So you probably clicked on this thread, scratching your head thinking,
"What in the world do you mean a 4-Door S13?"
"Who in their right mind would ruin a Silvia by adding an extra set of doors?"
"What are you smoking bro?"
Well, fear not... I didn't buy an S13 and ruin it by adding extra doors... INSTEAD... I picked up something rather hard to find Stateside.
Before I get into what I got, let me give you a brief backstory...
So, I moved to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia about 1 year ago to teach and have enjoyed every minute of it. The car scene out here is crazy! You have everything from S15 Silvias, R34 GTR Skylines, and every other JDM Fan Boy's wet dream could imagine. When I first moved here, I was geeking out like anyone else would probably do. It made me miss my JDM S2000 I had when I was living in Panama City, Panama previous to this. I started attending local meets, then car shows, and started meeting the locals... but there was one chassis in particular that caught my eye that I had never really known much about until now.
That chassis is none other than the A31 Nissan Cefiro...
Now, if you're like me before I moved here, you might be thinking, what the heck does a Nissan Cefiro have to do with being a 4-Door S13 Silvia? Well, I'll answer that for ya.
The 1988-1994 Nissan Cefiro shares the SAME suspension setup as the S13 chassis. I mean, it's practically identical! All of the suspension arms are interchangeable, the differentials are identical, aftermarket strut tower bars are interchangeable, hell, even the subframes are the same in the rear!
What's really cool about it is that whatever you can do from the S14->S13, like the 5 lug swap, will ALSO swap over. Z32/R32 Brakes swap... almost anything you can imagine will swap over. Now, don't get me wrong, there are of course some differences, such as the drivetrain, motor, exhaust, etc. but essentially, it's basically a 4-door Nissan Silvia.
In Japan, and other eastern Asian countries, the Cefiro actually comes standard with the SAME engine as the R32 Nissan Skyline GTS-T... the RB20DET. A lot of the same engine components are interchangeable with the R32 as well as the chassis itself so things like seat rails to even the dashboard will swap over into the Cefiro (with some minor tweaks).
Ok ok... enough of the history lesson of what a Cefiro is... this isn't Wikipedia, it's a build thread so let's show the damn car already!
Fast-forward to May of this year from when I moved to Malaysia 11 months ago, I picked up this lovely specimen of a Nissan Cefiro. It's a 1991... BUT... and this is a big BUT... it's not the cool RB20DET drift machine... instead it's Grandpa's grocery getting n/a RB20E... that's right... no turbo... no 5-speed... :wan:
The good news is... it's not all beat to hell, it's COMPLETELY stock, and it's basically screaming for a complete makeover. The bad news... well, the engine has seen better days. Let's start off this build story with some photos of when I picked her up...
To when I got her home...
As you can see from some of the photos, the body is in great shape. The wheels are rather 'meh' but will be changed in due time when my 5-lug swap comes in. The motor runs, but runs like crap. Granted, I've already been tinkering with this car for the last month and a bit since I bought it so it's been cleaned up a bit.