Accord­ing to Pres­tige Motor­sport, the new R35 GT-​​R can now be imported legally under SEVS!

How­ever, com­pli­ance is as far as 12 months away (2009), and prices are expected to exceed AU$100,000 for the new Nis­san super­car. Regard­less, this is a big fist in the eye of Nis­san Aus­tralia, as enthu­si­asts will now be able to grab the new car directly from the JDM with­out Nis­san Australia’s interference!

[Source: Pres­tige Motor­sport]

Totally awe­some. Watch the GT-​​R take the 997 to task around Tsukuba. All said and done, Nissan’s built great com­pe­ti­tion for the Euro’s with the new R35. Still, insane JDM car fan as I am, I would still take that sexy 997 for a drive. And maybe never come back

The awe­some pho­tog­ra­phers over at CarAd­vice have cap­tured the sec­ond GT-​​R to land in Aus­tralia, belong­ing to an unknown (and well-​​to-​​do) enthu­si­ast. Rumoured to cost around AU $150,000 (A very hefty pre­mium even on the US $69K price-​​tag for the GT-​​R in the USA) the GT-​​R can­not be road reg­is­tered in Aus­tralia, cour­tesy of Nis­san Australia.

Nis­san Aus­tralia execs, we are glar­ing at you right now. Fix this débâ­cle and let us import them, or bring them here!

The Con­cept RA has appeared in Detroit look­ing like a cross between the new Lancer EVO and (per­haps) the lat­est gen­er­a­tion USDM Mit­subishi Eclipse, or even an Audi TT.

The strictly con­cept only (Sorry, guys and girls) Con­cept RA sports a 2.2 litre, DOHC 16-​​valve 150kw/​201HP/​420nm high out­put, clean burn diesel engine, as part of Mitsubishi’s new drive towards eco-​​friendly per­for­mance sports cars.

In order to achieve low con­sump­tion while not sac­ri­fic­ing per­for­mance means the Con­cept RA fea­tures Mitsubishi’s pro­pri­etary MIVEC vari­able valve con­trol tech­nol­ogy, an all alu­minum space frame, vari­able diffuser/​variable geom­e­try tur­bocharger, peizo­elec­tric injec­tor sys­tem and also sports some impact resis­tant, recy­clable plas­tic resin pan­els as part of it’s construction.

Envi­ron­men­tal fea­tures include a new cat­alytic con­verter sys­tem that com­bines a diesel oxi­da­tion cat­a­lyst (DOC), NOx trap cat­a­lyst (NTC) and diesel par­tic­u­late fil­ter (DPF) in addi­tion to the highly effi­cient 2.2 litre clean burn­ing diesel.

Of course, the Con­cept RA sports Full­time 4WD, Twin Clutch SST Trans­mis­sion, and the new S-​​AWC (Super-​​All Wheel Con­trol) most notably seen on the new EVO. As men­tioned before on IJ, S-​​AWC is a com­bi­na­tion of exist­ing tech­nolo­gies, Active Cen­ter Dif­fer­en­tial, Active Yaw Con­trol, ABS and Active Sta­bil­ity Control.

Unfor­tu­nately though, all this is to be shelved as the car is designed purely as a con­cept, and won’t chal­lenge either Honda’s offer­ing in the new CRZ (CRX) or Toyota’s rumored new ‘AE86’.