The Golden Age of Forbidden Fruit Cars From Japan and Europe Is Over

There’s a famous Mark Twain quote about the “charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.” This is certainly true in the car world. And, for American enthusiasts, anyway, the “charm about the forbidden” combines with the fact that many foreign-market vehicles really are inherently more desirable. Such has been the case in much of the collector car world since the early 1970s, when Japanese and European manufacturers started keeping their best stuff to themselves. For us, magazines and books, and later video games and internet video clips, were the only way to see the some of the best stuff from overseas. The manufacturers made no effort to sell in the U.S., and the prospect of importing and using these cars ranged from extremely difficult to impossible.

The era of forbidden fruit cars was upon us, and it lasted for almost a half century. Now, though, as the world has gotten more globalized and as the number of new enthusiast vehicles has shrunk, is that era over?

By the early 1970s, U.S. safety and emission regulations had become considerably more stringent than those in the rest of the world. A little thing called the National Maximum Speed Law (which wasn’t repealed until 1995) set American Interstate speed limits at an absurdly low 55 mph, and this acted as a disincentive for foreign manufacturers to send us their fastest cars. Halo cars like the Lamborghini Countach, Ferrari Berlinetta Boxer, and Porsche 959 were all at one time verboten in the U.S.

Those with unlimited means found alternatives through expensive federalization processes, or “Show or Display” laws, but for the rest of us plebes who simply wanted a Nissan Skyline or TVR Griffith, the only practical solution was the interminable wait prescribed by the Imported Vehicle Safety Act of 1988 (better known as The 25-year rule), which allows legal private importation of non-U.S. safety and emission compliant cars upon the passage of a quarter century (a similar Canadian law sets the limit at 15 years in that country).

This means that every year, American enthusiasts can look forward to a new batch of cars turning 25 and therefore becoming legal to import and enjoy. The 2010s and 2020s have brought forbidden fruit favorites like Nissan Skylines, various Type-R Hondas, adorable A-B-C Kei cars, cute Kei trucks, and World Rally wonders from Mitsubishi and Subaru. These cars’ arrival on the American scene has brought much excitement to the hobby and to the market. Over the past few years, though, the list of desirable forbidden fruit cars has been thinning. At this point, I think we can officially call the forbidden fruit era all but over.

The apex of the forbidden fruit era probably came in late 2023, when the first 1999 model year examples of the R34 generation of the Nissan Skyline GT-R became legal under the 25-year rule. The anticipation that surrounded this car was unprecedented. A generation of enthusiasts knew the car from video games and from the Fast & Furious franchise. To say that the R34 was both legendary and highly coveted would be an understatement of historic proportion. Within the next three or four years, however, the entire production run of R34 Skylines will become legal in the U.S. (though most will remain unregisterable in California, which was ironically the setting for the first Fast & Furious film). After the R34, there aren’t many more truly significant Japanese cars that weren’t also sold here in America, and none have the cultural impact of Nissan’s Skyline GT-R.

Around the early 2000s, Europeans started to get serious about emissions, and safety regulations. The European Union’s NCAP safety ratings started to model those of NHTSA, and emission regulations, while not precisely the same as those in the U.S., were similar enough that the burden of making a small-volume performance model U.S. compliant wasn’t as imposing as it had been in the past. It should also be noted that in the late 1980s, the U.S. also began to ease up on its silly 5 mph bumper regulations. After the 996 generation, for example, nearly every 911 GT car variant was offered in the U.S. This was a big deal, because from the 1970s through the 1990s, Porsche had not offered its best-performing cars in the U.S.  

What remains forbidden fruit for 2025 is a small fraction of what had been on our long-term lust list. Most variants of the Renault Clio Williams V6 remain briefly out of reach, as does the wild TVR Sagaris, the Alfa Romeo Brera and the Porsche 996 GT3 RS, plus a few more years of the aforementioned Skyline R34 GT-R, but that’s really about it. Sure, there will always be a few random lovable cars out of reach. The Alpine A110 and the mini-G-Wagen Suzuki Jimny make this list, along with maybe the nifty VW Amarok pickup. But nobody is going to lose sleep over not being able park one of these in their garage any time soon. Nope, for the most part, you’re now free to roam Japanese auction sites like Car From Japan, or European platforms like AutoScout 24 and Mobile.de, and most of the coolest stuff is legal to bring on over. The era of waiting for forbidden fruit is officially over. We’ve finally out-waited the man.