Think about your first car. No matter how bad it was, like yesterday’s pizza, it’s still pretty good. Well my first slice o pepperoni was a 1985 Nissan Gazelle notchback.

In its time it made hairdressers all over Australia blush. And god is this car eighties. So why the hell did I buy one?

Well see in Japan it was a pretty respectable piece of kit, where the Silvia is revered as a ‘young persons’ car and needs a bit of oomph to back it up. Their model got Nissan’s FJ20T turbocharged motor (arguably one of Nissan’s better fours and still heavily in demand from Aussie speed freaks). Power was above/around the 150kw mark. Not bad for 1985 hey?

So what about the Australian version. Well um, brace yourself, the Dandenong boys turned their nose up at the FJ20T and brought in the Pintara/Bluebird CA20 engine. This engine is a twin sparker that has absolutely no tuning or modification potential and is barely even reliable. The twin spark plugs means it has to be tuned like a V8 (and costs as much)

While the engine can easily be swapped for the Nissan SSS SR20 or the Japanese FJ20T, it gets worse. The brakes were drums at the back and little discs at the front.

In the first four weeks I had the car, I managed to completely destroy the brake master cylinder, front brake pads, did massive damage to the rear drums and the whole system needed to be flushed and replaced. The car had virtually no brakes left whatsoever.

Those boys in Dandy must of made the entire drive train of porcelan and chewing gum. The clutch lasted less than 6 weeks. By the time I sold the car it had 10 percent of it’s engine compression left - and amazingly still drove!

So technically the Aussie Gazelle was a true minger. But there are perks. I had the notchback sedan version and for an eighties car, it had absolutely everything. 3 way sunroof, power windows and all that.

Assuming you can live with the heavily eigthies influeneced tweed fabric styling on the seats, that’s a good thing. For a p-plater on an under 5K budget it’s as good as it gets.

Yes the styling hasn’t aged gracefully (kind of like fairy bread at a brewery picnic on a hot day) and And there certainly isn’t any feeling on earth like hanging out of a sunroof at 160kph - not that I endorse that kind of behaviour. You can modify the Gazelle to your hearts content, but it’s like waking up to George Michael and Wham! everyday (Wake me up, before ya go, go. . . ).

So if you truly want something different that no one else has done, get yourself a Gazelle. Get about $5,000-10,000 large to put proper wheels on it, all wheel discs from a Skyline and i’d recommend an FJ20T engine transplant which will suck up most of the cash.

Oh yeah and don’t like the wheels? You wont find wheels that will fit the Gazelle off the shelf anywhere! Don’t even think about it. . .

But remember this and you have been warned. The suspension setup is pretty lame, the notchback sedan parts are starting to get very rare (go the hatch) and even the well modded ones in Australia haven’t gone that well, because the Aussie spec was and still is still is at the end of the day, a soft car.

Driver feedback wise, it steers like an AU Falcon, reading heavily power assisted and the feeling like you’re Captain of Thames River barge. And that aint never good when driving at the limit.

The money I saved on fixing this relic I ended up driving around a much cooler Pulsar SSS. Unless it was a bona fide import from Japan with the proper fast bits, don’t sell yourself short. You will be dissapointed and you can do better.