Here's the straight skinny. R33's right now are pretty cheap. The economy is down...driving the prices down
...and the prices are already low due to the exchange rate. You can get a good R33 for around 15k USD. A
Yokohama GTR specialtly shop was advertising a one owner R32 with 7000 miles on it (perfect condition for 16k...
You can't beat that with a stick. Anyway...the ONLY company right now that can import the car legally for you
is Motorex (
www.motorex.net or
www.skylinegtr.com ) The prices for importation on their website.
As for modifications. As long as you keep the original parts...and are willing to pay to have the mods pulled out for
US legalization and then put back in for your personal use...no problem. You can't enter the country with modificiations
that will change the emmissions...IE Cam profile, ECU tune. You can buy the parts over here though....very cheap in
comparison to state-side. You might want to look into just doing the suspension, rims, tires, and brake mods as well
as easy internal mods (boost controller, I/E, oil cooler etc) while you overseas...then doing the rest.
The only disadvantage to that is the quality of tune you can get. No offense to Hiro and the gang, but there are guys who
have been tuning GTR's forever and are damn good at it. As soon as I can get back home, I'll post my recent dyno. Although
the power output was a tad under what I had hoped (I didn't change the cams so I sort of expected it...) the fuel/air ratio
throughout the RPM band was perfect....which gave me beautifully smooth torque and HP curves.