FORBIDDEN FRUITS

Three of Japan's performance icons aren't available in Britain - but it's a different story in Canada. Brendan McAleer reveals what we're missing

- Brendan McAleer

With Queen Elizabeth II on bank notes and place names like Richmond and W Surrey, the west coast of Canada is most emphatically a British Columbia. Apart from the cars, of course, which are largely unlike anything you will find in the UK. It's primarily a land of American-style pick-up trucks and massive SUVS - but there are some Japanese interlopers that you won't find in Britain. There's a perfect premise, then, for us to gather the best of them atop a coastal ski hill.

From Toyota, there's the GR Corolla, a sop thrown across the Pacific since North America doesn't get the GR Yaris. Toyota has taken the three-pot buzz-bomb spirit of its homologation-special hatchback and infused it into a more practical four-door shape. We've called the bog-standard Corolla "pleasingly mischievous", so how does nearly 300bhp and an adjustable central differential grab you?

From Subaru, Canadians are lucky enough to have both versions of the latest-generation WRX - what we once knew as the Impreza WRX. You might perhaps not recognise how the yobbo boy racer of the 1990s has matured into a family saloon with the disposition of a fluffy golden retriever. Yet the bonnet scoops and turbochargers are still here, and so is the World Rally Blue paint that evokes memories of Colin McRae and Richard Burns. Select either manual for maximum enthusiasm or CVT for daily-driver practicality and keep the brim of your baseball cap as flat as Saskatchewan.