Watch Best Motoring’s Real Life Gran Turismo Sunday Cup

It’s a trope to describe a Japanese show Best automobile as Grand Tourism in real life, but in this case, it really is. In a 1992 battle between front- and rear-wheel drive cars, the crew put together a simply wonderful lineup.

At Mazda we get an FC RX-7 and an NA Miata; Toyota offers a Corolla Levin AE86 and a Starlet GT; Honda offers both the Civic and CR-X SiR; and to complete it all, two Kei cars, a Subaru Vivio RX-R and a Suzuki Cappuccino. This is an alignment straight from a lower level race from previous editions of Grand Tourismand also a very convincing argument for the excellence of Japanese cars from the early 1990s.

The video encompasses the usual Best automobile battery of tests, including a slalom and an autocross, but it’s the mid-course on-track battle that interests us most. It’s in Tsukuba, naturally, and it’s a lot of fun.

For all the legends in this test, it’s one of the most obscure cars that is the fastest, the Toyota Starlet GT. It was a 130-horsepower turbocharged hot hatchback that, surprisingly for 1992, featured an adaptive suspension. He also weighed less than 2,000 pounds, so no wonder he was fast. The CR-X and RX-7 were only two-tenths behind in terms of lap times, but the Mazda rotary finished the race first.

But honestly, we’d take any of these cars. They’re simple and relatively underpowered, but each comes from a high point in Japanese car history.