Photos Unboxed: Ruining the daily driver - Juiceboxforyou

I figured this would be a good place to post progress with the little daily nugget. So far as in how far the car has come on the vlogs, I’m trying to keep both the vlogs and blog posts somewhat in date. Most people have already seen the car in it final silly form but ill save that for its own separate post.

I’m not sure where the love for these quirky little nuggets appeared but somehow I’ve already had five of these things. I think the bond formed with the very first one I ended up acquiring back in the day, we thrashed and abused it in the snow for days on end and the car kept fighting back. Every other car we had purchased to rally since that day has been compared to that Micra.

Its actually Flips fault, he picked up the K11 as a cheap run around and when he decided to emigrate to Australia for a few years, we traded my Can of Coke for his K11 Micra.

This was the one we completely destroyed in the snow, I swapped this for another K11 because I wanted the JDM March option back in the day.

Yeah, I know but at the time I was a piss poor college student in the height of the recession and this was my only access to owning a car.

In the UK and Ireland, you will find a k11 Micra everywhere and they have been everywhere since the mid-90s. Everyone from you gran mother to the local 17-year-old has had one, these were one of the best selling cars of the 1990s. Micras/Marches are usually owned by either extreme ends of the spectrum. For some reason, we also loved taking them from Japan too in the boom times, I remember being a young chap on my street and wondering why the Micra was called a March, it just stood out as being really strange, it wasn’t until years later with a fully developed obsession for Japanese cars did I realise they called certain cars by different names in the motherland.

We picked this green beauty up for 400 euros, it was relatively rust-free. The only thing that really kills these cars is rust, and boy do they love to rust. Somehow this one appeared to be in good shape, a quick look underneath and I was happy, the owner handed me the ultra-rare little March central locking key and I pretended I wasn’t excited. How pathetic!

This model was a 2000 example, a Japanese import that was brought to Ireland back in 2005, its a 3 door Manual facelift March which is actually quite a rare option as 90% of the K11 imports that made it to Ireland are 5 door auto.

Its last Shaken (inspection) was back in 2005 judging by the Heisei 17 sticker. 17 is the 17th year of the emperor which translated into 2005 on the western calendar.

I had to grab some snaps of this car in totally stock form. A quick buff did nothing for the already well-worn paint job. I actually grew quite fond of the green, it’s a very very Japanese shade of Green.

The car came with some bonus Almera alloys which didn’t look too bad. I also ended up with only one wind deflectors, the passenger side. This was actually the good side of the car as it had been in some sort of a crash somewhere in its life. You can see the ten shades of green further down in the images.

The front impact damage is quite evident from this angle, the right headlight and bumper are a little funky and the original green is flaking through the respray on the bumper someone also broke into this somewhere in its life in Dublin and the rear window was smashed and replaced, along with the driver’s door.

Regardless, I love these charming little nuggets and was very keen to get it lowered and make it pretty much a useless daily driver. As I mentioned further up in the post, I’ve somehow had five of these cars, they are like cockroaches, an unbelievably reliable little nugget that’s super cheap to run, and quite a pleasant little machine to drive, ideal when spending all my money on restoring an 86!

When I first moved back from Canada, I picked this silver nugget up from a guy in the dark in the middle of nowhere. It was the very same somewhat rare spec as the green machine: 3 doors, manual and facelift.

Sadly I found out pretty quickly that this thing was a total shit heap. As much as I loved our brief time together, this car was hiding some secrets. Most of the rust was hidden with really bad repairs which only came to light after a proper clean and a poke with a screwdriver, the car must have lived next to the ocean in Japan because this thing was rustier than the 86! 

After a few months of ownership, the silver March was pretty much a write-off. To be honest, as crap as these cars were, this spec was something I thought we would never find again. It had to be three-door, it had to be 00 or newer and had to be the JDM version and manual.

The idea to ruin the March came from being exposed to this car, the TRD MSB Vitz. This is actually an ex one-make race car from Japan that somehow ended up here in Ireland. It came from the factory with TRD suspension and the cage and a few other cool bits. Toyota built 250 of these to compete as one-make race cars all across Japan as they and many other manufacturers do with certain models. I could not get enough of this car and its back story and quickly found out Nissan had a March cup which was essentially the same thing. This Vitz had planted the seed in my brain way back in 2012 and I always wanted to do the same thing with a K11.

I began endlessly searching Yahoo auctions looking for K11 parts and started to find all kinds of cool stuff. These AE86 coilovers and rear suspension were modified to fit the K11, this was actually quite a common modification back in the day and I was surprised to find so many used parts. It turns out the K11 was an incredibly popular car back in the 90s/ early Millenium and there was quite a lot of aftermarket stuff produced in the nineties for this chassis.

Working at JDM Distro really didn’t help either. When the time was right, we quickly got to work building an interpretation of the TRD Vitz, the idea was to build the March to a similar spec, standard engine, cage, racing seat and proper suspension, a livery would come in time…

We had to purchase a Panhard rod for the back of the k11 as these have a solid rear axle, it was top fun trying to take out the old crusty suspension, something I’m sure many of you have seen in the vlogs. Somehow everything flowed much smoother than we could have ever anticipated.

I’ll never forget the moment we rolled this thing out of the shed on its Fresh Wedsport R5’s. These were a very common wheel they used for racing back in the day. I got way too nerdy about what stuff to buy for this little runabout but that’s the stuff about cars that gets me excited. The Wed’s suit this car better than I could have ever imagined. I’ve always felt 14’s or even 13’s look much better on such a small chassis. It’s silly but that’s the whole point here. I wanted to take one of the most common mundane cars around and create something cool. Much like the TRD Vitz, which really opened up a black hole on what’s out there for these smaller cars.

Much like the Vitz/Yaris I had no idea these cars were raced back in Japan, or that these cars had a bit of a cult following back in the day. Both cars had their own cup/series and I bet it was an absolute blast to compete in. The engines were kept stock, 1000cc at that and there were at least twenty little nuggets blasting around the track at any given race.

The Vitz was our template, I managed to pick up a used cage for 100 Euros in Japan and luckily enough it was blue, a perfect match for the future plans. We made a custom Bride seat rail and gutted the rear end. Who needs rear seats anyways? This little nugget is ten times more practical with nothing behind the driver seat.

I wish I took more photos of the green paint and white 5 spoke Weds, this was a great look and in an ideal world I would have kept this and build the Calsonic car, but one March is enough. The Suspension completely transformed the car’s handling, along with these super sticky Potenza’s which came on the Weds, we managed to pick these up for less than 250 euros in Japan as someone had listed them incorrectly.

Somehow the DIY TRD coilovers were a perfect fit, the RSR Panhard rod in the rear was the right adjustment for the back end and the Wedsport’s and chunky tyres fit like a dream. This all came together a little too easy.

I really love this photo by the sea right after we essentially ruined this little granny commuter. This plush little spongey blob of 90s mundane misery had become an angry rock-solid little go-kart and I’ve been smiling behind the wheel ever since.