Goo-Net Find Of The Week: A 316bhp, Manual Toyota Mark X GRMN

Welcome back to Goo-Net Find of the Week, a series in which we pretend we’re not procrastinating on a Friday afternoon by idly browsing the coolest online used car platform in the world, Japan’s Goo-Net Exchange.

Japanese car companies limiting all the coolest, rarest versions of their performance cars to their home market is hardly a new phenomenon, and that hasn’t stopped some of these cars from becoming legends. We’ve all heard of the Impreza 22B, RX-7 Spirit R, NSX-R and Skyline GT-R V-Spec II Nür.

But this goes way beyond the established legends of Japanese performance, into stuff like this – the Toyota Mark X GRMN. Now, we’ve got slightly less reason to be jealous of this one, because the Mark X in general has always been limited to Asian markets. Produced in two generations between 2004 and 2019, it’s always been a fairly run-of-the-mill exec saloon, albeit with the distinction of only ever coming with rear-wheel drive and V6 power.

In 2015, though, Toyota decided to let its Gazoo Racing division loose on the Mark X, and the resulting car has one of the most appealing recipes of any performance car of the past decade. 

Under the bonnet was Toyota’s naturally aspirated 3.5-litre 2GR-FSE V6, producing a healthy if not earth-shattering 316bhp. The real appeal, though, came elsewhere – while the standard Mark X was an auto-only affair, the GRMN got a six-speed manual, with a Torsen limited-slip diff sitting on the rear axle.

It also gained reworked springs and dampers, uprated brakes, a carbon fibre roof that knocked 10kg out from up high where it counts, and some tasty-looking 19-inch BBS wheels to complement the angry bodykit. A final, deeply nerdy flourish of the sort that Gazoo Racing is so very good at came in the guise of 252 additional spot welds for extra chassis stiffness. The interior, meanwhile, gained a pair of Ultrasuede-trimmed sports seats up front.

In other words, rather a lot of lengths were gone to for the sake of a car which, at first, was only produced in a limited run of 100 examples. A further 350, with a slightly different look, were produced in 2019, but not only are these ones marginally less rare, they’re also a tiny bit down on power at 313bhp.

As a result, it’s one of the original 100 from 2015 that you really want, and that’s what we have here. It’s covered an indicated 62,889km, or just over 39,000 miles, and looks to be in lovely condition. And the asking price for this slice of ultra-rare forbidden JDM fruit that’s basically the four-door E46 M3 we never got? ¥4,512,600, or an entirely reasonable-seeming £22,500. Someone, please import it before one of us takes out an ill-advised bank loan.