Understeer
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How To Ruin The Market: Nissan 240SX Edition
Like many enthusiasts and users of this fine website, I appreciate collectible and rare cars. I also seek out the high profile sales of some of these collectible and rare cars. It helps me form a better opinion of where the market is heading, so that I can offer that advice to you fine folks (and anyone else in the office who will listen to my soapbox rants). If you can’t find me browsing the forums here, I’m probably browsing Bring a Trailer, eBay Motors, or newcomer Cars and Bids. And in doing so, I’m noticing a scary trend: undesirable outliers setting the price to unobtainable for exceptional examples. Case in point, this 1990 240SX (S13)
I can smell the little tree from here. Undesirable
This is an undesirable S13. Why, you ask? This is a USDM model with a single cam KA24E truck motor. It’s a “zenki” (or “pignose”), pre-facelift model, which is widely considered the ugliest variety, although some people (mainly zenki owners) do seem to appreciate the kitsch of it.
Short of being an automatic (this 240 does thankfully have the five speed manual), this is pretty much the least desirable iteration of the 240SX. While that’s not so bad for Facebook, this wasn’t listed on Facebook. This is Bring a Trailer. The name and reputation of the website itself implies that this vehicle is so rare, unique, and special that you need to Bring. A. Trailer. This car is none of those things, especially when you can import an example powered by the legendary SR20DET or with Type X parts equipped. This example is an average 240SX, which somehow evaded a drift kid strapping an eBay turbo on and cutting the fenders off.This car sold for a whopping $32,750, and no, I did not make the number up. If you look at the data Bring a Trailer provides on specific models, you will see that this vehicle is an outlier. Prior to the sale of this example on August 24, 2020, the highest-selling 240SX went for $20,000, and that puts the average price of a unique and collectible S13 (at least according to the folks at Bring a Trailer) at approximately $8,800.
As I said in the beginning, I believe sites like Bring a Trailer, eBay Motors, and Cars and Bids are useful tools to help predict and set the market, especially as enthusiasts and collectors flock away from auction events like Barrett Jackson and Mecum, where they don’t often showcase cars that our generation wants. This is also equally important to note, because as import regulations become lifted for 25-year-old cars that were never sold in North America, we’re going to have to look somewhere else to get some guidance on pricing.
Why this S13 matters
So, you might be asking yourself: why does this particular 240SX, which sold in August of 2020, matter? Well, when I originally began to cogitate on this whole idea, I knew something like this was going to happen: here we have another S13 that just closed its an auction on Bring a Trailer. The high bid of $18,001 did not meet reserve. Upon learning this, I broke several pieces of furniture in the Feed’s office (sorry guys, I’ll get another coffee pot soon). Why does this make me irrationally angry? Because aside from the Juniper Green Metallic, the car in question was just as undesirable as the listing in August! [Editor’s note: I want both of them, but at 2005 prices pls] The seller even had the nerve to list the car with a reserve that was entirely too expensive! At the end of the day, these auctions set price trends in the secondary market. For evidence, check out the S13 listings page here on Collector Car Feed. Wow, that’s a lot of $1234 listings, isn’t it?
I don’t see someone paying $9,000 for this. Observe the above BaT reject, recently found for sale using Collector Car Feed. An 80,000 mile example, its paint is far from perfect (note the peeling roof), it’s a single-cam KA, and it’s automatic. Three strikes and you’re out. But, because of that single moon shot S13, the price of a Nissan 240SX has risen so drastically that this formerly $4,000 car is now asking $9,000, which, coincidentally, is the average asking price on Bring a Trailer. [Editor’s note: I bet we see this constantly once I add finished auction analytics.]
I don’t think this is the first example of this issue in the market; in fact, I’m sure this has happened before, twenty or thirty years ago when companies like Barrett Jackson first began to auction cars. Except then it wasn’t S13s, it was Camaros and Mustangs. The only respite we’re going to get is when a real JDM legend hits the market, it should finally make the value of true collectibles reflect the opinion of their owners thirty years later.
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Z Odyssey Part 1: The Realization That We All Become Our Fathers
The Dastun 240Z is one of the most iconic sports cars of the 1970s, and, I’d argue, the 20th century. It is a timeless design coupled with old fashioned Japanese quality workmanship and engineering.
I’ve tried to remember when I first fell in love with the S30, and I think I my appreciation began around 2010. At that time, I owned a 2005 WRX and was an active member of NASIOC, a popular Subaru Impreza forum. I had gotten bored one day on the site and delved into the off topic forum where I found a thread about 240Zs. I was smitten with the first image that loaded. It was metallic blue, lowered, and customized with fender flares, a shaved rear end, larger wheels, and a few other custom pieces. It was absolutely gorgeous. The modifications were simple and elegant in a period where extreme camber and two stepping at car shows was all the rage. I had never realized until that point how timeless these cars were. I vowed that day that, eventually, I would own one.
At that moment, I started keeping an eye on Craigslist. In a conversation with my father, I casually mentioned my slight obsession with them. While he isn’t a collector or a car guy in general, he spoke to me as if I was an idiot. It turned out he had owned a ’70 240Z before I or any of my siblings were born. He and my mother loved that car and told me a few anecdotes about owning it. It was at that point that my desire to own one grew and I was going to buy one. Unfortunately, I was working a job that I loved, but I didn’t have the disposable income to “throw away” at restoring an old car, so I had to put my obsession on hold. I remember talking to my brother about them right after discussing with my dad. “You want to restore a classic car? A 240Z? that’s not really a classic though.” Little did he know just how incorrect that statement was. The S30 is really starting to appreciate in value now, and some of them go for $50k or more on Bring a Trailer.
I started moving up in my company and finally became financially stable enough to seriously consider one. As time went on, I began laying the groundwork for ownership. I bought a house with a garage so I could start pursuing projects and keep my car out of the bitter cold Virginia winters. No way was I going to let mother nature reclaim through oxidation my soon to be pride and joy. My wife knew I was ready to pull the trigger on a project and was very supportive of it as I began my online search for a 240Z. In November of 2017, I finally found an example in my price range, and it was rust free. The only issue was that it was located in California.
Fortunately, I had a friend that lived within a few hours who was also a gear head. He has some cool projects as well, like a 1 of <2,000 turbo DSM Colt and a Suzuki Samurai with a VW diesel motor swap. He understood my passion and offered to make the drive to check it out.
It was a perfect project, my friend claimed. There was no rot on it: just a little surface rust in the usual spots and a “nickel” (aka a shitty Maaco) paint job. It was living outside, but the owner made sure to tell me that this was his “driver”. Living outside in the arid parts of California is quite different than the east coast. Cars with exposed metal will often take years to develop surface rust, while back east you watch the chemical process take place in damn near real time. If this car had lived its life on the east coast, it would have returned back to the earth long ago. The windows were cloudy from years of sitting outside, exposed to the occasional rain storm. It had some cheap Chinese tires on it that had tread, but just looked really old. It had cheap APC seats, and the drivers side had a fairly large mouse hole in it. However, this was right up my alley; with a little bit of time and money, and this would be the perfect project car.
Read more the Z Odyssey archive.
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Toyota Celsior: The Most Reliable Car Ever Built, Part Four: Goodbye
TOP TEXT
First off, I’d like to apologize for leaving the story open for so long; I’ve had lots of requests to finish, so thank you to all that have read about my adventures with the Celsior.
Where we last left off, I had just dropped off the disabled Celsior with Lutz. It had been about two days, and he called and asked me to come in to talk about what they found. This didn’t bode well with me, and I prepared myself for the worst as I walked through the doors of his shop. I saw my car sitting on the lift with one of his mechanics working under the hood, while he explained to me the work they had done. That’s when I noticed it – the car was running! The glorious 1UZ-FE V8 was again back to its smooth and quiet self! The car had jumped timing just before I was set to replace the timing belt/water pump. Lutz also found one my camshaft position sensors had tested out of spec, so being the perfectionist he is, he went ahead and replaced them both, as well as the radiator, as he had found a slight leak. I was ecstatic, and couldn’t believe the work had been done so quickly.
Then came the bill, to the tune of $1,800 (maybe more, I don’t remember), which I couldn’t be happier to pay. I had my car back! As I drove away from the shop, the car felt as good as new, and it nestled into its spot on my driveway again, ready to take me to work in the morning.About a day or so later, I had my family in the car, and we were coming back from my son’s taekwondo lesson. As I pulled into the driveway, I rolled the window down for some reason. Inside my safe cocoon of sound proof metal and glass, I couldn’t hear it, but now that the window was down, it was evident that a *sound* was coming from the engine bay.
As I popped the hood, my mind wandered and I again heard the voices of demons and my wife. Why must I be tested this way? With my spouse looking on puzzlingly, I donned my stethoscope and placed it on the idler pulley. Bingo. My mind left the dark place, and the next day I purchased both the idler and tensioner pulley for good measure.
Around this time, my friend in San Antonio was getting ready to celebrate his son’s first birthday, and I thought “Wow, how fun would it be to take a road trip in my newly fixed, 25 year old Japanese car?” What could go wrong? The Friday morning before the birthday party, I packed up my family and we began our journey from El Paso to San Antonio. My wife reclined in her plush passenger seat and my son napped in the back, as I started putting miles (or kilometers?) between us and El Paso. When we arrived at the first “major” city, Fort Stockton, my wife decided she needed to use the restroom. I pulled into a gas station, got out of the car to stretch, and noticed it smelled like a car was burning oil. I went inside and used the restroom as well, and when I came back out my wife asked “Is the car smoking?”
The demons immediately returned.
There were definite wisps of smoke coming from the undercarriage. I moved the air suspension switch from NORM to HIGH to try and get a better look, but all I could ascertain was that I had developed a transmission fluid leak. I had to make a quick decision, and it seemed my best option was to turn around and try and make it back home instead of continuing on, as home was the closer destination. I purchased a quart of transmission fluid and left the gas station, turning on my left blinker to enter I-10 *West*, defeated. I kept my eyes on the rear view mirrors as much as the road in front of me, ready to pull the car over at any sign of smoke and evacuate the car. At that point, my attitude towards the situation had changed to a very Ivan Drago like one: If she burns, she burns.
Thankfully, the God of Bomex was watching over us: we made it safely back to El Paso, straight to Lutz’s shop. I left the Celsior in his care once again, and walked back home. He called me later that day to inform me that he had found the source of the leak and had corrected it. I brought the Celsior home again, happy, but with a little less glint in my eyes. Driving old cars is tough, and I had three RHD projects I had to keep running.
Sadly, the story ends abruptly here. The Celsior was sold locally on July 20, 2020, for the sum of $6,750. It is survived by a 1991 Nissan Silvia K’s (KPS13), and a 1992 Toyota Land Cruiser ZX (HZJ77).
There is another JDM legend. BOTTOM TEXT
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Recalibrating The Feed: What’s New, What’s Changing, What to Expect
First, thanks for reading and supporting this project! This thing has changed substantially since its inception as a Discord bot, first expanding to a blog with original journalistic endeavors sprinkled amongst auto-generated “Every X For Sale in America” daily posts to keep things moving, and then evolving to a forum format with tables of for-sale cars and trucks (and now bikes and ATVs!) to peruse.
You’ve scanned your last “Every X” style blog post. The aforementioned forum has rendered these posts obsolete. If you want to see “Every E36 BMW M3 For Sale in America”, for example, you can just go to the E36 M3 thread, which is updated every day, and now has some new sources beyond just Facebook: if you haven’t visited in a while, you may be elated to discover we now also search eBay Motors, Bring A Trailer, and Cars And Bids, and there are more sites coming! We want to see those gray market Canadian Skylines just as bad as the Canadians who browse this site, so Kijiji is on the table.
While “Every X” is gone, the blog isn’t going away. This week, we’re pushing car content every single day. There’s a new Collector Car Feed Podcast up right now (did you know we have a podcast?), in which four of us take turns presenting cars we’ve found on The Feed, while the other three shoot holes in our dreams. Part Four of the Toyota Celsior series is coming, detailing the ups and downs of importing a JDM classic. There’s a Datsun 240Z post coming this week as well, and a look at the insanity Bring A Trailer has wrought on the 240SX community.
Finally, to replace the “Every X” series, a new daily post format is coming, which better captures what I’ve been trying to recreate this whole time. This new, yet-unnamed daily post will now feature vehicles found in the past 24 hours: new listings only. Focusing on cars over 15 years old, we’re going to filter out junk prices ($1234) and junk mileage, only looking at cars with under 100,000 miles on the clock. The idea is to recreate cracking open a brand new, print-edition Auto Trader that you just brought home from the corner gas station, hopefully finding, without a laser focus on a single model, something worth looking into. The first post will drop this Friday.
Thanks again for reading, and thanks for all the suggestions and ideas you all have sent. You’ve all helped shape this site, and it’s starting to evolve into exactly what I was hoping for from the beginning. This coming week is full of journalistic gold, so stay tuned.
