My Cefiro #1: The Carsales ad.

Having owned an R31 Nissan Skyline GTS coupe in 2007, which I sold in early 2008, it was followed by an EG Civic, I started missing the feeling and power of a turbocharged rear wheel drive. 

So after thinking about maybe getting another R31 or a newer R32 Skyline, I decided that a Cefiro would be the best car for what I wanted to do with it. Which was to have a car that sounded good, handled well, had a bit of power to it, as well as the practicality of a four door sedan. I love the sound of the Nissan RB series engines, and Cefiros have that, but without the cop-bait circular tail lights of the Skylines. They were also one of my first choices of a Japanese import to buy in 2003-2004, but due to my health constantly being too poor to allow me even a marginal amount of paid work, I had to sit back and watch all my friends buy the cars I wanted, while I was stuck with dreams of being able to buy a nice car.

At the time in early 2010 I was also planning on using it for track days and drift practices and Mallala, but with my health taking a massive plunge in 2010, that's not realistic any more due to strength and money complications. Hopefully it's something I can do in the future though. Here's a YouTube video by Ryan Vandjik of a South Australian Cefiro drifting at Mallala and Adelaide International Raceway a few years ago.

Skylines are very common cars now in Australia, particularly R33s, and while there are a few Cefiros around the place, they are fairly rare, and there only tends to be 6-8 for sale nationwide on www.carsales.com.au at any one time.

Given that Cefiros are a very popular drift car, several of them would be track-only cars, or highly modified and a bit much for what I wanted, and sometimes both, and completely hammered. So after checking on the Carsales website and several Japanese import forums over the course of several months in early 2010, I finally came across an ad for a Cefiro that looked promising, and was actually in SA which was rare.

While it did have a bit of the 'drift pig' look going with the panda style black boot and bonnet, it had some aftermarket goodies that were exactly what I was after, but with a fairly standard engine and some nice 17" Buddy Club P1 rims. So after having a bit of a think and reading over the specs and looking through the pictures, I decided to give the seller a call. When I looked at the contact details, both the name and number seemed familiar for some reason.

So I started typing the number into my phone, and it came up with the name Vince. With Adelaide being such a small world, Vince had complied a couple of my friends' cars, and I'd also chatted with him at a nearby workshop (Boostworx) during a dyno day a little while back. But the reason he was in my phone already was that I had his R33 Nissan Skyline GT-R on my feature car list to shoot for High Performance Imports magazine. So after giving him a call and asking a few questions, I headed over to his import compliance workshop to have a look at the car in person, to see what sort of condition the car was in, and take it for a bit of a drive to see what it was like.

Here are the photos from the carsales ad, taken by Vince.