This is the section where Silvia
owners and Silvia admirers can share their experiences. Write to us and
tell us about your Silvia, or a Silvia you have seen, share your restoration
story with us or just tell us about a nice drive you and Silvia have taken
together. It can be as long or as short as you like. E-Mail
us with your story and we'll add it to the tales that are already here.
Alan from Queensland, Australia
writes :- I had been on the look-out for a Silvia for quite a while, my only
experience with Silvias had been reading about them in books and magazines,
and the only Silvia I had actually seen in real life was a very rough example
that was sitting in a shed awaiting restoration. But that was enough, I
was hooked and I wanted one. I had actually bought my first Silvia about
a year before, unfortunately it wasn't much of a car. It was only about
50% complete and was missing all it's interior, glass, and most of it's
external trim. With so much of the car missing it was going to be near
on impossible to restore. So I was constantly on the look-out for Silvia
number 2, something that was restorable, or maybe something actually going
that I could use straight away. On the 20th July 1987 the search finally came to an end.
That day I went to the shop and bought the latest copy of "Unique Cars"
magazine (a magazine that lists unusual vehicles for sale). After looking
through the sea of boring MGBs, Mustangs and Triumph Heralds that were
advertised for sale I saw my destiny before me, in small print in the middle
of the page read the following - "NISSAN SILVIA 1966. Vary rare motor car.
Excellent original condition throughout, and A1 mechanically. Collectors
item. Phone ****". Suddenly here it was, Alan's dream car, but there was
a couple of problems. One was that I didn't have the amount of money the
owner was asking, and the other was that the car was 1000 kilometres away
in Sydney. I quick visit to the bank solved the money problem, for an exorbitant
interest rate they would loan me the necessary cash. But a phone call to
the owner raised a more serious problem, there were at least two other
people I knew of that were also looking for a Silvia, and one of them was
going to have a look at the car on the weekend, in two days time. At that
point I did something that was potentially quite dangerous, I told the
owner that I would buy it, sight unseen, without even looking at it. And
I told him that I would be down there in less than two days time to beat
the other guy who was coming to look at it. I just had to hope that the
car was as good as he said it was, and that I could get there in time. A few quick phone calls secured me a bus ticket to Sydney
the next day. So I boarded the bus and sat for fifteen hours on this damn
bus, bored senseless, until it arrived in Sydney. I had never been to Sydney
before, but there was no time to waste looking around town, I hopped on
a train and headed straight to the suburb that contained my new Silvia.
In my determination to get there in time I had actually over done it and
I arrived an hour early, so I had to wait for the gentleman to arrive.
After sitting on the footpath for an hour I heard a familiar noise, the
rather distinctive sound of a Fairlady engine, or in this case a Silvia
engine. As the sound grew louder I saw her approaching and she turned into
the driveway beside me. It was the first time I had seen a Silvia in real
life (that wasn't a wreck) and I was stunned, she looked even better in
real life than she did in the photos. The other thing that amazed me was
just how small she was, I knew she was roughly the same dimentions as my
Fairlady but she looked so small. The car was in fairly good condition,
not quite as good as the owner had claimed but I didn't really care, it
was a Silvia and it was going to be mine. I had a quick drive to make sure
it drove OK, which it did, and went back and paid the man and completed
all the necessary paperwork. She was now all mine and all I had to do was
get her back to her new home. Unfortunately the trip out of Sydney was not quite as easy
as I was expecting. By now it was about mid day, and the plan was to get
at least half way back home that day, stop over night, and complete the
trip the next day. I headed north and I was revelling in the experience
of driving my dream car, cruising along at about 100kph along the freeway.
Then suddenly there was a massive power drop, at the same time a giant
plume of grey smoke erupted from the rear of the car. As I started to pull
over to the side of the road suddenly the smoke ceased and the car returned
to normal. I stopped for a quick check and could see nothing that looked
too bad under the bonnet, so I decided to head off again and see what happened.
Five minutes down the road it happened again, obviously something was very
wrong. I drove it back to the gentleman I bought it off, who had guaranteed
that the car was in perfect condition, and told him of the problem. He
seemed genuinely stunned that there was a problem and agreed to take the
car to the mechanic, who had only just serviced the car two days ago, to
get his opinion on the problem. We drove to the mechanic's shop and the
car ran beautifully all the way. The mechanic drove it and could see nothing
wrong with it and then started hinting that maybe I was just making this
story up. While the mechanic and I started having a heated debate about
the the amount of mechanical knowledge we both possessed, Silvia was sitting
there beside us, idling away quietly. Suddenly Silvia's revs dropped and
a huge cloud of smoke belched from her exhaust and she spluttered to an
ungracious halt. The mechanic and I looked at each other, but neither one
of us said a word, the look on our faces said all that needed to be said.
He had a look at the engine but could see nothing wrong. I agreed to leave
the car with him and call back several hours later to see what he had found. When I returned to the mechanic's shop at first I didn't
notice the apprentice trying his best to hide in the corner of the workshop,
but the mechanic soon pointed him out and told him to come over and appologize
to me. Apparently the young apprentice had been helping to service the
Silvia a couple of days ago, when he noticed that a small amount of fuel
was weeping from under the glass bowl in the fuel filter. He thought he
would do the right thing and fix the leak, so he removed the glass bowl
and applied a generous amount of silicon gasket sealant to the top of the
bowl and replaced it. After two days of soaking in fuel the silicon had
started to dissolve and work it's way into the fuel supply and into the
float chambers of the carburettors, where it then started to clog up the
jets, and then slowly work it's way into the combustion chambers where
it erupted in a cloud of smoke. After the mechanic stopped smacking the
apprentice over the back of the head I was able to head off on my way back
home. I decided to stay in Sydney over night and do the whole trip
back the next day. I found a motel and stayed there the night. The next
day I returned to my lovely new Silvia to find that someone had dropped
something from the balcony onto the bonnet of the Silvia, leaving a nasty
little dent in the bonnet. After an extended session of swearing and cursing
I decided to hit the road. Sydney's road system is nothing short of diabolical
and within a few minutes is was completely lost. Being too stubborn to
stop and buy a map, I soldiered on and eventually found a road that headed
in a roughly northern direction. By this time it was peak hour traffic
and the roads were jam packed with cars, I'd never seen that much traffic
in all my life and I was stuck in the middle of it. I was already un-nerved
by the whole situation when suddenly I was hit from behind, a Suzuki four
wheel drive that had been following me had run into my driver's side rear
bumper. I stopped the car and started to get out when the Suzuki reversed
back, then turned and drove off over the traffic island, down through a
drainage ditch in the middle of the traffic island and took off flat out
in the other direction. I couldn't believe it, I looked to the other people
around me but they all acted as if nothing had happened. Luckily there
was very little damage, it had pushed the bumper forward and had chipped
a little paint off behind the bumper, and that was about it. I climbed
back into my Silvia, which by now was nowhere near as nice as it was the
day before, and headed out of town, cursing all Sydneysiders and vowing
to never return to this god-awful city. The rest of the trip back home way very uneventful, Silvia
ran like a dream all the way back. I drove that Silvia nearly every day
for the next five years and never once had another problem. But I kept
my word, I've never gone anywhere near Sydney since that day.
