Nissan Primera

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I picked up my Primera (1992, SR20(DE) 2.0L engine, black, four speed auto) in July 2002 for about $5000 NZD with 82,000 km on the clock. It was sold to me as 1.8L, and came with mag wheels. I'm not complaining.

As far as I can make out, it had one owner who drove it only on Sundays, and never used the radio. That's OK, since the Japanese FM band radio is nearly useless in New Zealand anyway. I've since replaced it with a JVC KD-S785 CD/CDR/CDRW MP3 head unit. There was a minor issue with the fuel tank relief pipe leaking, but the only other maintenance in 10,000 km has been a set of new tires, sparks, and a transmission check.

It's a nice car and goes like the bomb. At about a 4500 rpm, the engine starts to growl and the car pulls like a 15 year old with a porno mag. This is a good thing, since the engine red-lines at 7500 rpm. I am told on good authority that the engine in my particular model has the capacity to bolt on a turbo charger. It would certainly go a long way to explaining why I tend to smoke tires without trying.

One of the very cool things is a little rocker switch just to the front and right of the transmission stick (right hand drive). It has three settings. The middle one has no label, and the rear setting, when selected, turns on a little green light under the word 'hold'. However, the front setting glows an evil red with the word 'Power'. And power it does. I drove for a tank of gas (about 200 km around town) with this setting, burned off more than a few rice rockets at the lights, nearly got a ticketed more than once, and nearly crashed more times than I care to remember.

The light also comes on when I put my foot down in a manner that suggests I want to move forward in a hurry. I think this is a good feature.

It came factory installed with a sunroof (yay!), spoiler, sports shocks and suspension, and a sway bar.

It's not all roses. There's a tiny bit of rust around the sun roof, and I really need to replace some of the rubber sealing on the doors. The sports suspension means that you feel every bump in the road, and every time I even go near a pothole, I think I've broken something. It's also disturbingly easy to speed in.

However, for a ten year old $5K import, it beats the pants of those pansy rice rocket Civics. It's also good for carting tonnes of computer gear to LAN parties. -- toalight says: In Europe, the Primera a station wagon. as in with an extended cabin. The name of the car is Nissan Primera 1.6GL. Quite a popular car here in Norway since it's fairly cheap. The sports Primeras are very different animals. -- I have to admit that I've never seen the one toalight is referring to. The type I have is common as mud here in New Zealand A picture mine is here; http://www.murrell.co.nz/~edward/primera1.png