Enter 2006. Toyota doesn't even make a sports car anymore. Nissan and Mazda have hacked the turbochargers off their current top-line offerings. The whirlwind of change doesn't always look good for performance lovers.
One thing you can get in the US these days, however, is a road-legal rally car. Since Subaru and Mitsubishi jumped into the identity puzzle, it's been possible to have around 300 bhp, all-wheel-drive, and a good-sized turbo under the hood for around $30k.
Stuff your family in the back, pack a trunk full of groceries and head to the autocross on icy roads in the middle of a blizzard. These things do it all, and they do it well.
But what about those aforementioned pioneers of Japanese performance? Well, they're more affordable than ever, and they still fill a void that has since been left empty by the island's manufacturers. Is this new generation of "have your cake and eat it too" performance really that much better than the boosted bastard children that ran the streets a decade ago? Have we come that far, or are we just spinning in circles trying to create something new?
Judging by the massive following that early-nineties Japanese metal still has today, it's worth a wonder.
For whatever rose-tinted reason, I'll never stop lusting after the aluminum flanks of an NSX or the outright thrust of a 300ZX Twin-Turbo.
Maybe I'm afraid of change or unwilling to accept the inevitable mushing of genres taking place these days. But I, for one, am itching to know if the performance envelope has been pushed that much since the early nineties.
Let's face it, good or not, it's a bizarre world when some of the fastest cars on the road wear Japanese symbols on the hood and have four doors and a family in the back.
Japan's budget ass-haulers quickly landed a following among starving gearheads everywhere