LOOK GOOD, DRIVE BETTER
SUPER-STYLING SR20 S13
“I’M A FINER-DETAIL TYPE OF PERSON; I LIKE THINGS TO BE QUITE NICE”
Building a car means something different to everyone. For some, it’s as simple as slapping in a set of Makita one-ways and bolting up whatever set of wheels you had sitting in the back shed, just so you can get that track-day fix, while, for others, it means a series of questionable life choices over the better part of a decade that see you left with one big pile of rad. But, whatever a build may mean to you, for one Christchurch local it was all about the vibe of getting amongst it and being able to say, yeah, I turned that pile of nothing into what it is now.
You could say that Russell Major has been into his Silvias since day dot. He’s owned one since before he had a licence, purchasing his first S13 mere days after his 15th birthday. It was on that particular chassis that he developed his love for drifting, and the humble little CA18DETpowered S-chassis saw him contest more than a few seasons of Drift South before it was all but tapped out on the build front.
“The first one was a mix of a road car and track car which I’d had since I was quite young. After a few years, I wanted to keep going bigger, and better, but it reached a point where it wasn’t worth continuing on that car, and [it was] better to start from scratch,” Russell recalls. “So, while the first was still for sale, I picked up this rolling body from Turners which had been in a police chase with the original owner, and started redoing all the stuff that I didn’t like from the first time around.”
While not a mechanic or fabricator by trade, Russell wanted to really push his skill set and learn all that was possible from this new car. Which is why, where we would normally mention who had done what on each aspect of the car, the short and sharp of it is that mostly everything is a result of his own handiwork. “I just jumped off the deep end and got stuck into it,” he says.
While the first car proved to be a fun, cheap, and underpowered base to learn to drive in, for Russell, the easiest option for the new car was always going to be an SR20. Although he had briefly tossed around the idea of building an SR20VET heart, the call was made to save some