Alright. We're here at the car dealership, replete with the expected chintzy music. Try not to make any eye contact with salesmen.

Oh right, this is Japan in 1991. They probably didn’t need salesmen since everyone is buying new cars every 6 months, and the cars are so neat that they sell themselves.



Welcome, please come 52, please take a look.


We meet a receptionist behind the counter, with the characteristic anime trait of eyes bigger than her hands.

It provides an interesting contrast to the otherwise realistic portrait of Joan of Arc behind her. Speaking of, why on earth is that there? I wonder what that says about this dealership. Well, I guess they’re here to help us wage war on the streets.

But we’re not here for tastefully decorated furnishings, we’re here for cars. Disappointingly, there are no MR2s here. I’m guessing these are starter cars, and they’re reserving the very best for higher tiers. Right? Surely that’s the case.

So what do we have on sale here?

Ooh.





Toyota Starlet GT Turbo - ¥1,240,000





Toyota Sera - ¥1,600,000





Mazda Familia GT - ¥1,503,000 -





Honda CR-X SiR ¥1,547,000


Each of these are seriously cool cars, for reasons I’ll bore you with later. Whilst some of these model names are known for being boring econoboxes, the variants on sale here are (for the most part) their limited run performance focused versions. There’s some real secret JDM gems here.

Noticeably, each of these cars have over double, closer to triple the power of our little 50 horsepower Nissan March. I actually think the game purposefully gives you a ridiculously slow starter car to encourage you to buy one of these. Oops.

I’m going to need you Goons to help Hiro with his decision here. But first, to ensure we make an educated decision, I intend to focus the next few posts on some history lessons about these cars that nobody asked for…