A limited production vehicle meets an unlimited desire for performance.
In forty years, you will witness a televised auction on the Versus7 network where a pristine, two-owner, unmodified '97 Toyota Supra Twin Turbo 15th Anniversary Edition fetches $168,000 from a gray-haired, Fu-Manchu-sporting Ken Gushi. The former drifting legend, factory racer, and Toyota dealership maverick will be quoted, "I've always wanted a Supra in green. When turbocharging was popular, these six-cylinder engines were so strong on the streets. I had to jump at this chance to own one because I wanted to remember acceleration before electric cars and the end of the gasoline era". Sounds almost implausible, and yet there is a historical precedent.
No sage could have forecast the fat cash that would exchange hands for American muscle cars 40 years after they left showrooms. The confluence of limited production, high desirability, legendary performance, and the passing of time would transform the way we viewed such clearly outdated technology. Take the '70 Plymouth Hemi Cuda. It originally sold for about $6,000, yet today transacts to well-heeled, nostalgia-soaked baby boomers for about $180,000 or more in the right condition. About 651 Hemi Cudas were built in 1970. You read Import Tuner, so you give a frog's ass about the Hemi Cuda, but their shitty ox-cart handling and single-digit fuel economy mean nothing to farts old enough to remember when Playboy was good for spanking, who still consider them the ultimate automotive wet dream.
And so it goes with classic Japanese iron of days past. The Toyota 2000GT sold for $7,150 in the late '60s, yet today surviving sport coupes of the 351 originally produced (about 60 made it to the U.S.) can fetch as high as $225K. Like Toyota, Nissan produced 420 copies of the lightweight, higher-output, race-focused Nissan Fairlady Z432 and 432R for the Japanese market between 1969 and 1973. Selling for about $4,000 and blessed with a plethora of lightweight parts and an advanced DOHC in-line six, this is the most desirable and collectible early Z, today fetching around $35,000 for really nice examples.
In 2007, Nismo produced the Fairlady Z Type 380RS-a street-going version of a balls-out competition car too expensive for sensible folks. The street version, which sold for about $45K, employed much vital race-derived sexiness in the name of performance: enhanced aerodynamics with an elongated nose and rear diffuser, an improved suspension, and a Nismo-built, 3.8-liter VQ engine rated at 345 naturally aspirated horses. Only 300 of these special Fairlady models were produced, and all were sold in Japan-making the Type 380RS more unique than the Jurassic-era Fairlady or Toyota sports coupe. Such limited numbers guarantee the Fairlady Z Type 380RS' wild desirability and significant place in Z car history as the meanest factory-built Z33, and anyone lucky enough to own one would do well to leave it the hell alone and allow its purity to command a fortune in a few decades. Anyone who gives a damn about all that, anyway. Turns out some of us would rather go fast today than wait around for tomorrow.
The man responsible for this creation is someone the masses just may hail as foolish and impatient 40 years from now, for the decision he made to turn his slice of JDM heaven into what you see here. A golf-club-swinging, car-lusting architect by trade (read: baller), as the story goes, once this hottest version of the Z33 was announced to the Japanese market, a man known to us only as "Yamazaki" was left with no doubt that he had to party in the exclusive hot tub of Type 380RS owners. Attaining this rarest of Fairlady specimens remains an automotive mountaintop for many of us outside Japan, and after cresting that peak in real life, Yamazaki-san was content to enjoy this rare site from within the confines of his garage, safe from the outside world. Until its rare motor took a dump.