1981 Nissan 280ZX

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Just when I thought they all had dissolved into piles of rust years ago I find what seems to be a fairly pristine-looking Nissan 280 ZX in the junkyard.

This was always a cool looking car and the adolescent version of myself found these cars far more attractive than the Mustangs or Firebirds that my classmates had drooled over. 

To me, it was the shape of the car, that long hood with the fastback back end made for a very unique shape when compared to its more square-shaped contemporaries at that time. I suppose what put me over the edge on this car was the front end, with the recessed headlights, again very different than that flat fronts that most cars had at that time.

Alas with the type of sheet metal that was used in these cars, the heavy use of salt on the roads here were not very kind to these cars and they were very prone to rust out at an early age.

That's why I was very excited to see that this car seemed to be in very good shape body wise. That is until I looked inside the car and immediately noticed that the floor on the driver's side was non-existent. Still, if someone was handy with a welder and had a bit of time, it may be possible to still save this car.

This particular car was a base model that had a 2.8 liter 6 cylinder engine. It also had a manual transmission with the evidence of 3 pedals on the floor. I can imagine that this car was a real blast to drive. 

One thing I did notice was that this may have been originally a US car since the speedometer and odometer were both marked in miles (Cars specifically for the Canadain market use kilometers)

For a Japanese car, it didn't really really have a lot of miles on the clock with only 100,000 miles (160,000) on the odometer. Usually, I would expect a car like this to have almost triple that amount before it lands in the junkyard.

It could very well be that this car was not winter driven, which would back up the overall condition of the body.

History on this car is very sketchy, but the car was last on the road in 2001, running around in a small city about an hour's drive south of where it sits today.







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