Nissan Silvia 1992/3

My Customer’s Voice: If I Can Have Only One, It’s Silvia.

One of our customers in the UK told me that, if he had to pick only one sports/performance
car to have for the rest of his life, he’d pick a Nissan Silvia. Now I took special note when
he said this because this fellow had previously said to me: “I’ve been privileged to own
pretty well every Japanese performance car that I’ve ever wanted; I bought them all second
hand direct from Japan.”

This customer of ours (let’s give him the fake name of “Bob” since we can’t reveal our
customers true names without their permission) had a system: He’d import a good example
of a car he wanted to try, drive it for a while, including getting all maintenance up to date
and doing some tuning and modifying, and then he’d sell it on either as a unit or,
interestingly from a pure business point of view, as parts. Now I, myself, could never sell a
perfectly working car just for parts, makes me cringe, but Bob chose his good condition
used cars from Japan very carefully (learn more about our inspection systems here) and
could calculate where there was a better market for parts than for whole cars. He made a
good go of that business for many years. Later, when he left the used car from Japan
import business, and wanted the one, the “best” sports car for himself just to hang onto and
drive for the pleasure and practicality of it, that was when he told me: “I think the Silvia is
the best for me.” Here’s a beautiful example of the S15 chassis type Silvia just like the one
that he finally settled on:

He knew a lot about performance cars and sports cars and about tuning and modding and gave me a piece of good advice which I kept in my mind when I was looking to replace my 1996 Subaru Impreza WRX STi wagon. (That was a hot piece of kit!)

Bob said: “You’ve got to decide what you want the car to be best at.” In my case I opted for a Miata / MX5, but the man who bought this lovely white, nicely tuned S13 Silvia that we are looking at here, clearly agrees with Bob and he has come down on the side of the Nissan Silvia.

A clean used turbo Silvia from Japan, whether S13, 

S14, 

or S15, 

is definitely one of the best second hand sports/performance car purchases you can make.

They are from the glory days of Japanese cars before all the cost cuts and excessive complexity that, to my mind at least, made so many modern cars just…how can I say it?…just…not as good as they were. And then there’s the question of “heritage,” motoring heritage, whether from track and competition successes or just from the good looks and design balance that is so pleasing to me; when I look at cars from before the days of all-computer design and all-regulation dominance that are the hallmarks of so many modern machines, I sigh: Such good machines! We talked about this in the past on our Japan Car Direct Blog when looking at Toyota’s classic luxury cars (click here, here, here, and here to find out more about those wonderful machines, I had one and loved it), so I won’t go into it here, but suffice to say that the Nissan Silvias that ran from 1988, with the S13, all the way to 2002, with the S15, are solid examples of the “best of times” for Japanese performance cars.

And Not Just Out of the Box: Grab Yourself a Good Pre-Tuned Winner Silvia 

Another winning point about the 1990s Silvias is their tunability; and when you think power tuning for Nissan Silvia, you think DRIFT. And rightly so. I’ve spent some really enjoyable days and admired some really super Silvias at Fuji Speedway close to my house here in Japan, and a highlight on nearly any day going up there is, no matter what class of vehicles are racing or no matter what special motor exhibition is going on, there is very often a chance that the drifters are up there on their special drift track, burning rubber (with smoke and tire chips flying around, so watch yourself!), and screaming around the corners with tires howling and engines growling. Engines like the mega turbo unit in our white Silvia here:

To read more about the best of Japanese drift cars, have a look on our Blog here, here, and here.

A pre modified used Silvia bought direct from Japan for self import can be a very wise purchase because, although it is fun, in and of itself, to tune your car from the ground up and all by your little lonesome, it also costs a bomb; engine power-up parts and the labor to properly install and test and dyno them, suspension tuning parts and the labor and track time to test them, including the time to be disappointed with them (let me tell you about suspension tuning on my 1995 Celica GT4, how I changed it…and changed it again…and went back to stock…but let’s not go into all that here). And what’s that great big sucking sound you are hearing? It’s money flushing out of your wallet that you could have saved by buying a car from us here in Japan that has already had much of the necessary tuning work done before you buy it. 

Listen to Bob

If you are into tuning, I figure it this way: First you take the advice that Bob gave us at the beginning of this article: “You’ve got to decide what you want the car to be best at.” And when you’ve decided that, you then pick a good candidate in terms of design, power to weight ratio, engine type – four cylinder or multi cylinder, drive train layout, chassis strength and integrity and balance, and parts availability and tuning popularity. This is really important because, if some other guys have tuned the model of car you are considering, it’s a real benefit to have their knowledge and experience available to you. Nissan Silvias score big time here. Lots of people have had great success in tuning them. Praise the Internet and praise the generosity of 99 per cent of petrol head power tuner car guys that I’ve ever met and chewed the cud with! They so willingly share their tuning experiences: What works and what doesn’t. And then, once you know what you want, get in touch with us and (register here) and we’ll help you find a good example from the many excellent used cars available in Japan at the Japanese used car auctions or from the specialist dealers that we partner with here.

A clean used Nissan Silvia direct from Japan is such an excellent candidate for sports/performance car tuning and is such a great machine for joyful motoring right out of the box and in stock form. So when you, like our customer Bob, are looking for “what’s best?” I’d put these cars high on your list.

And it’s a good time now (summer 2024) to get yourself a nice clean second hand 1990s Nissan Silvia from Japan. One: because they clear the 25 year old used car rules for easy import to the USA and Australia, and two: because the exchange rate with Japan is so strongly in your favor at this time.

For our customers in our main used car from Japan import markets of the USA, Australia, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Germany, the UAE, and Ireland, to find the used car import rules and regulations just click on the country name. For other countries, just look on our Japan Car Direct main website here.

And a wee note to our customers in Ireland: Don’t forget to use the system that Irish Tax and Customs has at the moment of classifying these used cars directly imported from Japan as goods of “Japanese Preferential Origin.” You’ll find the document from Irish Tax and Customs that explains the system here.