Why is 1998 significant? For starters, it’s the year director John Frankenheimer released the last great car-chase film, Ronin, starring Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, an Audi S8 (D2), and a handful of middle-class Peugeots. It is also the last year of the 993, Porsche’s final air-cooled 911, arguably marking the end of the greatest production era in sports-car history. If you haven’t yet acquired your 993 C2S, then hurry! Or don’t. It’s way too late, and valuations on these remarkable machines blew past ridiculous long before Bring a Trailer came along and COVID lockdown turned us all into literal armchair car collectors.
This story originally appeared in Volume 18 of Road & Track.
There are cars from that time that I think about late at night, when the demons come. They fill me with regret, since I never bought one when I had the chance. There are sleepers, such as the Ford Contour SVT. About as unflashy as a car can get, the SVT version of the plain Contour hid a 2.5-liter Duratec V-6 that milled 195 hp at 6625 rpm. This wasn’t an off-the-line dazzler, but it screamed bloody murder at the limit and doesn’t come with that hefty BMW E36 price.
Among my favorite nostalgia cars of that period is the Toyota Celica GT, which was one of my first cars, an overlooked little beast with buggy eyes. The version I really wanted, the Celica GT-Four ST205, never made it to the States. A WRC homologation car, it was an all-wheel-drive monster that made 240 hp (as much as a ’98 M3), and it bristled with cool details, like an aluminum hood and a twin-entry turbo with next to zero lag. This car, as rare as any JDM vehicle out there, is in my pantheon.
A car-lover’s community for ultimate access & unrivaled experiences.JOIN NOW
Why am I talking about 1998, anyway? It is exactly 25 years ago, and the year around which this issue, Vol. 18: New Vintage, focuses. As Jamie Kitman writes in “Open Borders” (page 012), there was a time in our not-so-distant past when enthusiasts who lusted after overseas cars (especially during the grim low-horsepower era that followed the oil crisis) had few ways of importing them. Then, in 1988, a gearhead at the Department of Transportation named Dick Merritt pushed through the Imported Vehicle Safety Compliance Act, also known as the 25-year rule, opening up vast landscapes of exotic cars more than 25 years old to people with a little less money than the wealthy.
The significance of this is becoming apparent, as now the great JDM cars of the Nineties are being set free. In January 2024, for instance, the mighty Nissan R34 Skyline, which was famous long before Fast & Furious turned it into a movie star, will officially be 25 years old. This machine is a hallmark of what we think of as the new class of vintage collectibles, cars you should go out and get now, before it’s too late.
