You have dollars. You have several thousand dollars. You have several tens of thousands of dollars. Great! Hurl them in the direction of this 1990 Autech Zagato Stelvio on Bring a Trailer.
I’ll lay this out.
It’s the 1980s in Japan. It is what is now referred to as the “Bubble Era,” a time in which Japanese carmakers (along with the whole economy) was flush with cash and actively striving to move into higher profit margin vehicles.
That meant niche cars.
That meant sports cars.
That meant luxury cars.
That meant higher-quality variations of regular cars.
Companies like Nissan had the money to produce these variants, and they looked into every avenue to get at them.
Advertisement
In the case of Mazda, that included starting a new luxury sub-brand called Amati, which almost made it to market before getting axed at the last moment. A full history of the thing is illuminating if you want to know more about the Bubble Era itself.
In the case of Nissan, it involved (among other things like the Pike cars) inking a deal with the Italian super-weirdos Zagato in 1987 to make mega fancy versions of its fanciest cars.
Advertisement
The legacy of that tie-up is the Zagato Autech Stelvio, Autech being an in-house tuner of Nissans. The car itself is based on what we’d know as the Infiniti M30 here, the Nissan Leopard elsewhere. The difference, other than the body that includes mirrors integrated right into the fenders, is that the 3.0-liter V6 is turbocharged. Our M30s never got the VG30DET turbo engine (just the VG30E), while outside markets did.
Advertisement
As such, the Stelvio is simply a must have to stunt on all of your neighbors driving M30s.
Get it together, y’all. The car is currently looking at $25,000 on BaT with six days to go. You missed your last chance. (Another Stelvio recently went up for sale.) Go for this one now.
Advertisement