For those of us of a certain age, the video game Gran Turismo was an extremely influential part of our adolescent years. It was when the first generation of Sony’s Playstation came out, and for a car nerd, it was a total gamechanger. If you didn’t yet have a driver’s license, it was the closest thing to driving you had experienced up until that point. And of course, it opened up a whole new world of cars, forbidden fruit from overseas, with actual tactile feedback reminiscent of the real thing. The Nissan Pulsar GTIR was one of those cars, and to this day, it has never been sold in the U.S. Find this “garage find” here on eBay with a Buy-It-Now price of £4,995.00.

Like many iconic performance cars, the Pulsar GTIR was built in an effort by Nissan to compete in the FIA’s Group A rally segment. The Pulsar represented the company’s efforts to meet “homologation” requirements, with a small batch of road-going versions of the rally-prepped car made available for civilian use. Whenever you combine raucous performance with limited production, the results are usually a car that remains in high demand for years to come. Despite this, the seller still allowed his car to fall to the back of the garage, sorely neglected.

And like many Pulsars, this one has already been upgraded despite the impressive out-of-the-box performance. The Pulsar featured all-wheel-drive and a turbocharged powerplant generating around 270 horsepower, and combined with its low curb weight, these were very quick cars right out of the gate. Turbocharging makes it possible to turn up the boost – literally – for even more explosive power, but also at the expense of originality. The seller’s car features a NISMO rear cage, aftermarket exhaust and wheels, turbo timer, and a NISMO steering wheel.

NISMO is effectively like AMG is to Mercedes-Benz and SVT is to Ford; it’s Nissan’s in-house performance build team. You can look at those upgrades as effectively being OEM-plus. Still, this Pulsar carries a salvage title and the seller notes that it will need a new “front slam panel” and grill, which will have to be dealt with after you get the car to run once again. It was a runner when it was parked, so hopefully the road to recovery isn’t too long. Would you import a classic Japanese hot hatch like this?