The long version

JDM-only from new, so every US example is a 25-year-rule import, and the wave of American buyers discovering the B16B over the last several years is a meaningful chunk of why values have climbed sharply — collector demand arriving from a market that was never supposed to have access. In Japan, where the car never needed importing, the touge and track-day culture around it is still alive, run by owners who treat a hand-ported 1.6 revving to 8,400 rpm as something to use up, not preserve. The export price spike is pulling more of the surviving population toward preservation than the domestic culture ever did on its own.