lol...we got those stupid auto-belts in the 89-94 maximas too. worst idea ever.

 

nissan's official reason for the KA motors in US S chassis cars was so that 15 years down the road, retards could buy them, spend assloads of money on swapping over to a motor that came out of a junked car halfway around the world, and have a legitimate reason for doing so, which is...

"because it's a truck motor". (which we all know is entirely false and retarded)

but seriously im not taking any shots at SR owners, i think nissan just generally sucked in general up until about 6 years ago. that and they were skurred of themselves bringing over the CA/SR cars, and failing miserably. granted, the s chassis after 95 failed horribly anyways, but i guess nissan feared since it wasnt a big contender in the US, that it wasnt confident enough to think the sr would win over enough buyers here.

oh well, seems it still turned out alright in the end, it just sucks that end is a $2500 addition for it to happen.

oh and IMO, if nissan was paying attention, they could have realized that if they were stopping production of the Z in 96 (or at least importation of it to the US), they could have brought out the S14 in '95 with an SR in it. it could have failed too, but i figure it would be a worthy shot...and if it would have worked, you never know, nissan might have been able to keep it over here with the S15, and there could even be one in production today...

 

IMO the Z failed because the twin turbo version MSRP'd for $45k. That's steep any way you look at it. Look at Nissan's line up today and you'll see that $45k will buy you almost any car they make, including luxury Infiniti models. If they did the S14 K's at $28k (which I think is the rough Yen conversion?) they would have sold their asses off. Of course fear of failure probably prevented this. At that price point and configuration, it would have absolutely no competition as there was nothing like that in 1996. The only thing close was the MR2 turbo, which ended in 1995, but was also a true coupe and not a 2+2 like the Silvia.

This reminds me of a similar story about a car that came out in late 2001; the WRX. Subaru took a huge risk bringing the WRX over. They were ready for failure, but Subaru was sucking in the US and wanted to try it. Subaru of America had been telling the Japan office to do it for years to no avail. We all know what happened next. With no other turbo AWD cars on the road, the WRX took off. In 2002, it sold >36k units, 50% more than the 24k that they planned to export. In just that one year they sold more 2002 WRX's than all other Imprezas to date combined. Now, every car they make has a turbo option (Tribeca is an SUV and doesn't count).

 

I know why my s13 has a KA....

 

damn good thread, alot of good points as well. its also has to do with the american people and the market which gets the biggest share. toyota did the same thing as nissan as far as not bringing alot of the cool stuff over here. but not quite to the exstent that nissan did. alteast toyota took a gamble and broght over the ae86, alltrac celica's and mk1 mr2's. both cars we could easily not have gotten. but did we get the ae92 corolla with the gze? no. 20v anything?....no. st205 celica?.....no. but alot of these dicisions are the fault of the amercan people. toyota broght the cars over, but they just didn'tr sell. and nissan saw what toyota was doing and decided to not even try.