Cloud Hosting

When it comes to engineering brilliance and technological marvels for the time, there aren't many who do it better than the Japanese companies. The big Japanese manufacturers have always been right at the leading edge of the curve (or even ahead of it!) when it comes to innovation in cars. Some of those cars managed to achieve that through having unique engine designs, such as the rotary engine. Others were packed full of technology that many other cars didn't adopt until several years later. A rare few actually managed to combine both of these!

The JDMsports cars from this list come from most of the big manufacturers you'd expect. There's also one in there from a manufacturer you absolutely wouldn't expect to have built a sports car! What they all have in common, though, is being known for being showcases of how brilliant Japanese engineering can be.

The Nissan Skyline GT-R is one of the most famous JDM sports cars ever. Perhaps the most iconic out of all the generations is the R34. This car was introduced to the world via the Fast & Furious series of movies, etching itself a place in popular culture. It's also one of the most technologically advanced sports cars of its day. It had an intelligent AWD system that included a limited-slip differential, and it had a multi-function display unit that could show you almost any kind of data about the car that you wanted. The R34 GT-R could even let you record your own lap times, something which wasn't a feature on many out-and-out sports cars until years later!

When people treat the R34 Skyline GT-R like the JDM legend that it is, there's a very good reason for it. It really was a technological marvel for its time. The R34 GT-R being such an incredible sports car is solid proof that Japanese engineering is some of the best in the world.

RELATED: Here's What We Love About The Nissan GTR R34

Mazda has produced many rotary-engined cars over the years. The Cosmo was the first of these, and it set the stage for what was to come. While the rotary engine may have been invented by a German, it was the Japanese who managed to make it a solid enough unit to use in a production car. Other cars had used the rotary engine before and since, but those always ended up as dead ends. These cars would either be hopelessly unreliable, or too expensive to run for most people to stomach. Mazda solved a lot of issues with Dr. Felix Wankel's design and, while it still had quirks and flaws as an engine, it was actually reliable enough to put it in the Cosmo.

The Cosmo isn't packed full of brilliant technology. But, it is a great example of Japanese engineering brilliance. Mazda managed to take such an odd engine design that had been rejected by most of the automotive establishments, and they actually made it work!

The 300ZX is a Nissan that sometimes goes forgotten by the car community in general. It isn't forgotten by those of us who love JDM stuff, though! The 300ZX was another one of those Japanese sports cars that was packed full of as much technology as they could shove into it. One of the big pieces of advanced tech the 300ZX had was four-wheel steering. This allowed the rear wheels to steer a little along with the front wheels, improving the car's handling and stability at higher speeds.

The 300ZX may be a little bit forgotten in the general sports car world, but it is incredibly desirable to JDM enthusiasts. That legendary status in the JDM world is well-earned, as the 300ZX is a great example of Japanese engineering creating something brilliant.

The Mitsubishi 3000GT VR4 gets forgotten a lot, even among those who are proper JDM enthusiasts. But, it really shouldn't be. The range-topper of the 3000GT model lineup was packed full of innovative technology for the time. It had an intelligent AWD system, four-wheel steering, active aerodynamics (via front and rear spoilers that automatically adjusted), and adaptive suspension. Quite a few of these were features that only regularly appeared on road cars 10 or more years after the 3000GT VR4 first appeared!

The 3000GT VR4 is one of the lesser-known cars in the sports car world. Whether that's due to it being a Mitsubishi instead of a more known make like Toyota or Nissan could be up for debate. But, it is a brilliant example of how great and forward-thinking Japanese engineering was during the '90s. It's also a bit of a used car bargain, so it might be a good idea to get one now before the prices shoot up!

The Maxda RX-7 is one of the most iconic JDM sports cars. That's especially the case with the FD generation, thanks to how much it endured in popular culture through the Fast & Furious franchise and Initial D. The RX-7 took Mazda's rotary engine to what many enthusiasts consider its zenith, adding twin-turbochargers to the perennial twin-rotor design Mazda had been using since the first Cosmo. This engine could produce up to 261 hp, which gave the RX-7 plenty of grunt considering it only weighed around 2,932 lbs at most!

The RX-7 isn't a technological marvel like some of its peers. It was supposed to be a fairly simple out-and-out sports car. But, it was powered by one of the ultimate developments of the rotary engine. That alone makes it worthy of being a triumph of Japanese engineering.

There's a good chance that you might not have heard of the Mazda Eunos Cosmo. That's understandable, as it was never sold outside of Japan. But, it's a car people should know more about, because it was a technological marvel for its time. It's one of the few production cars to feature a triple-rotor rotary engine, and it had a very early example of what's now known as an infotainment system. This Car Communication System (as it was called back then) used a CRT touchscreen to control everything from the radio to the climate controls to the built-in GPS.

Unfortunately, the Mazda Eunos Cosmo is getting rarer and rarer. Enthusiasts seem to value its engine much more than anything else, and many of them have been cannibalized so that their triple-rotor power unit can be dropped into other cars as an engine swap. In some ways, that's a huge shame, as the Eunos Cosmo is a brilliantly quirky car that was on the cutting edge of technology for what you could find in a production car back in the '90s. It's a lesser-known example of how great Japanese engineering can be, but one that's still worth highlighting.

RELATED: 10 Reasons Why Gearheads Should Consider The Mazda Eunos Cosmo

The Honda NSX often gets forgotten in the wider world of supercars. But, when it comes to JDM enthusiasts, it's one of the most legendary cars out there. Honda designed the NSX to be a bit different from the typical supercars of the '90s. As a result, it wasn't anything special when it came to performance. But, that performance was much more accessible to the driver than it was in other supercars of the era.

The Honda NSX wasn't the fastest or the most technologically advanced supercar of its day. Its European rivals were more exciting to drive, and other Japanese sports cars had more fancy tech. But, it was a supercar that you could genuinely live with as a daily driver. That makes it a proper engineering triumph, as a properly useable supercar is one of the hardest things to create.

Many of you may not know that Yamaha actually built a sports car. But, they did, and the result was the OX99-11! This car was an attempt to use engineering wisdom from the world of Formula 1 to create an awesome road-legal supercar. It was powered by a 3.5-liter Yamaha-developed V12 that produced 400 hp and revved to an insane 10,000 rpm! This engine was originally designed for the Brabham Formula 1 team. It also shared its carbon fiber chassis with a Formula 1 car! The body and design of the car were inspired by Group C race cars and featured a very unusual canopy door.

Unfortunately, the OX99-11 never went into production. But, the prototypes are still running to this day, and you can very occasionally see them out in the wild at track events! The fact that a car like this exists at all is a testament to how great Japanese engineering can be. It's also a testament to how engineering from the world of motorsport can be used to create something truly special.

The Lexus LFA is perhaps one of the most legendary supercars to have ever come out of Japan. There's a very good reason for this, as it truly was an engineering marvel. Perhaps the most impressive part of the LFA is its incredible V10 engine. This engine was developed by Yamaha, and the exhaust was created by people from Yamaha's music division to make it sound as great as possible. That's something those engineers from the music division definitely achieved, as the LFA is widely regarded to be one of the best-sounding cars ever made!

The Lexus LFA has since passed into legend as one of the greatest supercars ever made. It's really not hard to understand why that's the case. This may very well be one of the greatest automotive creations to ever come out of Japan, and it wouldn't be as amazing as it is without all the brilliant engineering that went into it.

RELATED: How Lexus Created The Ultimate Supercar With The Overengineered LFA

The R390 is perhaps one of the oddest and least well-known cars Nissan has ever made. This car was designed with one purpose in mind, as a homologation special so that Nissan could go racing in the GT1 class of sports car racing. For this, Nissan partnered up with Tom Walkinshaw Racing, a proven winner at anything to do with sports cars. Powered by a 550 hp 3.5 liter twin-turbo V8 and only weighing 3,175 lbs, it had everything to be an absolute performance rocket. That's something it certainly achieved, with one of the racing chassis coming 3rd overall in the 1998 24 Hours of Le Mans. Interestingly, it was also designed by legendary car designer Ian Callum during his time at TWR!

Even though Nissan was technically supposed to put this car into production, it never actually did. They only needed to build one R390 to technically fulfill the regulations. So, that's exactly what they did. They built one car and never built any more of them. That's had the side effect of making the R390 potentially one of the most valuable cars in the world, as it really is one of a kind! It's also yet another great example of Japanese engineering, as the R390 was genuinely fast when it took to the track.

Continue reading here:

10 Best JDM Sports Cars That Showcased Japanese Engineering ... - HotCars