modest 330-350hp this one puts down is just about ideal for the street. It's fast enough to be interesting, with old school twin-turbo surge and chatter. The 2.6L RB26 is as perfectly balanced as the kanji pictogram for roku, as brushed by a calligrapher who spent a summer or two in Bavaria in the early 1990s. With six individual throttle bodies and twin turbos, it's a pleasure to rip it past seven grand and hear the echoes of Group A monsters tearing up Bathurst.
Compared to the hulking mecha-Godzilla that is the current GT-R, the R32 is surprisingly delicate. The curb weight's considerable, but the feel is raw and mechanical despite the high level of technology Nissan employed here. The modern R35 handles a lot of the fine work for you, the R32 is a manual tool.
If you grew up on Gran Turismo, it doesn't disappoint. More than that: driving the GT-R feels as special as you could hope for. If the legend's Nürburgring record is now eclipsed by hot hatchbacks equipped with modern e-trickery, it still thrills. Best of all, the R32 is neither fragile nor ephemeral, unavailable nor outrageously expensive. It's right there for the taking.
