For all its sales success and technological prowess, the Japanese car industry has yet to really crack the top end of the global car market, and offer in significant numbers sports and luxury cars that we really want to drive, or be seen in. Toyota has knocked General Motors from the global number one spot, and high oil prices will supercharge demand for the hybrids and small, cheap, economical cars the Japanese build so brilliantly. But we seldom want them for their own sake. There are exceptions: Toyota's Lexus brand has been a success in the States, and occasionally Japan produces a car like Honda's fabulous, angular, but now sadly defunct NSX supercar that stands comparison with the best of Ferrari, Porsche or BMW. But in general, the Japanese give us what we need, and the Europeans what we desire.

Lexus and Nissan defy you not to desire these two cars. There has been a fresh spate of impressive Japanese performance cars in the past year; we've already tested Mitsubishi's sharky Evolution X, a €36,000 saloon car capable of hitting 100km/h in just 4.5 seconds. But it will still be a little boy-racerish for some; these two offer performance and refinement of a different magnitude. We had to fly to Japan to drive them; it was worth it.

The Lexus IS-F has a specification so extraordinary that I had to read it twice. Lexus is a brand refreshingly free of sporting pretensions, focusing instead on refinement and obsessive-compulsive build quality. It also makes great play of its environmental credentials, offering a hybrid drivetrain in three of its models. All of which makes the IS-F yet more extraordinary.

Lexus has simply taken the five-litre V8 engine from the biggest of those hybrids, the leviathan LS600h (also previously tested by us), stripped all the electric hybrid stuff off and somehow shoehorned it into the engine bay of its smallest car. A BMW 3-series-sized Lexus with a 420PS eight-cylinder engine, an eight-speed automatic gearbox, 0-100km/h in 4.8 seconds and a top speed limited to 270km/h: you'll forgive for me reading that lot twice.

The looks are less shouty that the figures. The nose has been reprofiled to accommodate that engine and is now bulbous but purposeful and very reminiscent of Japan's bullet trains: about as fast, too. But otherwise the IS-F is remarkably subtle for such a bruiser; just some tasteful, anodised alloy wheels and some restrained badging (the F stands for Fuji, Toyota's test track where the car was developed). The same is true inside: there's carbon-fibre trim to mark the F's sporting intent but Lexus has been careful to retain the quality and refinement.

Cruising Tokyo's congested streets, the IS-F seems to have sacrificed little for its extra performance; its compact dimensions, automatic gearbox and cabin ambience almost make the jams pleasant. But when the roads clear the car's demeanour changes suddenly, almost violently. It happens at precisely 3,000rpm, when a valve in the exhaust opens and allows the V8 to emit its full, deafening and very un-Lexus-like blare. The noise is accompanied by a relentless, linear surge of acceleration, managed by the slick-shifting, eight-speed gearbox.

The IS-F could just have been another artless, over-engined fast car but Lexus has given it the chassis it deserves at the first attempt, something harder to do than simply producing crazy power and acceleration figures. The ride and body control - often mutually exclusive - are both impressive, the steering quick and accurate and the brakes impassive despite having to haul the car down from the redline repeatedly, just so you can do it all over again.

At €64,000 the IS-F is a very expensive small car, and it has very strong competition from the BMW M3, the Mercedes-Benz C63 and the Audi RS4. But those three marques have been building performance saloons for decades, and it is remarkable that Lexus has got the formula so right, so quickly. Its rivals remain ahead dynamically, but in this case the Lexus' Japanese qualities - its refinement, subtlety and precision - give you a reason to choose it. It's rarer too; only a few hundred will come to Europe, making the Mercs and BMWs look almost ubiquitous.

But for a few thousand euros more, you can have a Japanese car with performance to exceed the offerings of most exclusive European marques. With a smaller engine and fewer cylinders than the IS-F, the 3.8-litre V6-powered Nissan GT-R doesn't look like a rival for Ferraris and Lamborghinis witheight and 10 cylinders. But the GT-R has desirability and performance that transcend its blue-collar badge.

Officially it produces 480PS but the engines are expensively hand-finished and independent dyno tests have revealed power outputs well in excess of that. Officially, Nissan claims the car will hit 100km/h in just 3.6 seconds, but more independent tests put the figure at 3.2 seconds, on a par with a McLaren F1. Top speed is in excess of 310km/h, not that the busy, over-policed Japanese roads allow us to test it.

The figures prove it has the performance; its desirability comes from the fact that its a car that is not only a technological marvel but also intoxicatingly exciting to drive. <

The acceleration is shocking; the GT-R just recalibrated your notion of how fast a car can feel. But the explosive, almost uncontrollable nature of its acceleration is countered by the extraordinary security and composure offered by its four-wheel drive system and its brakes. The GT-R's slightly truculent, lumpen low-speed behaviour starts to make sense as you travel faster; it needs to be tough to cope with the demands of its feral performance. <

If you can tear your eyes away from the road for a moment you'll enjoy a cabin that can match the Porsche 911 for build quality and materials, with thick, double-stitched hide on most surfaces. But, like the IS-F, it makes a virtue of its Japanese-ness, with a mind-boggling, F1-specification, on-board telemetry system monitoring every aspect of the car's performance.

And there's a very Japanese quality to the styling, inspired, according to Nissan's designers, by samurai swords and the giant Gundam robots from Japanese manga cartoons. It is as distinctive as the car's performance; the very first are starting to arrive in Europe and the contrast with the humdrum European supercars that clog the roads of central London and Paris is revealing. The GT-Rs draw the crowds and turn the heads; the Ferraris and Lamborghinis at twice the price get ignored. Perhaps Japan is about to overcome the car world's final pocket of resistance.