Over the years, the number of Japanese performance cars on sale has massively reduced. Back in the late nighties and early 2000s, each major Japanese car manufacturer had a range of performance cars. Take Mitsubishi, who back in the late 1990s had cars like the FTO, the 3000 GT, the Lancer Evolution, the Pajero Evolution, and the Galant VR-4 on offer. Today, they have nothing.
It’s not just Mitsubishi either. Mazda, Honda, and Nissan have all reduced their performance offerings quite massively which is a huge shame. Today, many of us look back on this golden generation of the 1990s and early 2000s and wish things stayed the same. Unfortunately, due to decreasing demand for these sorts of cars and an increase in demand for normal cars, manufacturers have decided to put more time, money, and effort into normal cars.
Nowadays, some Japanese car companies do offer a performance range of cars. Toyota’s list is growing with their new GR range models and Honda does have the NSX and Type R Civic. Nissan is also set to launch a 370Z replacement called the 400Z. However, we can all agree that things are just not the same anymore.
So what killed this exciting period of the Japanese performance car? Why won’t we ever see a time like the 1990s or early 2000s with Japanese performance cars ever again?
picture via:motortrend.com
The Rise of The Everyday Car
Japan is very good at making performance cars, but they’re even better at making your everyday normal car. The best-selling car in the world is Japanese, being the Toyota Corolla. They completely disrupted both the British and American car industry back in the 1970s and 1980s, and the reason why they did that is that they brought along cars that were reliable, well-built, reasonably priced, and economical. Something both countries needed from a car at the time.
Originally, Japan only made these boring cars. They made a few sports cars such as the Datsun 240Z and the Toyota 2000GT, but nothing else really that set your pulse racing. All this changed during the late eighties and early nighties when a new tax came in regarding Japanese export cars. This meant that it became a lot easier and more efficient on tax to export more expensive luxury cars. This meant the birth of a few luxury Japanese car brands such as Acura, Lexus, and Infiniti who aimed to export luxury cars to mainly America.
Towards the early to mid-1990s, many Japanese car manufacturers launched performance cars some of which were only available in Japan. All of this really started with the Honda/Acura NSX back in 1991 which was the world’s first properly useable supercar. Then came cars such as the R32 Nissan GTR, the Toyota Supra, the Nissan 300ZX, Mazda RX7, etc. Course some of these cars had predecessors prior 1991 or so, but the early to mid nighties is when the whole scene exploded.
This whole scene lasted for just over a decade, then came the mid-2000’s where many Japanese manufacturers started to kill off their performance range. Fast forward to 2021 and many Japanese car companies have axed most if not all of their performance range cars. Companies such as Mitsubishi or Mazda don’t make any performance cars at all anymore, choosing to focus more on electric cars and everyday cars.
Even look at Toyota. It took them over 20 years to make a new Supra, and that’s just a pretty BMW Z4. They may have launched the amazing Yaris GR hatchback and are in the process of a Corolla GR hatch, but their range of performance cars is nowhere near as good as it used to be. They tend to focus more on hybrid and everyday cars nowadays.
Remember The Competition Between These Cars? The Proper Golden Era
The early to mid-1990s to the start of the 2000s was the golden era for these Japanese performance cars. The competition was rife for manufacturers, but this made everything so much sweeter and interesting. At this time period, Japan was on top of the car game and they were the ones making the best cars in the world.
There were four key sports cars that were always talked about. These were the Nissan Skyline GTR, Toyota Supra, Honda NSX, and the Mazda RX7. All of these cars would have a massive Hollywood breakthrough during the Fast and the Furious films. All of these cars didn’t just challenge each other or other European sports cars, they challenged supercars. Furthermore, all of these cars included groundbreaking technology that was way ahead of time.
This was what Japan was all about. Making advanced cars that were faster, cheaper, and better than the European rivals. They made performance cars that changed the world. These cars rocked the entire industry.
Enthusiasts like to refer to this era, as the “Gran Turismo” era, since a lot of these cars were on the Gran Turismo video game. Furthermore, a lot of these Japanese performance cars were so easy to modify. Every week Japanese tuners whether it be a body kit cosmetic company like Velside or engine performance parts company such as HKS, were launching new products for these cars. It was all insane and this attracted many western car enthusiasts hugely since they could get supercar speed for family sedan money.
Few Japanese Car Manufacturers Have Tried To Revive This Golden Era
Few Japanese car manufacturers have tried to revive the golden era of Japanese sports cars. Nissan launched the GTR back in 2007, Honda launched the new NSX back in 2016, Subaru still makes the WRX STI, and Toyota have made the 86 now for almost a decade. However, these cars just do not capture the same excitement as these old Japanese performance cars.
Few Japanese manufacturers have promised a few more performance cars in the future. As mentioned earlier, Toyota will be expanding its GR performance range of cars and Nissan will be bringing out a new sports coupe called the 400Z. However, with the rise of electric vehicles and autonomous driving, Japanese car manufacturers have their money and interests elsewhere.
Mitsubishi has a new generation Lancer, and they could easily make a new Evolution. Yet they won’t as they’re no longe interested in performance cars. Mazda for years have promised a new RX7 but not delivered and Honda is soon to axe the NSX due to poor sales.