With Queen Elizabeth II on financial institution notes and place names like Richmond and Surrey, the west coast of Canada is most emphatically a British Columbia.
Apart from the vehicles, after all, that are largely not like any factor one can find within the UK. It’s primarily a land of American-style pick-up trucks and big SUVs – however there are some Japanese interlopers that you simply received’t discover in Britain. There’s an ideal premise, then, for us to assemble one of the best of them atop a coastal ski hill.
From Toyota, there’s the GR Corolla, a sop thrown throughout the Pacific since North America doesn’t get the GR Yaris. Toyota has taken the three-pot buzz-bomb spirit of its homologation-special hatchback and infused it right into a extra sensible four-door form. We’ve known as the bog-standard Corolla “pleasingly mischievous”, so how does practically 300bhp and an adjustable central differential seize you?
From Subaru, Canadians are fortunate sufficient to have each variations of the latest-generation WRX – what we as soon as knew because the Impreza WRX. You would possibly maybe not recognise how the yobbo boy racer of the Nineties has matured right into a household saloon with the disposition of a fluffy golden retriever. Yet the bonnet scoops and turbochargers are nonetheless right here, and so is the World Rally Blue paint that evokes recollections of Colin McRae and Richard Burns. Select both guide for max enthusiasm or CVT for daily-driver practicality and preserve the brim of your baseball cap as flat as Saskatchewan.
Lastly, Nissan’s merely named Z heaves into view with the world-weariness of Toshiro Mifune’s wandering ronin in Yojimbo (a superb film from 1961 – go test it out). Not completely a brand new automotive however an ageing platform given a recent physique design and a twin-turbocharged V6 engine borrowed from Infiniti’s components bin, this coupé is a bit of on the heavy aspect however nonetheless sturdy. And charismatic: Toyota requested BMW for assist with the GR Supra however Nissan stored the Z’s growth totally in-house, and it’s the higher for it.
These aren’t direct rivals in your hard-earned kilos (nicely, {dollars}), however all promise thrills for eager drivers. So let’s see whether or not British lovers can be inside their rights to have a sour-grapes angle to those forbidden fruits.
Nissan Z: The final samurai
We’re now three many years away from the golden age of Japanese bubble-economy manufacturing. The likes of the twin-turbocharged Mazda RX-7 and Mk4 Toyota Supra are actually classics to be polished and loved on the weekend. But the automotive that proved the Rising Sun’s efficiency bona fides continues to be right here to fire up bother.
While the Z is solely named, it’s not likely the suitable title for it: it’s extra a reborn 300ZX, proper all the way down to the vintage-look tail-lights. Where the 240Z offered within the hundreds as a result of it was scarcely costlier than a compact saloon, this present Z is extra a muscular various to a V8 Ford Mustang. It feels engineered to be offered to the identical individuals who both purchased a 240Z new or simply missed out on doing so.