An Unexpected Surprise

If you are in the market for a Skyline GT-R chances are that you will never meet or know its original owner. A thorough condition check before the purchase and full service history from the same Nissan Prince dealer reassured me that my car had been cared for, but a part of me has always wondered about its previous life. 
Was the owner a car guy? Was he a GT-R enthusiast, or somebody who bought the car just because it was "cool"?

Yesterday I might have found answers (or hints) to some of these questions in...the trunk of my BNR34.

Garage encounters

Ever since I bought my GT-R I must have opened the trunk just a handful of times and, obviously, never paid too much attention to it. As parts boxes from NPCT have been piling up in my apartment, last night I decided to store a couple in the trunk of the car and casually noticed this:

Trunk liner?

Rear wiper motor cover?

These photos will look completely normal if you have a zenki (series 1 standard or V-spec) model; however, as some of you may know, in an attempt to shave costs, Nissan didn't fit the kouki (series 2, including V-spec II and Nür) version of the BNR34 with the trunk liner and rear wiper motor cover, nor these parts were offered as an option. I actually came to learn about these minor differences only after buying the car, as shown on the image below.

Zenki (top), kouki (bottom)

This means that the previous owner must have fitted them at a certain point during his ownership. Now, you may wonder, are those parts so special to deserve a post of their own? Of course not. 

Actually, upon learning about the difference I just assumed that my car hadn't been fitted with them and never bothered to even check; after all they don't add anything in terms of performance and I don't mind the more spartan look. What they do instead, is telling me a thing or two about the previous owner.

To begin with, he must have been into GT-Rs or at least passionate about them: these are details that you will never notice just out of curiosity (especially the rear wiper controls cover), but rather learn about on specialized magazines, like I did.

This leads to my next question: who spends time and money to go the extra mile and buy these parts aftermarket and have them fitted, so that the car looks more "complete" and refined in areas that will go absolutely unnoticed? Obviously an owner who cares a lot about his car and is probably a bit of a GT-R geek! While retrofitting parts is not completely uncommon (lot of V-spec owners have had their car fitted with the V-spec II aluminum pedals), you would recognize that it must take a certain level of passion and perfectionism to fit such insignificant kind of parts. These are the same people that will likely not drive the car in the rain (I don't).

So, here you have it: if you have a kouki model that has been fitted with a trunk liner and rear wiper motor cover, rest assured that its previous owner either cared about it...or was a GT-R otaku!

Until next time.