At a small town car dealer in 1998 one day, appeared a car I had never seen before. It was incredible, looked like nothing I'd seen up close and looked fast. I had to see more. I went in for a test drive, I don't know why they let me drive it; I was a teenager with no money, but they did. I found myself in a futuristic cockpit (it was a nine year old design and still looked futuristic) with things I had never seen before like seatbelts on the doors and pods with a digital display. The dealer drove it out of the lot and out of town, clearly loving the opportunity. Then it was my turn. I can still remember the thrill, the deep sound of the engine, the absolute flat feeling in the corners. The seat that felt like it was designed for me. I was hooked. I remember it being a goal to have one for some time, then I guess life happened and it was forgotten. Fast forward to 2011. The idea had resurfaced that year, and I had even looked online for quite a while to see if you could still get a tidy one in original condition, to no avail. For this and a few other ?logical? reasons I gave up. In December I was visiting a friend in NZ who I hadn't seen for a couple of years, he and I have always had a shared interest in cars. I asked what he was driving lately, and he said he has a 300zx in the garage. Of course my face lit up and we were soon flying down a country road with the targas off, both grinning. I didn't even wait until I got home before I called an importer. Even after expanding the search to Japan it took a while to find what I wanted; TT manual, completely original and very tidy. Filter that with import restrictions; 2+0 or 2+2 1996-1997. In March I found a good looking candidate and requested more info. It was listed as a 1991 and looked completely original. An inspector was booked who sent all the details and about 100 photos. It turned out that this car was first registered in 1991, but was actually a 1989, in fact the seventh car with a build date of July '89 and a chassis ending in 00007. We think it was a dealer demo until April '91 when it was registered with 216km on the odo. This made it pretty special (to me anyway) and as it looked very clean I gave the go ahead. A summary of the import process; March; found potential car, had it inspected. April; gave the go ahead and paid the vendor in Japan. (The importer) organised shipping, customs, DOTARS, aircon de-gas. May ? June 30th, on the boat. July ? December, with the compliance mechanic. He was an ex zed owner and looked after it well, and kept me informed by text often. He gave it a service, including filters and spark plugs. He had to change the tyres, even though the ones on it had heaps of tread and were a model that is sold here, they didn't have the markings that DOTARS like so they had to be changed (and the astute will notice, that the tyre guy put all of the wheels on backwards, and the tyres are directional. It annoys me every time I see it and I will refit them soon!). Most of the time he was waiting for DOTARS to push the paperwork through, every step took weeks. In November I was passing through Sydney and went to check it out. I saw that I had a big cleaning job ahead of me and noticed that I needed shifter bushings, other than that it was looking great. Then this car was ?randomly? selected for a DOTARS inspection, which of course meant more waiting until they got around to it. They spent half a day inspecting and gave it the ok, then as soon as it had all the stickers in the right places he had it trucked to me. In true territory style, I didn't get the call to say my car had arrived. I was driving past the depot and there was a black zed right next to the fence. I u-turned and excitedly went in looking for my keys, quite sure that a black zed at that depot would have to be mine (I think there are only six zeds of any colour here). As soon as I got it home I got my arsenal of cleaning products and zed parts that I had been collecting and went to work. All of the tweed got scrubbed and came up beautifully. I spent hours getting old wax out of the dimples around the bottom, then polished sealed and waxed the paint. Shifter bushings replaced. I installed a custom bluetooth adapter to the head unit, which consists of a Belkin buttonless receiver, jaycar voltage converter, noise filter, and a 5 pin DIN plug. It's plug and play except for the 12v source, so only one wire had to be tapped (in the interest of keeping everything as original as possible). Now I have the factory cassette player playing bluetooth music, and can still use the volume control. I had collected factory cruise control parts from members and coz, and installed those which was all plug and play except for a harness between the cabin and engine bay (as per the tech article). The right pod I purchased with cruise on/off was in good condition, but the original pods (and the whole interior) is so clean and scratch-free that I could see the difference. Not wanting to settle for that I carefully removed the cruise button and switch board from the purchased pod and transplanted them into the original pod, which looks excellent. I changed the gearbox oil to MT90 and have the dif oil standing by. The aircon was re-gassed with hychill-30 which meant no conversion was required, and copes quite well with the heat. The condition has exceeded my expectations, the owner has kept it immaculately. The mats I'm sure have never been removed; the black carpet is plush and looks brand new. The cigarette lighter is unused. The key is titanium, the targa bags and blind are there. The glovebox has all of the service history, and after putting it all into a spreadsheet I found the longest time between services was 5500km and one year, but average about 2000km and six months. This car feels tight and has no rattles, and it drives fantastically, every time I get in it I'm in disbelief of it's 23 year age. One of my neighbours saw it in the driveway polished with no plates and assumed it was brand new! Granted she is an old lady, but for 23 years old that is a testament to the timeless design of these beautiful cars. The worst thing about all of this is that I now realise there are absolutely no good driving roads up here. We have no hills, no windy roads, many straights. They are talking about opening the speed limit on the highway, this does not excite me as it's no autobahn. It's a glorified goat track, complete with wildlife and road trains. I may need to move. Anyway thanks for reading, I have been on here for a few months and haven't gotten around to introducing myself, but am often reading your zed stories and finding good tech info on here. Cheers
Thanks mate. Sure, a rough breakdown: 1100 Importer 5829 Car 3300 Shipping 4700 Compliance (including tyres etc) ----- 14929
Completely unmolested jdm, to the naked eye? won't find many of those round these parts (none for sale anyway!)
I know it's a bit weird, but I wanted it as close to factory as possible. Every time I found one here I would find a hole cut somewhere or something scratched etc. No disrespect to modified cars, I think there are some awesome looking mod'd machines on here, just not where I wanted this project to go.
but if you are going for the factory look i can understand that.. but $15,000 for a factory look, hell look at SIM300's white car, mint condition for $8,000.... could have spent $7,000 buying brand new everything from Coz and it be utter factory, rather than unknown 25yr old factory. I more than understand and think you have a great buy and y ou'll have alot of fun with it... but I wouldn't have said $15,000 of fun
Clean! I'm glad the cruise parts worked out mate. Sorry about the pod not being as good as you'd hoped. I even pulled the nice one off my car and put the used one I had on mine so I could send you the best one, lol. Have you got any plans for mods or is it remaining original?
Looks good and like how mine would have originally looked only in 2+2. Good buy IMO the owner of mine before me paid $15,000 for it from Japan. I changed the same pod in mine just the other day too it was stuffed bad, dunno why..
Well the budget I went to the importer with was 10k, he came back with 12, and it ended up 15. I had never imported a car before and I can see now that it could easily go much more over there are so many variables. Anyway I have no regrets, I now have a car which I know hasn't been changed since 89, and it's the seventh car. This may mean nothing to some people but these cars are symbols of the 90's, knowing that this car stands exactly as it did when it was new in an era that im quite fond of is worth it to me.
Congratulations, it looks absolutely immaculate. Sounds like a pretty long journey to get to where you are, but achieving your dream is truely an accomplishment. It only seems normal to have paid what you did especially for exactly what you wanted. It usually hard to buy something pretty much the way you want it off the bat.
I know thanks again for that, your one was in good condition it just turns out the original one was even better, but your button looks good transplanted now! Your cruise module works great too, really smooth
That's cool man. The car is amazingly clean, I don't blame you for picking the best option, lol. Plans?
Lol, that's awesome man. Wish I was content with stock. It would be a shame to destroy such a clean car though.
Just went through the exact same process, mine landed the day before Australia Day, my cost was a little dearer, compliance the same, however mine is a 97 2+2. Your car looks sweet, very original looking, i was on the hunt for something similar, but decided to go for something very clean, and in excellent condition, not dissapointed either. Well done CZ32, you have an excellent example.
One day we will be watching a tv show about classic cars and the presenter will give a run down about how Zeds. 1~6 were crash tested and here is #7 :br:
And only a three month wait! Lucky, I guess you had a lot more choice when it came to compliance. We only found one guy that would do an 89, not that I'm complaining he did a great job, but he's part time now. Thanks mate, yours looks really clean too.
