Glen,
What do you mean by popular? Let me sum it up the best I can for you. The GTR or any Skyline in general is VERY rare in the US, there are a total of about 60 GTRs (32/33/34) here in the whole US so far and about 3 GTS-T. I know for sure there are 8 R34 GTRs here, the number of R32 and R33 GTR I am not sure. Most of them are in Southern California, I know there are a few in Hawaii. In the town I live in (fairly big town I say, with a population of 2.7 million people), there is only 1 R34 GTR (mine), 1 R32 GTR and 1 R33 GTR.
As you can see from the rarity of GTR, combine with the hugh mark-up Motorex put on the car, making the GTR rare and fairly expensive, any GTR are consider god like by people who know what it is and are a fan of it. The status of GTR is almost like a Mclaren F1 for most young Asian people, I haven't have a chance to try it yet, but I think if I park my car next to a Mclaren F1 in the parking lot, most people would look at my car first.
Tuning knowledge is very scare, lucky for me there is one good tuning shop that are pretty close to where I live that know what they are doing. I can say there are only 3 shops or so I would trust working on my car.
One normal street driving, you would probably never see one on the road. I say if you come over here for a month long vacation, you probably won't see any driving on the road. I have only seen 2 so far.
You are right, we have lots of wide open freeway and the gas is dirt cheap, who cares about where the steering wheel is
The RHD bother some people, but those are the people that are not potential GTR owners
Jeff
