Team Cream’s
Sentra Silhouette
Being handed the keys to a car that you’ve never seen before and given 24 hours to build it into something fast is a bloody hectic task — but that’s what the lads at Team Cream had signed themselves up for at this year’s nats, entering the Interclub Build Off. Riding on the spice-of-life wavelength, they had already dreamt up a handful of gnarly creations to get the crowds riled up, but nothing could be set in stone until the car was handed over. Chief creamer Sean Jones told us, “We couldn’t plan too much. Kelvin had the wheels, 14x10-inch and 14x12-inch Watanabes, and we were real keen to make those fit something to make a street-style bosozoku car.” What they ended up with was an N13 Nissan Sentra — not quite your typical boso base car, and also not the 4x114.3 stud pattern the Watanabes fit onto either. That was resolved thanks to the boys at 360link, and, with a bit of Kiwi ingenuity and some leftover MDF sheets from a display stand, the boxy body was destined to switch tracks after group chat banter lead to V 2.0 — a silhouette racer!
The first step was chucking the springs out the window and cutting off the bump stops for the appropriate low, before taking the reciprocating saw to the guards and cutting those suckers right out to clear the wheels. A few kilograms of metal lighter, it was then time to add the MDF — a shitload of it. Its shape progressed fast, and it
wasn’t long before the boys threw around the idea of chopping the roof off, although it was um’d and ah’d over, as no one was sure if it would pass scrutineering for the drags the following day. That decision was soon resolved courtesy of the liquid courage of many rowdy beers at GT Refinishers, and a Facebook vote, resulting in the roof being removed and the body being slammed to oblivion in spectacular fashion. Burning on into the very late hours of the morning, the team did seem a touch worse for wear the following day.
There had been doubts that it could be pulled off from within the group, but, in the end, the build only took around seven hours before it hit GT for the finishing touches and a hearty lick of paint — which drew heavy inspiration from the Brock Racing Enterprises (BRE) themes of yesteryear’s Datsun race cars. “The whole thing was done very much winging it,” said Sean. “I guess we all just knew what we wanted and worked hard, and it pretty much fell together.” Losing the drag race to the UMF-built competitor, the slow-but-stylish silhouette Sentra produced a 22.4-second pass after blasting the musical horn the length of the strip — top work, team! It was enough to win the crowd over and take the title, too. Not that it was about winning, it was simply about having fun with a great bunch of peeps.