The long wait only made getting this 1992 Skyline GT-R that much sweeter for Mark Hutchinson, after he dreamed of owning one for decades.
The day Mark Hutchinson was shown a Japanese car magazine was a day he’ll never forget. Since that day on, his obsession with sports imports began — it was his first exposure to Silvias, 180SXs, Celica GT-4s, Skylines, and the mother of them all: The GT-R.
Mark was well into college when he got the exposure during his college engineering class in 1995, but this was also before most Japanese street cars were even legal to buy in America, but to him, it would be well worth the wait.
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Since this was a time before the average gearhead in the U.S. had a lot of exposure to JDM imports, Mark didn’t really even know what he was looking at, but he knew he wanted one of these sleekly-aggressive, big-winged race-bred Skylines. Unfortunately, the original “Godzilla” R32 GT-R models wouldn’t be legal for import for another couple of decades.
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Left wanting, all Mark could do from there was watch the GT-R dominate race circuits overseas, while he built up a few Nissan 240SX cars to enter the budding SoCal drifting scene. While this wasn’t a bad way to kill time, it wouldn’t dull his passion for the Skyline GT-R, and he’d finally get to important a 1992 GT-R in 2017. However, red tape would prove to be the final finish line that caused the car to be held up while it was being made to comply with California’s nearly impossible emission codes.
“I had to wait 22 years to get this car,” Hutchinson told Hagerty, “but that last six months was the longest wait of my life. It’s like running a marathon and then not being able to cover that last inch. Once I got the car, though, you couldn’t wipe the grin off my face.”
Now in his care, you’d expect an experienced tuner like Mark to get to tinkering right away, but he instead decided to leave the 2.6-liter twin-turbo engine alone. From the iconic styling to the torque vectoring to four-wheel-steering, Mark explained that he wants to drive this car in the way Nissan engineers intended it to feel.
Although it’s been a rollercoaster, Mark Hutchinson would certainly make his 19-year-old self proud that he never gave up on the idea of owning his dream car.
