Nissan Pulsar GTI-R

The long version

Nissan needed a homologation base for Group A rallying and already had the Skyline GT-R's ATTESA all-wheel-drive system engineered, so the Pulsar GTI-R is essentially that hardware transplanted into the smallest, lightest Nissan body available — a genuinely odd pairing of a budget three-door hatch and a drivetrain developed for the brand's halo car. The SR20DET under the hood was a unique variant, code 54C, never used in anything else Nissan sold, tuned specifically for the low-end torque a rally car needs on loose surfaces rather than the high-rpm character other SR20 applications favored. It never came close to matching the GT-R's fame, and for most of its life sold for JDM-hot-hatch money rather than icon money — clean examples traded in the low five figures for years after import eligibility began in 2015. That's started to shift as the wider 90s JDM boom pulls in buyers who missed out on Skylines and Silvias at reasonable prices, but the GTI-R remains one of the more attainable ways into genuine Group A homologation history. The ones on the road mostly stay there — this was never expensive enough to become a vault car, and the ownership base skews toward people who specifically sought out the oddball rather than people protecting an investment.