When you have a car as immensely popular as the Nissan S13 is, it can be pretty fascinating to take a look back and see exactly how that came to be. Sometimes cars made waves from the moment they hit showrooms. Other times it’s taken years or even decades before enthusiasts realize the true potential of a car. As for the good old S13, its history also depends on what part of the world you’re talking about.
Here in the US for example, the Nissan 240SX lived a quiet, unassuming life for more than a decade after its introduction. It wasn’t until the drift explosion of the early 2000s that enthusiasts and wannabe drifters starting buying S13s up by the dozen. Prior to that point, most of the 240s you’d see on the street were virgin examples driven by old ladies. After the drift boom, it’s rare to see an S13 that isn’t coated in multiple shades of primer with body panels barely hanging on.
In Japan the story went a bit differently. There the Nissan Silvia and its cousin the 180SX were a big deal from the moment they were released. If you flip through the pages of a mid ’90s Option magazine or pop in one of those great VHS tapes, it isn’t uncommon to see Japanese guys out there drifting Silvias and 180s that were just a few years old at the time. As the drift movement in Japan continued to grow, the S13 would become the quintessential dorisha - a label which it’s held to this day.
Head to a Japanese drift event some 20 years later and you’ll find that the Silvia and 180SX are still the most popular cars by far. And in the past two decades, the cars have gone through many different styles. First there were stock bodies and 15 inch tires spun by nearly stock motors. Then came larger wheels, more horsepower, more aggressive body parts and well, more aggressive everything. The base cars might be the same, but today’s style has evolved into something that those pioneering drifters might not even recognize.
And when you want to see what Japanese drift car style is in 2014, it’s hard to come up with a better example than the blue 180SX you see here. I’m guessing this isn’t the first time you’ve seen this car. It’s popped up at many different events over the last couple of years, and has spread across social media feeds and blog sites like a wildfire. At the moment, it just might be the internet’s most well-known S13.
I personally first encountered this car and its owner, Mr. Shuichi Nakagawa, a couple of years ago at the M&L night meet in Osaka. Both he and his buddies from Team Review and Bad Quality hail from Hiroshima, and last month I finally had the chance to go to Hiroshima and hang out with these guys on their own turf.
I’ll have more later on my Hiroshima adventures, but for now let’s stay focused on ‘Nakkan’s’ radical 180SX. First things first – Nakagawa is not a car builder by trade. He’s a true privateer, and when he’s not drifting and fooling around with cars, he can be found at his day job as a metal worker. More specifically, he works at one of Hiroshima’s massive shipbuilding facilities in the same area where the legendary Japanese battleship Yamato was constructed during the 1930s.
