There aren’t many 30-year-old cars in fairly large numbers on Japanese streets and roads. Toyota Mark IIs (X70/X80), S130 Crowns and FJ60 Land Cruisers are still about. Second-gen Mazda RX-7s are too, as are Mitsubishi and Suzuki 4x4s, but old Subarus and Hondas (of any sort) are rare. As for Nissans, plenty of Y30/Y31 Cedric / Glorias, Sunny B120 pickups and R32 Skylines remain in daily use. But the real hard core survivors of the fade-out of the Japanese Bubble Economy are definitely the many S13 Silvias still prowling this country’s highways and byways.
There is always a however. In the S13’s case, the issue can be of finding one that seems in good condition, by which I mean original, unmolested and well cared for. That can be a little more challenging. These cars are the darlings of the drift crowd, so a great number have been modded to hell and not a few have had encounters with railings, other cars and other war wounds.
I applied the Zen version of the CC ambush hunter creed: don’t look for something, that way you’re sure to let it find you. So one fine day, late last year, I encountered this perfect early model S13. Only issue was the colour – white is never a very easy colour to photograph. At least it goes well with the car, which is not always the case.
Let me show you an example of the sort of S13s one can see here. This sad-looking individual, parked in front of an equally dilapidated house, is a pretty extreme case, but it will do very well to illustrate my point. Silvias were plentiful, reliable and fun, so they stuck around – sometimes way past their prime, while their boring, broken-down and rare competitors are long gone to the great junkyard in the sky.
Even in Japan and even back in the late ‘80s, few cars had the Silvia’s specs. By which I mean that our feature car has a 1809cc DOHC 4-cyl. engine – which happens to have a turbocharger, and thus makes 175hp. This ample power is sent via a 5-speed manual gearbox to the independently-sprung rear wheels. Given the relatively light curb weight (1110kg), performance was quite outstanding. In 1991, the CA-Series engine was replaced by a 2-litre SR-Series 4-cyl., which further boosted performance.
Who else was making RWD 4-cyl. turbocharged coupés in those days? Most of the Silvia’s domestic competition – Honda Prelude, Toyota Celica, Mitsubishi Eclipse – were FWD (or AWD) and the Mazda RX-7, though RWD, was also in a class of its own due to its high-maintenance Wankel engine. Even on the foreign markets, where the S13 put on a different front end and went by Nissan 200SX (in Europe) or 240SX (in North America), the Nissan coupé’s true rivals were the BMW E30, which was more of a two-door sedan than a coupé, the FWD Scirocco and… er… is that it?
Our feature car is a higher-spec K’s, with the turbo engine and all the requisite bells and whistles. Mid-level trim Q’s and base-trim J’s only received the naturally aspirated 1.8, which only churned out 138hp. But from the outside, aside from the discreet badging on the flanks, there is nothing to tell a fancy Silvia from a lesser one.
There was a visibly exclusive S13 Silvia though: the Autech convertible. They only made 600 in 1988-89, so if I ever catch one – even an abandoned one – I’ll be sure to document it. There was also the 180SX, which was the same S13 platform but with a fastback body with pop-up headlamps, just like the 200SX/240SX.
It was fast, it was fun, but most of all, the S13 Silvia was cool and affordable, particularly in those heady final years of the Bubble Economy. Younger buyers snapped them up as soon as Nissan could churn them out. In short order, the Honda Prelude lost its place as Japan’s number one hipster coupé, never to really regain its crown. The Silvia’s time in the sun was also pretty short: the S14 piled on the kilos and grew too big for the Japanese taxman, making it far more expensive than before, just as salaries had stopped growing.
Nissan corrected this with the S15, but alas that was to be the last Silvia. The world had apparently moved on and high-performance 4-cyl. RWD coupés were no longer seen as part of Nissan’s remit. The mind boggles, but one could not argue against Renault logic (at the time anyway – things have changed since then.) Over 300,000 of the S13 Silvias were sold and it seems a large proportion of them went to people who really loved to drive them.
Perhaps the secret ingredient that made this car such a legend was its looks. Had it been ugly or merely boring like some of its kin, I doubt this Silvia would have commanded such loyalty from the public. It isn’t flashy or revolutionary, just exquisitely balanced and quietly dynamic. Along with the R32 Skyline, the C33 Laurel and the Y31 Cedric / Gloria hardtop, Nissan really had their moment, in the late ‘80s. Peak Nissan led to peak Silvia, almost by definition. Too bad peaks tend to end kind of abruptly (again, by definition). You wand a high plateau? Try Tibet – or, if we’re still talking figuratively about carmakers, Toyota.
Related posts:
Curbside Classic: 1989 Nissan 240SX And Silvia/SX History – Who’s The Prettiest Silvia Of Them All?, by PN
eBay Find: Nissan 240SX – See? There Was One, by Geraldo Solis
What a beautiful machine.
I want to rescue that neglected one and give it a good home.
I always wanted a 240SX (U.S.) but it was not to be.
Quite prized here among the boyracer set and it seems some have become track cars I seen a couple on trailers heading down the motorway to Hampton downs for playtime on that track
I think the exposed-headlight front of the Silvia notchback looks much more natural organic on that body style than the pop-up headlight / sloped front our 240 SX XE got. Great find in beautiful shape.
Likewise. The pop-up headlight front clip looked like it was designed for another car and grafted onto this one.
It kind of was, the hatchback 180SX was marketed in Japan as an entirely separate model line, possibly even through a different dealer channel.
This car was a sensation in Japan upon debut; it gave rise to the nickname in this class as “the date car”, and it won Japan’s industrial Good Design Award in ‘89. The marketing was also brilliant. Early cars were promoted as Art Force Silvia, and the J/Q/K’s designations represented a deck of cards; Jack, Queen, King. Early cars could add a “diamond” group that gave projector lamps, full power everything, and CD, while later cars got a “club” group that had triple projectors but largely the same stuff. There was also a limited run of “ace” cars that were loaded like a K’s on the outside, but without the turbo motor. The brochures for these are works of art compared to what one would typically see from other manufacturers then. There is a reason they have a cult following:
The new Nissan has no connection with the old. Ghosn saved them from bankruptcy and cut the links and cut the costs. So sad that this was necessary.
I was lucky to have a low mile B13. Was fun. An S13, 14 or 15, my next internet stop this evening
is Hemmings….
Just a lovely car.
Great find – and nice to see it’s still all original.
Really prefer this linear pre-2000 Nissan styling to what came after…
I don’t understand where this perception that the S14 is significantly bigger or heavier than the S13 has come from, and that the S15 went back again (a similar perception of R32, R33, R34).
They all have the same floor pan, they’re very similar in length and weight. So to compare, the S14 is actually a touch shorter that the S14, it is wider, (only by 40mm though), and similar weight. The S15 did shrink a little, down 35mm in width, and a more significant 75mm in length, but the weight of the S15 was again very similar.
The S14 went over 170cm in width, which put it in the “large car” tax bracket. That and it was a good 100kg heavier than the S13.
My (middle) sister still has her ’97 240SX, bought new…she previously had a ’95 240SX which was totalled in an accident. My youngest (since deceased) sister had a ’93 240SX and before that, an ’86 200SX. All of them were notchbacks (and I’m a big hatchback fan) and unfortunately all automatics.
That being said, we just transferred my Mother’s ’06 Impala to my sister, since my Mother opted for an ID card rather than driver’s license (which my Father did in ’15, when my Mother took it over). It is of course newer than her 240SX, and frankly, she’s a bit too old for the car, no longer a scrambler, and the Impala suits her better now..she can put my Mother’s wheelchair in the trunk, no way it would fit in the 240SX..
But the 240SX gets looks that evade the Impala….people want to buy it off her, and I might encourage her to take one of them. The 240SX has been pretty good, but has had odd problems, leaky gas tank, and only car I’ve ever known to have problem where brake lights wouldn’t go off, and then they wouldn’t come on (2 different problems with the brake light switch.
I liked this car, this S13 is gold, I heard Gran Turismo 1 and 5, now I have my tomica premium Silvia S13.
This was once what a new car could look like.
A person could actually buy it.
You could see it on an actual road, not just in your imagination or your miniature car collection.
With all the good the future has brought, something has been lost.
This.
I miss it.
When I look at the Silvia S-13 it is impossible to think that these late 1980s and early 1990s square designs could’ve lasted well into the 2020s. People only started to make cars with more curves because… everyone was doing. To make curves in the design, you make the car more expensive to mold the iron panels in the factories, same thing for interior plastics and cloth, glass as well. That’s why the old Silvias and Skylines still top of the buy. Anything that is relatively square can be fairly good aerodynamically and easy to produce. Unless you’re producing a superbly cheap rounded car, the industrial investment doesn’t make sense.
At least that’s the minor lesson form the Tesla Cybertruck. Elon Musk himself is kinda goofy for that amount of money and quick intelligence, so I praise only that specific thing taken from Cybertruck. But the little Silvia proved that driving can be fun and accessible. If you think you’ll need some 300 to have fun with a “famous” car, then you fell into the trash of popular culture.