Im often overwhelmed by the whole idea of importing cars from Japan. Over the last few years on the website, I’ve rambled enough about just how interesting I find the whole process. This little gold Skyline is a classic case of that. Lets just take a step back for a moment, anyone of you out there that has ever built a car, put all that work into it, with friends, family, the people you have met, the people you shared those experiences with, the jobs you worked to save the money to buy those parts, the late late nights of frustration and anger, accompanied by the days of utter joy you shared behind the wheel….
So here I was, completely out of my comfort zone making my way across Canada, looking out the window of this chrome train at possibly one of the most epic and somewhat alien landscapes for this little Irish mind. Heading “up north” as its put, not really knowing what to expect. It was incredibly exciting but at the same time pretty scary, I’m sure many of you have that feeling once or twice in your life. This was one of those completely unforgettable life moments, so far removed from everything I had called life back home. I sat there taking snaps out the window trying to process nature on steroids.
It has been almost four years since the tragic disaster in Japan. As a car head, like many of you reading this, apart from all the chaos and sadness that followed the disaster on March 11th 2011, we cant help but be fascinated by all that radioactive Japanese metal that was left behind. Google was kind enough to creep in and drive the streets year after year, which is amazing. I have spent hours cruising the streets looking for stuff but I have to give credit o my little brother for hunting out a lot of these, both of us would spend hours cruising down streets spotting stuff. We did one of these posts before and people really enjoyed it, so here is another collection of Cars that will probably never move again.
Let’s face it some of the 90’s cars that rolled out of the Nissan factory have aged perfectly, others are still questionable. Take an R33 Gts-t for example, not many of you will be quick to say they looked or aged as well as similar chassis from that era. On top of that for some reason, Ireland, Australia and the UK just couldn’t get enough of the 33 GTS, we just loved them. We loved putting horrendous wheels and bad body kits and questionable parts in them, pretty much a large portion of R33 GTS’s which exist outside of Japan just don’t do it for people as much as an R32, s13 or an s15, or any of the GTR’s for that matter.
Sometimes you never know what you are going to get in an email. A couple of months back we received an email from a young fan of the site telling us about how his father owns not one but two Nissan GTR’s. In Ireland the GTR is not exactly a common site to begin with so after a quick exchange of details we decided to pack the car and head to Cashel to check this out for ourselves. I really couldn’t believe what I was seeing; this was a pretty awesome sight to behold.
Not really knowing what to do with the rest of our night we drove around for hours trying to see if we could find other parts of the track. If you have never been there, its pretty gigantic.
Nicky Hallahan… He borrowed his wife’s skyline to compete in Driftfest round one, the car was having engine trouble all day… its pretty much a full more or less casual road car and he was busting out insane runs all day Saturday… he also left a little love tap at the end in this qualifying run… what a hero
The 32 skyline has to be one of the nicest pieces of eye candy to ever come from Japan…. so little is needed to create such a timeless look..Those classic tails, one of the most iconic rear ends known to the car scene worldwide…. Much of the mature generation was introduced to it Via car games outside of Japan, and the younger Via the internet and another feeding of car games…. I’ve always had an insane fondness towards the HCR32, its like the misfit little brother of the GTR… On a casual cold night I tracked down one of the nicer local examples for a quick photoshoot….
I almost forgot these pictures were on the harddrive… I was asked to come shoot a video for the Bavaria in the city, so it would have been a shame not to bring the picture camera also to get some snaps. The day itself had massive potential, its just this Quality Irish summer which made it somewhat of a misery. Julian Smiths Mac tools 34 was over for the weekend for a drift display which was going to be happening on the streets of Dublin, a very rare opportunity for the Prodrift guys.
Punchestown 2012 in video…
Click here if it does not work in your country, make sure to watch in HD. Cheers!