Looking for a car to modify? Don’t have a lot of cash to throw around? Hmm,
what do you pick? Well, how about something really unpopular? Huh, why? Well,
read on....
Right now, used cars have never been cheaper. Especially here in Australia,
the booming new car market of the last few years has put a huge number of used
cars onto the market, heavily decreasing their price. So yep, that’s pretty good
– but it still doesn’t help you in your choice of what sort of used car to
buy....it just gives you even more options!
The cheap and popular performance cars are so well known that the model names
roll off the tongue – Skyline, V8 Commodore and Falcon, Turbo VL, 180SX, WRX...
For all these cars you’ll find plenty of modified role models to copy, a heap of
aftermarket (and often factory) performance parts, and a known performance
outcome. You know, throw on turbo ‘X’, use it with exhaust ‘Y’ and fit engine
management ‘Z’.
And look, there’s nothing wrong with taking that approach. It’s relatively
cheap, it’s easy and it doesn’t involve much heartache. Trouble is, it’s also
not a helluva challenge following in the footsteps of hundreds of others with
yet another ‘me-too’ car... But these cars are attractive for performance
modification just because they are known inside-out.
A different approach is to look at cars that many people don’t modify. In
other words, unpopular cars. (If you’re someone who shies away from offending
your peer group, you may as well stop here!) There are plenty of cars that are
rarely modified. Sometimes that because it’s expensive to modify them, or
they’re originally so slow so that the modifications needed are not worth it.
Sometimes it’s because the car is rare, or because in many people’s opinion it’s
ugly.
There’s a whole bunch of reasons why a car may not be popular for
modification - but those reasons often don’t hold up over time. So:
- a car that may have been originally expensive to modify gets a helluva lot
cheaper when you can now pick up a whole second car for maybe $1000 (think older
BMW or Mercedes Benz or Audi);
- a car that was thought of as slow may not have got a lot quicker as the
years have passed – but regard for its handling may have increased substantially
(think ‘80s Alfas and Fiats, and the later Mazda MX5);
- ‘rare’ is a relative term, especially with the ease with which orphan cars
can be located on the Web;
- and finally, ugliness is in the eye of the beholder.
In short, if you want something a bit different, just because no one else
seems to modify it is not a good reason to hold you back.
So is this just one of those vague and general filler stories that
proliferates in times of journalistic drought? Lots of words but no real life
experience? Not at all. Recently I sold two of my cars – and both fit the trend
of the ideas outlined in this story.
The first was bought as the (then) cheapest turbo six cylinder car I could
find. A 1988 Nissan Maxima grey market Japanese import, it uses the
SOHC-per-bank VG20 two litre turbo engine, designated VG20ET. Compared with the
3-litre VG30DE - and the twin turbo VG30DETT used in the 300ZX – the two-litre
turbo is a neglected and dismissed outcast. Think black sheep of the VG family,
beating only the non-turbo VG20, which in turn can barely muster the confidence
to raise its head above the parapet.
[Warning: metaphor mix.. baaaah, bang!]
Bolt the forgotten Maxima turbo engine to an auto trans and then drive the front
wheels, and you have a car that almost no-one would consider a worthy design to
modify. Especially with its staid and conservative looks.
I bought it at the time I was developing a bunch of electronic performance
car kits with Silicon Chip electronics magazine. The Maxima ended up with
a cat-back exhaust, boost, underbonnet fan-cooled and water spray’d intercooler,
180SX alloys, Toyota Crown radiator, some (external) auto trans tweaks – and
lots of electronic bits and pieces.
In Australia that model Maxima is a complete orphan. It was never sold here
and so it is rare to find one in a wrecker. But from Nissan Australia I could
still easily source oil filters and air filters (the latter didn’t matter with
two pod filters finally fitted anyway) and a brand new cam timing belt. If something
like an electric window motor had broken it would have been difficult to find
another – but no electric window motor did break. And nor did much anything
else, come to that. I even bought a workshop manual that covered much the same
engine (mounted in a 300ZX) but I don’t think I opened the manual even once!
I hammered that car very hard – during testing of the intercooler system, I
did numerous full-throttle blasts up a long and steep country road hill... the
equivalent of a four or five minute full-load dyno run. The engine never used
oil, didn’t breathe excessively, and started and ran as sweetly as only those
who have driven mid-Eighties Nissan six cylinder engines know they can. On the
other hand, the trans felt slightly fragile – but then maybe all it needed was a
service. I gave it a huge oil cooler and left it at that.
But my immediate need for the car came to an end and the Maxima stayed
undriven for nearly a year. In that time, as I debated what to do with it, rust
came out along its rear guard flanks. (With four other cars on the block, there
were plenty of other vehicles to drive.) In the end I sold it to a young guy who
could see past the boring exterior (although less boring with that huge
intercooler bonnet scoop!) and who thought of the rust as a minor day or two to
be spent with some fibreglass and a can of white spray paint.
I sold the Maxima for $700 (all prices in this story are in Australian
dollars). While it might be unusual to find a car with those mods for the
dollars, it’s not at all an unusual price for the sort of unpopular cars I am
describing in this story. Maybe at seven hundred bucks you might need to do some
work before getting a roadworthy (just as the Maxima needed), but is that a bad
thing? (Incidentally, the interior of the Maxima was mint.)
As a car for modification, the turbo Maxima was excellent. It was easy to
work on, used easy to understand engine management, handled quite competently
and went pretty hard considering what had been done to it. Even better, it was
fun to drive and modify: the sort of car where you tweak the boost
and then go for a hammer to see what the performance and intake temp now are. I
wouldn’t ever have wanted to crash it (what with its thin A-pillars and
non-existent B pillars), but otherwise it was damn-near a perfect cheap and
unpopular car to modify.
The other car I sold was a Toyota Crown, of the same vintage as the Maxima.
Boasting another 2-litre six cylinder, this time with DOHC and factory
supercharger, the Crown was a driveline crying out for a car. Oh sure, the Crown
was comfortable and well equipped, but a look underneath showed its antiquity of
suspension and subframe design. In fact, when I listed it on eBay with a
starting price of $1500, I actually suggested in the ad it would make an ideal
transplant car – take the engine and trans and put it under the bonnet of
something like a VB-VK Commodore. That wouldn’t have created some 12-second
tyre-burning monster, but it would have made for a really sweet road performer,
especially with one of the numerous brake and suspension upgrades available for
early Commodores. Like the Maxima, the Crown was another grey market Japanese
import.
Coincidentally, the same guy bought from me both the Crown and the
Maxima!
So there are two cars that lend themselves to cheap and fun modification.
Both happen to be grey market Japanese imports – and here in Australia that
is a good way of finding low cost orphans – but in no way is the
philosophy limited to those cars. As I write this, eBay has had in the last few
days the following cars for auction (we’ve illustrated these with generic pics,
rather than of the actual cars for sale):
Two – yes, two – 1985 Alfa Romeo 33s from the one vender for a
finishing auction price of $665.90. One to drive and one for parts. Think of
these cars as the non-turbo Astra Sri of their day – not huge performance but a
willing motor (Weber’d flat four) and good FWD handling and brakes. Oh
yes, and plenty of interior space. The Alfa Romeo clubs in Australia are strong (so
there’s plenty of support) and non-factory parts suppliers abound around the
world.
An ’87 Audi 100 – the very first of the modern day, low drag cars.
Roomy inside and with a delightful 5-cylinder in-line engine beat, the downside
of most of the locally-delivered models is the 3-speed auto. (The rare 5-speed
manual cars go much harder.) The auction example had the (very common) cracked
dash but otherwise appeared fine. Sure, you’d want to inspect it thoroughly, but
you’re potentially looking at a class act – and all for $800. And the Audi is
also a car with huge heritage – it’s a joy to read about the exploits of the
first-ever performance four wheel drive (the Audi Quattro) and then go for a
drive in your own Audi, which has much the same engine in non-turbo
form...
A 1985 BMW 735i with just 96,000km on the clock. Or, as the ad said,
61,000 miles. That ‘miles’ would almost certainly make it a private import (ie
not locally delivered) so you’d want to check even more thoroughly than usual
for rust, but this model is a great car. We’ve had one in the family and the 3.5
litre six – while thirsty – has bags of usable bottom-end torque and yet still
revs superbly at the top end. Handling is very good, although the steering wheel
is large and the steering rather indirect around centre. But it’s a dead-easy
engine to rebuild (just a SOHC in-line six) and responds superbly to a warm cam...
Closing price? Well, it went for $4000 – and that’s a bit
much.
And believe it or not, there was also on eBay a 1989 Maxima V6 Turbo,
just like the one I had. It had had a bunch of stuff replaced – exhaust, catalytic
converter, plugs and plug leads, fuel pump and filter, battery and water pump –
but needed an ignition module. The seller listed that component at $250 but in
reality, it could be done much more cheaply. Oh, the auction amount? It went for
$1175.
Yes, I can hear all the naysayers saying: "What the hell do you want one of
those for?" but in a way that’s the point. You won’t see another hot
camm’d BMW 735i at the local shops, and nor will you see a big exhaust Maxima V6
turbo go growling past. None of these cars is particularly complex, all have
plenty of support worldwide in terms of parts and experience, and all were good
or excellent cars in their day.
And best of all, they’re something different....
Engine Management
Another advantage in tackling cars like those mentioned here is that if
you’re handy with a soldering iron, the Digital Fuel Adjuster kit (and, as this
was being written, the soon-to-come) Digital Ignition Adjuster kit will work
perfectly on these mid-Eighties cars. That means you can fit bigger injectors, a
hot cam, wind up turbo boost – you name it. And then modify the engine management to match these mods very cheaply indeed.
Do an AutoSpeed site search for more on these kits.
|
|