Junkyard Find: 1986 Nissan 200SX Turbo
It’s hard to get more stereotypically 80s than this car. Weird Japanese styling, headache-inducing upholstery patterns, and— most important— TURBO! I was 20 years old when this car was new, and the sight of this Crusher-bound example gave me terrible A-Ha flashbacks.
While not quite as gloriously ridiculous as the Mitsubishi Cordia Turbo, and not as fast as the Dodge Omni GLH, the 200SX Turbo came with a respectable-for-the-time 120 force-fed horses under the hood.
Well, maybe not so respectable when you consider the 200SX’s curb weight: 2,734 pounds.
So it was a bit sluggish for an alleged sporty car. So what? Check out the seats!
You see, the word “Turbo” had magical connotations during the middle 1980s. Major Motion!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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I'm quite the 200SX aficionado, having had a 1982 hatch for my first car, and a 1988 SE V6, which I still own, but is currently in project status. It was my daily driver from 2001-2009, and I put about 110K miles on it in that time. There's actually a small but loyal following for these cars on forums like www.club-s12.org. The VG30 model is a fun car, with a nice flat torque curve. It always handled well, but since I installed 1.5" lowering springs it corners like it's on rails. The V6 model is noticeably more nose-heavy than the four-banger cars, but as was mentioned above, it's lighter than the 300ZX overall. The CA18DET was only available on these cars in Asia and Australia. The CA18ET, like this one, isn't the strongest but takes well to upgrades. Many 200SX Turbo owners I know have successfully upped the boost by adapting Volvo intercoolers. These cars also take well to SR20 or KA24 transplants. It sucks to see an S12 in the junkyard, but it's nice to see these forgotten cars getting some attention. BTW, Consumer Reports listed the base 2.0 liter 1988 200SX at $12,349 for the notchback, $12,599 for the hatchback. The SE V6 came only as a hatch, listed at $15,399. The 1.8 Turbo was not available in 1987 or 1988, being replaced by the V6.
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