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The Geneva Motor Show is one of the auto industry’s best-known rites of Spring. Every March, the motoring world converges on the lakeside Swiss metropolis to gawk at all the new models (vehicular and otherwise) on neutral ground. It’s absolutely one of the crown jewels of the international auto show calendar.

And because it’s such a prestigious show, the manufacturers tend to bring their best production and concept cars to the Geneva Palexpo. This means picking out the best of the best is a mighty daunting task, which is why we’ve decided to expand the field to 25. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, so let’s hop to it.

For performance enthusiasts on a budget, the “pocket rocket” – a compact, small-engined runabout tuned to strike a balance between performance and practicality – is manna from motoring heaven. And few nations have made as many of those over the years as Japan. The island nation’s automakers turned Americans on to affordable, quality compacts during the energy crisis of the 1970s, and in the 1980s, started turning us on to affordable, quality compacts that were fun to drive.

But which Japanese pocket rockets had the biggest impact on the enthusiast community? Well, we’ve tried to narrow that list down to the top 10 contenders for the title of best all time, though we’ll stop short of naming a number one, since we’re going to be getting enough flack for leaving so-and-so off the following list. Note, too, that we’ve limited the criteria to fixed-roof cars that have more than two seats and were available new in the U.S.; in other words, no whining about gems like the MR2, Miata, Civic Type R and Pulsar GTi-R not making the cut. Yes, we realize that makes the title more than a little misleading, but making a more accurate one would have made for a long-ass title, wouldn’t it? With that out of the way, here are our picks.

If you wind the clock back to last weekend, you’ll see that we ran a feature on a 1987 Buick Grand National for sale on Long Island. We explained how the GN came to be one of the most formidable vehicles of the muscle car renaissance of the 1980s, and also mentioned how even it was put in the shade by a rare, one-year-only super Grand National called the GNX. The following is its story; by the time we’re done, you’ll understand why we can’t possibly not add it to our fantasy collection.

By the mid-‘80s, the Buick Grand National (and the various other turbocharged Regal coupes that were essentially identical, save for different wheel styles and a choice of interior and exterior colors) was on many a car nut’s radar. Unfortunately, the rear-wheel-drive G-body platform on which the Regal (as well as other GM models like the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, Chevrolet Monte Carlo and El Camino, and the Pontiac Grand Prix) was set to be replaced by the thoroughly modern, front-drive GM10 platform beginning in 1988. Buick could have adapted the Grand National’s turbocharged 3.8L V6 to mount transversely and power the front wheels, but it also knew such a car would have been atrocious from a driving dynamics standpoint, particularly with the same kind of power levels the intercooled ’86 and ’87 models were making. So the painful decision was made that the 1987 turbo Regals would be the last; however, work began in earnest on making sure they went out with a bang.