Importing History

Supercar sticker shock leads to jdm skyline revival

- Aaron Bonk

There was no sticker shock when Ginash George went out and bought an Acura CL. Honda made the car, the dealership sold it, and the markup Ginash was willing to pay was a reasonable one. The whole process was about as boring and predictable as the CL itself.

But dealerships aren’t always reasonable and Nissan’s R35 GT-R is neither boring nor predictable. All of which led to the sort of dealership markup that sent Ginash—who’d had every intention of driving home in a brand-new R35—packing in his 5-year-old 350Z and contemplating something else entirely.

Aside from that Acura-branded Accord, Ginash’s affinity for all things Nissan runs deep. When he was growing up, the twin-turbocharged 300ZX was his dream car. Years later and preempting the North American GT-R’s release, he had the opportunity to see the JDM supercar for himself in Japan. “There was a global buzz about the upcoming GT-R,” he says about what led him to that Nissan factory showroom located in the Tokyo subdivision of Ginza and, later on, to sell off his Z in order to free up funds for a Nissan supercar of his own. Six months and tens of thousands of dollars of dealership markups later, though, and, according to Ginash, that dream was thoroughly squashed.