I spent 16 years living in Okinawa, Japan, as a military officer and while I was there, I was into the motorsports scene. Like a lot of my friends, we went drag racing. I had an Evolution III and a Skyline GTST Type M [before this Skyline], but to bring any of them back to the States would have been too costly. It's about $6,500 and up just to ship a car over, not to mention trying to keep up with all of the rules and regulations that are placed onto vehicles of that type. Anything over 25 years old, however, doesn't have to meet DOT or EPA regulations as long as it has a front bumper and meets the 5mph bumper law-hence the reason I have this Skyline today. I still had to bring the car in through a registered importer, but a $1,000 fee versus a $6,500 fee was a huge difference. However, finding this type of Skyline in good condition wasn't easy at all.
You can find four-doors all day long, but nothing compares to the two-door, old-school type. The average price for one that's in fair condition is about $10,000-I had mine appraised at $45,000. I found it through one of my friends, who was moving at the time and needed money. He called, asking me to make an offer on it, but I didn't want to insult him so I had him come up with a price that was within reach. It originally came with an S20 engine [Ed: the original engine found in that chassis] and transmission, but he wouldn't part with these due to their rarity. These twin-cam, overhead four-cylinder engines are rare, so he offered to put another engine into it-the L28, a 2.8L 280ZX motor. When I took possession of the car it was running 12-13 seconds and got it close to 11 seconds flat when I added a cam, stainless exhaust, and a bit of headwork to it. We didn't have any dragstrips in Okinawa, so I had to use a G-Tech to estimate what I was running.
When it was time for me to leave Okinawa, I had a really hard time trying to get approval for it to be shipped over [to the States]. At first it was declared "unacceptable" because it was so radical and not very drivable, even though it was my daily driver. I had to take it back and basically detune it so that it could be driven onto a container, removed from the container once it arrived, and placed into storage-the way it was set up wasn't acceptable for insurance reasons. I had to swap the head and change out the header for a 6-2-1 system, which was still good for plenty of power. Even up to the last day I was almost denied permission to ship the car home-I was being told that the 25-year rule dealing with classic cars only applied to American cars that were already in Japan going back to the States. But I had to point out that the rules and regulations did not specify whether the car is from America or Japan. They were worried about customs confiscating my car and having it crushed or transported back to Japan at my expense. Finally, after going back and forth with arguments, they said, "Screw it" and said if anything went wrong then it would be on my head.