What Car Should A Gheorghie Drive: Mark Edition

WCSAGD is back like cooked crack, this time with Mark’s car.

Mark really exists. I know this because I saw him once over a few beers in Manhattan. But that’s the entirety of my in-person experience with him. Everything else I know about him I learned on the internet (in particular, on this blog).

Mark is different from the rest of the knuckleheads who hang out in this space. In some ways it’s almost like he’s from another planet. He has lots of tattoos and pit bulls. He gets all of my hiphop references and makes some that I don’t get. He gets all of my sneaker references and owns many more pairs than I do—he likely owns several pairs of Foamposits. He probably saw “Doo Doo Brown” performed live multiple times. He has the shaved-head-and-a-beard look and he rocks it. It just works.

He’s also more athletic than the rest of us. He played college basketball and still plays competitively. That said, he’s relatively short. So he’s sporty and compact.

Mark is the only Gheorghie who could plausibly be a character in a Fast and Furious movie.

Mark should drive a 1991 Nissan Skyline GT-R in gunmetal gray.

The Nissan Skyline GT-R is one of, if not the, most sought-after Japan domestic market (“JDM”) cars among US JDM fanboys. Like most muscle cars, the Skyline started out as a relatively benign automobile. Then, in 1969, Nissan dropped a 2.0 liter straight-six engine in it and added the GT-R badge. The result was a dragstrip legend in Japan. This carried on for four years.

Nissan resurrected the GT-R badge in 1989 and affixed it to what Fast and Furious types call the R32. It had all wheel drive, a twin-turbo straight-six, 276 horsepower, flared fenders, and a don't-fuck-with-me stance that induced lust in a certain demographic of car fanciers. It is extreme. The R32 was manufactured through 1994 but never imported into North America, and was only available in right-hand drive.

Thus a generation of car fans could only read about these beasts online. Sort of like Mark, until I met him.

You're allowed to import cars that were never cleared for registration in the US once they are 25 years old, so any GT-R manufactured before February 1995 is currently fair game. This means you can import some of the second generation GT-Rs, which is the R33. They are very cool too but despite being the youngest Gheorghie Mark is more of an old school guy.

My stance on car colors is well documented (black, white and gray are not real car colors) but 88% of all R32s manufactured are black, white or gray, so I chose gray here. Besides, this car has enough of a WTF factor with the steering wheel on the wrong side that it doesn't need any more pizzazz. If anything, the gunmetal paint makes it look slightly dangerous, like something a Bond villain would drive and that seems to be pretty on-brand for Mark. Like Mark, this one was registered in Florida.

Anyone who knows what this is will go bonkers when they see it. I know I did--I saw one once in Japan and it was cool as hell. I did not go bonkers the one time I saw Mark but it was a very cool mini summit.

Predictably, there are a number of places to buy these in the US now. Bringatrailer often has one up for auction. Japanese Classics in Richmond is a fun website to peruse, as is Duncan Imports outside of Roanoke, which I mentioned here previously. You can also buy them from Japan and have them imported here, but that seems dicier to me (good luck recovering you money if you don't get what you paid for).

You used to be able to get these for $20k to $25k but most of the crispy unmolested specimens have been plucked from Japan, leaving mostly heavily modified drift cars and dragsters to choose from. As a result the price for a clean original car is now over $30k and can easily get to $50k for a low-mileage car with full documentation. Much like Mark, these things get more valuable with age.

The R32 is a small, sporty, powerful car that doesn't look like anything else on the road. It is almost impossible to see one in regular driving--they're unique. They were frighteningly new school when they came out, but now they're old and looked upon with nostalgia, but they are still bad-ass. And they'll always be cool.

That's what Mark should drive.