The Car Lovers Guide to Japan, The Nissan Heritage Museum

Here is the Silvia version of the S13.  Silvias had fixed lights and coupe bodies.  The S13 is beloved to this day.  I want one! They are powered by the CA18DET up to 1991 after which the 2000cc SR20DET was the engine of choice.  The S13 is a car from what I consider to be Nissan’s Golden age which was from 1989 to 1994 or so when Nissan made some of the best cars in the world in all categories.  In my opinion it’s been mostly downhill from then to the current abyss full of crappy cars the brand is known for now thanks to Carlos Ghosn’s relentless cost cutting.

This is the 180SX version of the Silvia which denoted the hatchback with pop up headlights.  This is the minor facelift version, post 1992 called the pig nose.

Here is the S14 which replaced the S13 in 1994. It has the same SR20DET engine as the S13 but with variable cam timing and an more efficient turbo.  It looks a lot bigger than the S13 but it really isnt that much bigger, the illusion of size is due to the styling.  For some reason, I did not see any S15’s here. This S15 is my personal favorite S Chassis.  Interestingly enough I didn’t see any Z31’s, Z32’s or Z33’s either.

Here is a most interesting car!  The Nissan Mid 4.  I almost thought that this was an S15 at first.  The Mid 4 was Nissan’s attempt to build a supercar to rival or exceed the Porsche 959. The Mid 4 was a mid engined, AWD car powered by a twin turbo twin cam 4 valve V6 variant of the VG30, the VG30DETT. Only prototypes were built and the car had stellar performance for the time.  Unfortunately for us, Nissan upper management decided that the world was not ready for a Nissan with a Porsche price tag and the production for the car was cancelled before it even started.  However a lot of the technology developed for this program trickled down to the relaunched R32 Skyline GT-R and the engine found itself in the bay of the Z32 Fairlady Z.

Perhaps the baddest Nissan of all time and the car that put Nissan on the map! Of course it’s Godzilla the mighty BNR32 GT-R.  AWD, twin turbo and awesome powered by the RB26DET.  The GT-R name plate was killed due to the fuel shortages in the 70’s that were even worse in Japan than the US and Nissan did not launch another GT-R till the R32 in 1989.