For us more middle mature ha! When did you get you first 200sx? How long did you have it ? And do you have your first one still? My first still have it runs well was 07 94 bought off lemon lot Chery Point been hooked since! 86 notch 2.0
My wife bought her 85 new a year before I met her. It's been my dd for almost 20 years now!
I happened onto a sales lot where a guy I knew worked. He rolled up in an 86 coupe that was coming in on a trade. I bought it immediately and that was 1988. Drove that car for 19 years before the harsh mid-Atlantic winters and salt had taken their toll. I was never happy about losing that car so after 7 years without an S12 I bought an 85 coupe in 2014 that had only 32k on it. We rollin.
It was a dark and stormy night on Friday the 13th of November 2015. A shady figure approached me in a in a random front yard as I was checking a '85 Nissan Silvia that turned up for sale, it was the salesman. I acted as if I knew what I was doing but he knew immediately that I don't know a first thing about cars. The car didn't run and was described as a "set of spare parts" in the contract I ended up signing. As I was returning home with the car on a flatbed I listened to the news on the radio the whole way, there just was a terrorist attack in Paris...
End of chapter one.
Chapter two is in the "build projects" section of the forum :)
Traded my fully functional, fun, but automatic 1993 escort gt for a not so great '85 hatch with a 20e. Limped that car around for a year before pulling the motor for a KA swap; which over the next two years never got finished. Motor got sold - shell got sold to the bad guys.
On my second red turbo hatch since.
I will ALWAYS want another copper hatch. Always.
Got my first 85 ca18et s12 roughly 13 years ago barely running from a dude just looking to get rid of it for about 200 bucks. Tinkered with the ca18et over the years but it was pretty tired and never ran well enough to be considered reliable. Sat mostly parked for years and I would just drive it around the block for fun occasionally. 3 or 4 years after buying the turbo s12 I bought a stock 88 SE for 800 bucks that ran great but just needed a clutch. I sold my s14 and the SE took its place as my daily while the ca18et still sat.
Finally decided to ka24de swap the ca18et s12 after having the SE about 3 years. Swap went relatively smooth and for awhile I had 2 fully operational s12's though unfortunately not for long. A year or so after swapping to the ka24de I was driving the SE one night and a lady pulled out into my lane outta nowhere during peak traffic time. I was going about 25-30 mph in a very long right turn lane and she blindly crossed bumper to bumper traffic taking a left into a strip mall entrance that was adjacent to my lane. I slammed on the brakes immediately after seeing her but it was too late. Ended up t-boning her after she froze like a deer in headlights in full panic mode in the middle of my lane. Had she kept going instead of panic stopping directly in front of me disaster likely would have been avoided. Instead the SE ended up totaled. RIP SE. Luckily the ka swapped s12 has proven reliable and I have been driving that the last 5 years since that tragic day.
Got y'all beat! Got my 84 Turbo Hatch in Dec 1987 when it was a creampuff. Still have it, and it looks good for 33 years! Got my 87 SE about three years ago and it's ménage-a-trois for sure!
Click on "Club-S12 Gallery" and click on "30 year Anniversary."