This is one of 2,500 Mazda Familia GTR's produced in order to qualify Mazda for the World Rally Championship. The GT-R was only sold in Japan, but has been popular as an import around the world, particularly in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. This particular car was found on a Canadian import website myjapanesecars.com, asking $11,500 CAD, located in Montreal.

The advertisement unfortunately gave little information about the cars condition, and overall history, however, the pictures demonstrate that it's in fairly good condition for its age. If anyone knows where this car ended up, please get in contact with us - we would love to be able to track the ownership and locations of as many GT-R Familias as possible, as there are likely only a handful in each western market.

For those that don't know these cars, they were essentially a road going rally prepped car. Some of the features of the GT-R included a 1.8l DOHC single turbo engine, producing 210BHP (154kw) from the factory. The engine is connected to a 5-speed manual transmission, a viscous LSD and a limited-slip 4WD system providing drive bias of 47% at the front, and 53% at the rear under static conditions. A substantial amount of work was done to the engine to bring it up to a competitive rally standard, and there are significant differences between the mechanicals in the GT-R and that in the Familia GT-X. For example, there is a larger ball bearing turbo, tougher engine mounts, larger sodium filled valves, revised profile hollow cams, ported exhaust manifold and re-mapped computer. The GT-R also received a significantly larger intercooler, revised sway bar, upsized brakes, faster steering ratio, strengthened gearbox and clutch, among other performance features. These items can assist in determining a genuine GT-R from the GT-X model.