Nissan has a rich history of bringing Japanese race car flair to the street, this started way back in the 60s, and continues to stay true today with the race-ready GT-R line-up still on showroom floors.
In the early days of Nissan's racing days (or Datsun's), they released the iconic 240Z. In stock form, this coupe was a serious competitor, but like most iconic performance cars, it needed a bit more under the hood to spice it up.
This spice came in the form of an S20 inline-six taken from the original Skyline GT-R. Thanks to the long nose of the 240, this engine slotted in perfectly, and the Fairlady Z432 came to be.
With 118kW and 177Nm driving the rear wheels through the four-speed manual transmission, this coupe was quite the competitor for its day.
Named for the four valves it had per cylinder, three carburettors, and two camshafts, around 420 Z432s were built for road use to comply with the homologation racing rules of the time. Over the years, Z432 examples have fetched over $500,000 at auction.
While these cars contained more than enough performance for the road at the time, Nissan still wasn't done with the Z432, and decided to build an even more hard-core variant, which was named the Z432R.
The R utilised exactly the same engine and drivetrain as the standard car, but was put on a serious diet to shed some weight. The radio and heating systems were ditched, the metal hood was swapped out for a fibreglass example, and the body panels and windows were thinned out.
All these measures allowed for almost 100kgs to be shed from the coupe, with the only additions being a rigid racing seat, and a 98-litre fuel added for endurance racing.
Just last week, this genuine Z432R with only 98,000 kilometres on the clock sold for a whopping $1.2 million at the BH auction in Japan. Considering that this is one of 40-50 Z432Rs in existence, we'd say that it's a reasonably fair price.