180sx... Sileighty... Fairlady180!!!!

Okay, so we all know the 180sx. It's the car we see driving sideways on racetracks and streets around the world. The sport of drifting has really brought this car out to the forfront and why not? This car is everything a drifter could ask for. It's light-weight, has a powerful engine, is cheap to buy, and is easy to find. The Turbo I4 SR20DET engine is one of the world's most tuned engines, and can easily be upgraded to big power numbers.

Here is an example of a nicely tuned version. It has been lowered with some nice rims and a subtle body kit. This kind of car is seen at Japanese car auctions quite often. It would be a nice starting point for getting into drifting.

Next we see the Sileighty. Most of us know about these. They are an S13 180sx with the front bumper, lights, and fenders from an S13 Silvia. These came about from Japan's early days of touge and street drifting. As you can imagine, racing down Japan's famously norrow and dangerous moutain passes at night leads to many accidents. And what is a 180sx driver to do once he smashed his front end on the guard rail? Install the cheaper, easier-to-find Silvia front end of course. That's right, touge racing directly influenced the popular Sileighty trend. This particular Sileighty has the drifters' signature mismatched wheels, cracked bumper, and poor colourmatching...

It didn't take long before people were installing the Silvia front end for style. In fact, It was so popular that Nissan, in 1998, did a limited run of official "Slieighties". The trend started to see S14 and S15 front end conversion kits like the one you see below.

The S15 Sileighty is a brilliant looking car. The headlights give it a very nice aggressive look. I looked at this picture for a while wishing it were in my driveway (or parking lot as I live in Japan). A drive in this car on an open curvy road would be like heaven. I stared at it for a while before I scrolled down in the weekly auctions and found something truely special.

This is something we don't ever see. Someone put an S30 Fairlady front end onto their 180sx. Everyone knows the S30 Fairlady, but some of you know it as the 240sx from the eighties that started it all. This is an interesting fusion of two popular Nissan cars and just really stunned me when I saw it at first. I have to say that I am a big fan of how this turned out. The old meets new(er) thing is neat and I always love seeing the original Z, even if it's just the front. Love it or hate it you have to admit that it will garner lots of attention. I'm on the side of love it.

I guess in keeping with the nomenclature I should be calling this a Faireighty...  Although it seems to be called an S30180sx if you were to search on Google. Whatever you call it, the reserve was not met on it this week at auction in Japan. The high bid was 496,000 yen. Will we be seeing more of these in the years to come? I don't know, but I'm sure the S13 chassis will be here for many years to come.