AutoSpeed staffer Michael Knowling and I have discussed it numerous times over the years: wouldn't it be good to buy a grey market import? The discussions usually happened shortly after driving cars imported and complied by Melbourne's Sports and Luxury cars; the principal Craig Dean is a stickler for quality and his cars are usually very well turned out. We discussed it after driving the Supra RZ, after driving the Lexus RX300 - even after a tyre-smoking 1995 Z28 Camaro.
But we always came back to a few points - the depreciation on these unofficial imports can be fierce, spare parts can often be a problem, and the difficulties of insuring such a car seem to be continually on the rise. What will be interesting, we always said, is when the price of imports gets down to the level where buying one is to risk only (relatively) little cash.
Having a soft spot for the turbo Kei class cars, I have always been hoping that something like a Daihatsu Mira turbo or a Suzuki Alto Works would by now be available here in Australia for, say, $4000. But alas the relatively small demand for sthese cars and the fixed costs that apply to any grey market importation scheme sees even the cheapest imports hovering at a price higher than this figure.
But what about the imports that arrived five or even ten years ago? Those cars are now available very cheaply indeed.
A Different Rationale
But this wasn't where I was heading when I decided to buy another car. In fact, the rationale couldn't have been more different. I'd just finished pulling my '98 Lexus LS400's glovebox in and out for the fifth time, and I was sick of it. The reason for the glovebox manoeuvres is that the engine management and trans ECU lives directly behind it. To access its wiring requires the glovebox removal - a fiddly and time-consuming task, evidenced always by broken clips and rattles in the otherwise near silent car that are horrible to find.
And I could only see the situation getting worse. I am helping to develop a range of cutting-edge automotive electronic modification kits with electronics magazine Silicon Chip, and part of the testing procedure involves fitting the circuit boards to a car.
That's fine, but the Lexus is just so hard to work on in this way. Take the prototype digital injector duty cycle meter. Simple enough, it seems. Just find power and earth connections, and connect a signal wire to one of the injectors. Except in the Lexus first there's the glovebox removal trick (agggh, another clip to be plastic welded back on), then locating an injector feed in a very complex loom, then the realisation that if I wanted the LED numerical display placed in front of the driver it would take me a full day to install it there (it's impossible to feed wiring laterally across under the dash - everything is sealed into place). So the digital display ended up inside the glovebox, a style seen more on the show circuit than conventional street cars.
Then there's the speedo corrector, designed to allow the easy alteration of speedo readings when the gearing or tyre diameters are changed. Or even if the speedo is simply wrong. Again, it was a project I was keen to prove on the Lexus. Use of the GPS nav system and testing of the 'Road Angel' (see "The Road Angel") had shown that the speedo was out just by a few km/h - not much, but it would be nice to correct it. But - yep, glovebox out again - after wiring it into place I found that changing the Lexus speedo input has some dramatic negatives. The speed input is used by the auto trans control, the stability control, the ABS, the engine management system and God knows what else. Change the speed input and the trans started behaving oddly - and that was enough to stop me dead in my tracks. So why not simply intercept the signal just in front of the speedo? Well, in the LS400 the engine management ECU talks by means of a dedicated bus to the dashboard ECU, which in turn outputs a straight signal to drive the speedo needle....which is probably a stepper motor.
After a full day trying to fit the speedo interceptor, I decided a change was needed. A big change. Like a different guinea pig car....
Many of the electronic projects are most applicable to turbo EFI cars, so it would be best if the new car had a puffer. A medium level of complexity (eg an electronically-driven speedo) would also be good. So, easy huh? Just go plonk down eight or ten thousand dollars on a 2.2 Mazda 626 turbo (or Telstar or MX6), or perhaps stretch to a bit more on a Subaru RS Liberty. I even know the latter car very well, having owned one when they were near-new. Trouble is, the piggy bank wasn't going to stretch anywhere near that far - with the high monthly lease payment on my (much-loved) Lexus, the total available kitty was $3000.
"Three thousand dollars," said my fiancé Georgina on her fingers, raising one digit with the slow enunciation of each word. "Three - thousand - dollars."
Reality Hits
To be honest, the budget didn't worry me all that much. I've bought lots of cheap cars over the years - from two Holden Camiras to a Rover 2000 to a Volvo 142 to a Nissan EXA. However, this time I was in for a shock. Before I started to look around, I was going on the logic that said if a JE Holden Camira cost $2000 five years ago, these days it should be about $500. But the market doesn't work like that. If the car is roadworthy and in good condition, its value plateaus. Sure you can find cars for $500, but they can't be driven. Instead - and especially with the state of Queensland's compulsory roadworthiness check before sale - $2000 can get you anything from an XB Falcon to an old Corolla to a VK Commodore.
But if two grand was the baseline figure for a car that could be registered and which ran, how much for something with a turbo and engine management of the sophistication I wanted? (For example, I wanted a car with a hot wire airflow meter, rather than a vane design.) I thought maybe $3000 ("Three - Thousand - Dollars" with a finger rising on each word) but it soon started looking more like five or even six thousand.
Georgina and I went out searching one Sunday afternoon. From where I live - inland from the Gold Coast - the next state of New South Wales isn't far away, and there the car yards are open for trading on Sundays. I half expected to lob over the border, show up at a corner lot caryard, see a slightly battered but honest turbo car, and put down a deposit. In fact, I took some cash to allow me to do just that. But what I found was firstly, no turbo cars. Then secondly, even the decent naturally aspirated Camrys and Corollas and Pulsars were four-five-six thousand dollars.
We headed back to Queensland. There we parked and walked, parked and walked. One yard fascinated me - it was full of beautifully turned-out Japanese imports. There was a pristine R31 Nissan Skyline coupe with a RB20DET engine in it (I've always loved the shape of those cars), a Cefiro and some other Nissans that I'd never even seen before. One four-door even had a RB25DE engine in it - it looked a sweet, sweet machine. But this was really just an incidental excursion - all these cars were four, five or six times my entire budget...
This was it...
But there was one thing which kept me going that afternoon. Advertised in the Trading Post had been a turbo four-cylinder at $3000 - the magic number. It was a Holden Piazza, a 2-litre turbo and intercooled car that had attracted very poor press at the time of its release. Styled by Giugiaro, the Isuzu built car was rear-wheel drive - and this particular example had a four-speed auto. The auto trans would be good in my application - Silicon Chip and I are developing some very tricky interceptors which could be used to electronically modify the trans. Sure the Piazza was 17 years old, and I didn't expect it to be immaculate. But at least it would have style - they're a very pretty shape - and some character.
By that time in the day I knew the minimum standard that I would accept. We'd looked at a Mazda 626 turbo in a yard and it had been very tired, with the paint faded and bits and pieces of trim missing from the body. The car yard - in Queensland, and so supposedly closed as required by law - had, hmmmm!, been sort of open and so we'd been able to pop the bonnet and talk to the proprietor.
"It's got a new turbo, that one," he'd proudly called from across the yard, but when we'd lifted the bonnet the cylinder compressions written on the rocker cover had strongly suggested that in fact it had been fitted with a Japanese-import engine. That might be fine, but an honest well-serviced car would be less of a lucky dip. Having owned a Mazda MX6 turbo, I remembered the interior quality of this family of cars, and one that was rough inside and out didn't fill me with joy.
I know, I know...
Filling me with joy at ownership wasn't the idea - I was supposed to be buying only to have something that the electronic kits could be tested on. But if I groaned every time I picked up the keys, well, it wasn't going to do too much for my work ethic that day... So the Piazza had to beat that baseline, it had to be better than a battered Mazda 626 turbo, to be more inspiring than a naturally aspirated, old - but honest - narrow-body V6 Camry. Somehow deep in my heart I knew it would be so, so I pointed the Lexus's nose southwards again and romped down the freeway back to New South Wales.
My heart was wrong.
The Piazza sat in the street - engine still ticking on cool-down, so it had at least been running. But how the driver could see where they'd been going was a bit of a mystery - the windscreen featured so many starring cracks that the road ahead must have been split into pieces. Still, a replacement windscreen - while probably expensive - would be available. I looked into the cabin at the Eighties-concept car interior. The satellite switch pads that sit where normally column stalks would be had numerous buttons missing - broken bits of plastic looked back at me. Then I walked around the rear - only to see rust perforations all across the base of the rear glass. In Queensland this car would never pass a safety check - not without thousands being spent, anyway.
I beat a hasty retreat.
More Looking
That night I again started browsing the web, widening the search for an EFI turbo car to more states. Doing classifieds key word searches under 'turbo' came up with almost nothing when a max budget of $3000 was put in, so I upped it to $4000. (It was late at night; no-one was looking over my shoulder.) I did the searches in a whole variety of ways, yet only one car kept popping up that was within 500 kilometres of where I live.
"Nissan Maxima 88 V6 turbo auto aircond central lock, alarm, white, rwc, velour seats, excellent condition. $3999." said the ad. That 'rwc' meant roadworthy certificate - it had passed a recent safety test and so must be in at least semi-competent condition. I did some more searching and found what it looked like - a cross between a Skyline, Bluebird and 300C. It was a Japanese grey market import - and an old one at that. I rang the vendor, made an appointment to inspect the car, and headed off. I was seeing the car at the guy's place of work and when I arrived and saw the open carpark under the office block I sneaked in for a quick look. If it was another Piazza no point in wasting time... But it looked much better. No rust perforations, no broken windscreen. That was enough incentive for a closer look.
I found a little rust in the door seams and lots of paint touch-ups. Inside it looked immaculate and the odometer - for whatever that figure was worth - said only 124,000km. On the road it drove - well, adequately. With a 2-litre single-cam-per-bank V6 turbo I didn't expect awesome performance, but it was quite slow. There was also a slight vibration in fourth gear at moderate acceleration - it went away when the gearbox kicked down. I couldn't decide if it was a driveshaft problem or a gearbox problem or no problem at all.
But without a doubt this was by far the best turbo EFI car I had seen for $4000. Now what about that "Three - Thousand - Dollars"? The seller was a hard bargainer.
A very hard bargainer.
We metaphorically walked away from each other maybe three times before I got him down to $3700 - and that was the best I was going to do. But I was undecided. It was more than I wanted to spend - no, it was more than I was permitted to spend - but it matched what I wanted. There was that driveline vibration, but on the other hand the interior was in such good condition that maybe - just maybe - the odometer reading was correct. And if that distance was anywhere near right then this was a god buy. After all, the Piazza had 240,000km on it, the 626 Turbo even more.
I gave him $100 deposit and then went back with the balance a few days later. I'd bought a grey market import.
On the Road
When I got the Maxima home I gave it a good clean, changed the air and fuel and oil filters, flushed the radiator and changed the coolant, and booked it in for an auto trans service and a new cam belt. But even with the latter two still to happen, the car is now driving better. Tightening up the turbo-to-intake manifold plumbing has solved the driveline vibration - it was apparently being caused by an air leak that made the engine run roughly with just that load. Then discovering that the engine was often running on only five cylinders (it's very smooth so hard to tell that one is down) resulted in the fitting of a set of new plug leads. Performance has also improved substantially - though I am loathe to rev the engine hard without the 25,000km-overdue new cam belt first being replaced. However, realistically this is still not a fast turbo V6.
But on the road the Maxima is surprisingly good. The rack and pinion steering is precise - albeit lacking in feel - and the damping quite firm. In fact there is a three-position damping adjustment knob on the dash but the system flashes an error code when the switch is moved away from 'medium'. But on medium (which for all I know may in fact be 'hard') the handling is actually quite impressive - the car sits flat and turns in willingly. Without a lot of power to push the front wide it's all very composed.
The interior is in excellent condition (so much better than facing the broken Piazza buttons!) and Japanese period features include four red door-ajar lights mounted on the insides of the doors, velour everywhere and cornering lights. Cornering lights? They're the front-mounted, sideways-facing lights that come on at night when you're indicating for a corner. In fact, they are very effective - where I live there are few street lights and the Maxima's cornering lights actually give a much improved view.
Conclusion
So the import that I ended up buying is nothing like I once imagined it would be like. But it has character, good on-road characteristics - and oops, nearly forgot, it's much easier to fit those electronic kits to....
