Maroc - SAU.COM.AU - content - Hier 16:50

The Adventures of a Roofless Silvia

G'day everyone, I am a couple of months overdue but I wanted to start my write up about the car I moved the Skyline on for.... but first lets go back a couple of years and see where this all began. As I briefly touched base on in the previous build thread, my automotive experience started back in early 2016 with a Silvia, specifically a ratty black 1991 S13 Q's with an SR20DE that had been manual swapped. This car sadly didn't hang around for long as it got me in some legal trouble within a couple of months leading to a long license suspension. Ultimately it got sold, but not before it laid the S-chassis parasites in my mind that would keep me coming back for more. A year later and I have just purchased a 200SX S15, amazing car, and it ticked all the boxes. It was probably only a few months after the purchase that I open Facebook and my eyes are blessed with an Autech S13 Convertible for sale. In that moment I felt like I had been living under a rock, I had never seen a drop top S13 and I was instantly in love with the shape. I was pretty bummed at the time because I wasn't willing to part ways with the S15 and had it have come up for sale prior, it would've been the perfect purchase. I will quickly touch on some nerdy info regarding the Autech S13's. If you somehow haven't heard of the company Autech, they are a subsidiary of Nissan that focused on tuning & conversions of Nissan vehicles. In 1988, Autech was tasked with creating a convertible platform of the S13, by the end of production they had built and sold 603 units. Each chassis that got converted was a pre-1991 K’s trim, meaning each came standard with the turbocharged CA18DET engine. They were also all fitted with the 4-speed auto transmission, with no option of the manual that would come in a regular coupe. The roof is a soft-top material that is operated by a hydraulic motor system, all crammed into the back of a cut up chassis. In the time between that S15 and the R32, there has been a handful of examples come up for sale but never at a convenient financial period, and after owning JZ & RB powered vehicles the prospect of spending Silvia money for an automatic CA18 powered vehicle was pretty... discouraging. It was approximately 1 month after I bought the R32 that I was on my usual marketplace trawl when suddenly I stumble across the holy grail; a 1989 Autech S13 that had been RB25DET swapped, with a genuine Tommy Kaira body kit, rolling on some mint 15" SSR Star Sharks. I was instantly messaging him with offers to swap for the 32, to which he was initially interested in much to my surprise. A 20 hour round trip to Queensland and back was pretty daunting for me as I honestly didn't believe that the Skyline could handle it (and I was probably right in hindsight), I deliberated about it for too long and the seller eventually took the ad down leaving me stuck with my money pit. Fast forward to July of 2025 as I was rocking back and forth about my feelings towards the Skyline and my decisions about if I want to stick with it or jump ship. I was almost on board with keeping it and throwing more money at it when all of a sudden it appears again, the same combination of perfect Silvia, this time with a 10k price drop on stock wheels and without the brick headlights. Quite literally the moment I saw it I felt like it was fate giving me a second chance at the opportunity I should've taken from the start. In between writing up a sale ad and taking photos of the 32, I was juggling messaging the seller for info about the vert and organising a plan. I managed to find a buyer within the week and as soon as their deposit had landed in my bank account, I had booked my flights to the Gold Coast. As soon as the Skyline was gone, a wave of excitement begun as I knew it was all finally happening. There was only one major con with the vehicle, it had been stolen at some point and the roof was all slashed up, this info will very quickly become important as you read on 😂. The day finally arrives on an early August morning, I wake up and make my way to the airport in some pretty miserable Sydney rainy weather. I make the nice short flight up to a surprisingly sunny Gold Coast, where the legend of a seller is awaiting me in the carpark with the vert pre-prepared with a full tank of E85 and a filled 20L jerry can in the back seat. After a quick run down of the car and the usual handover procedure, I kick off the journey along a pre-planned route accounting for fuel stations that sell ethanol, with the first stop being Tweed Heads United, then to Coffs Harbour United, and a final stop at Maitland United before finishing the marathon home in Sydney. With the almost certainty of seeing some rain along the journey I decided to make a first stop at Bunnings Warehouse for a tarp and some duct tape. As soon as I walked out of the store I could see a looming very black cloud quickly coming over, I make my way to the car and the sprinkling has already begun. I waste no time in navigating myself to the only cover I can find and get to work creating my absolute master piece of a roof, MacGyver and Bear Grylls would be proud... 😂 I didn't intend to colour match the tarp but between that and the builders plastic rear windscreen I was pretty chuffed. The next stop on the list before leaving Tweed Heads was to the United to completely top off the tank in preparation for the nearly 300km journey south. Very much to my surprise and horror upon arriving at said servo, it had been sold to a smaller chain that no longer sell E85. I started to panic as the whole journey was counting on this precious corn juice. I decide to call ahead to the United down in Coffs and even worse news, they no longer sell E85 either. This left me with a 700km stretch of road with no fuel available in a car that had an unknown economy and a small tank, I knew if my stock crown could only get 500km to a 70L tank of 98 on a good day, I was screwed. I quickly started forming a plan B, this started with a quick stop at the local Supercheap for another 40L of jerry cans, and then a 30 minute drive north back over the QLD border to the closest United in Merrimac. Once I had arrived there and topped up the car and all the jerry cans, I felt like I could relax a little bit, the great commute back to Sydney begun. One can imagine being inside essentially a large plastic tarp bag at motorway speeds, the cabin pressure was making the noise literally unbearable. I decided to cut some relief slits in the rear 'window' to alleviate the pressure, which somewhat worked but also created new wind noise which wasn't that much better. We made it about an hour into the trip around Byron Bay when the front of the tarp kept lifting up and whacking around, we decided to fold the roof down since the weather had been behaving since we got fuel. Only half an hour later down the motorway it was as if we drove straight into a tropical monsoon, the rain was ridiculously heavy and we found a little overpass to take shelter and chuck the roof back up. 3 hours of getting slightly soaked due to the drivers side window not going up, we make it to Coffs Harbour. At this point the cabin was filled with little bits of shredded bits of tarp and tape so we pull over to assess the situation. We take a second to admire what looks like a house that has been hit by a cyclone before ripping what was left of it off and continuing the journey down. As the day turned to night, the temperatures dropped, and in already cold weather the lack of a heater and the fact that I was pretty soaking wet was making it a fairly horrible experience. We pushed on for hours until we reached Maitland and felt stoked that it was nearly all over, surprisingly the car made it there with a whole 20L jerry left and only took another 30L in the tank. When we made it home I'd say I left the car opened up to dry, but that would imply I had a choice 😅 It has been a great 5 months since that journey and I am very excited to continue to write up more about the car when I get the chance, I think I will start with some cool history on the car and old photos, and then I will pick up back here with the start of its life in my ownership up to the present day. Cheers for reading ✌