Used Nissan Sunny GTI-R (1990 - 1994): review and specs of the unknown rally special

One of the wonderful things about Group A is that it created legends from some pretty unlikely starting points. The humble standard cars on which homologation heroes were based were often dull to the point of anonymity and it is somehow even better when those run-of-the-mill roots are still very clearly visible in the end product. There is perhaps no better exemplar of this marvellous melding of worlds than the Nissan Sunny GTI-R.

Nissan was one of the companies caught on the hop by the regulation change in 1987 and quickly realised that the 200SX that it had homologated wasn’t going to be cutting any mustard with its naturally aspirated V6 and rear-wheel drive. So it was back to the drawing board, and a few years later, in the midst of Toyota’s Group A heyday, the Sunny GTI-R was launched into the stages.

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Based on the N14 generation of Sunny – or Pulsar as it was known in Japan – the GTI-R road car was quite the machine. It was launched as the Pulsar GTI-R first in 1990, and there were GTI-RA and RB models, the latter being more stripped-out. The Sunny version arrived in 1992 and its 2-litre turbocharged SR20DET engine had slightly less power (217bhp rather than 224bhp) owing to the European-spec ECU. Nonetheless, it was good for a very impressive 0-62mph time of 5.4sec thanks to the ATTESA (Advanced Total Traction Engineering System for All-Terrain) four-wheel-drive system. This was a mechanical version of the system found on a GT-R of the same period, and with a kerb weight of a mere 1240kg the little Sunny made excellent use of it.

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But the glorious thing about the Sunny GTI-R is that it looks like the equivalent of a teapot with tassels. Its little 14-inch wheels, standard arches and humdrum interior look so wonderfully incongruous juxtaposed with the huge rear wing and wildly bulging bonnet. Sadly the bonnet wasn’t quite wild enough for the rally car. The slatted bulge was there to accommodate the needs of the huge intercooler that was on top of the engine. However, because of the heat rising from the engine (particularly on warmer rallies) the intercooler struggled and was nicknamed the ‘interwarmer’. The solution for road-car owners was to move the intercooler to a vertical position in front of the engine, but Nissan couldn’t do this on the rally car without producing another 5000 GTI-Rs to homologate such a major change…

The result was that the Sunny’s only notable success from its two seasons in the WRC (when it was run by NME out of Milton Keynes) was a single podium place. That was in the hands of Stig Blomqvist at the 1992 Swedish Rally, but the event only counted towards the world championship for drivers, not manufacturers.

This in turn might partially explain why the Sunny GTI-R is such a rare car. Just 771 were produced (as against nearly 14k Pulsar GTI-Rs) and of those only 103 were right-hand drive. Nearly 30 years later the number left in completely standard trim, like the one we have for this test, must be astonishingly small. – Henry Catchpole

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What it's like to drive

The Sunny illustrates what happened when a manufacturer ruthlessly exploited the Group A regulations, creating a bizarre concoction of humblest shopping hatch and rallying warrior with seemingly little to glue the two disparate halves together. And also how a lack of planning or understanding of those very same regulations could render an entire multi-million-yen project effectively useless before it had even got off the ground.

It feels like eons since cars had interiors as basic and bland as the Sunny’s. The flat cloth seats, scratchy plastic and simple dials are only augmented by a trio of secondary dials for boost, oil temperature and pressure. On its tiny 14-inch wheels it looks meek in one sense, but the bonnet bulge from the driver’s seat is a pretty massive clue as to the qualities of the ‘red top’ SR20DET engine – perhaps best known in the UK under the bonnet of the Nissan 200SX. It’s an absolute cracker: punchy, with little lag and an appetite to rev freely.

It may have been a miserable rally car, but the GTI-R is a formidable road car. It doesn’t even feel overtly four-wheel drive; it’s like some larger-than-life hot hatch that’s time travelled through space to 2025. As it takes apart a particularly tough, twisting road, only the average response of the middle pedal and the sedate driving position betray that it’s nearly 35 years old. You’d not fear even a contemporary hot hatch in the Sunny, it’s such a bizarre but deeply covetable little monster.

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Nissan Sunny GTI-R specs

This story was first featured in evo issue 271.