If you are reading this, first off thank you. I appreciate your time and hope you find some amount of enjoyment from this blog in a world that seems set on making people miserable.

I should probably start with introducing myself, I am Matt, owner of Shift Photography. At the time of writing I am 32, living in King’s Lynn, Norfolk. Why King’s Lynn of all places? First off it’s pretty cheap to buy a house here, so that helps, but mainly because I grew up in Suffolk I have now moved north of the border to Norfolk.

When thinking back to what started my affection for cars I have a singular distinct memory. In my bedroom grown up I have 2 posters, a Ferrari F40 and a Ferrari F50. I to this day have no idea where they came from but I had them and they were the coolest things on the planet (and still are) and since then I have wanted to learn more about them.

The next stage in my automotive passion development came in 2001, like most kids of the early 90’s The Fast and The Furious was a huge part of my youth and added the love of Japanese cars into the mix, heightened by the release of Tokyo Drift. The somewhat obtainability of those cars compared with the F40 and F50 of my childhood drew me to them, and like many I fell in love with Skylines.

When it came time to start driving I ended up in my parents car, a Peugeot 107, whilst not exactly the most exciting first car, it was a car, and growing up in the middle of nowhere that was enough. That car also brought me my first breakdown, driving back to university to resit an exam I had the exhaust drop off on the motorway, which was a fun experience.

After university I did what any sensible person does which is move half the country away for work, in doing so I needed a vehicle. At this point I’d never worked on cars so I opted for the boring, but safe option of financing a new car (the only new car I have ever bought) and plumped for a Vauxhall Adam. Once again, not exactly exciting but functional and pretty cheap, which when you have just left university is pretty important.

That car is also the only car I have ever sold too, 3 years in I decided I wanted (needed) something more comfortable at motorway speeds covering long distances. My job at the time had me driving about 25,000 miles a year and doing that in a 1.2 Vauxhall Adam wasn’t ideal. Being 3 years into a job I still didn’t have buckets of cash lying about, I wanted a VW Scirocco (I still do) but these were too expensive for the model I wanted at the time. Instead I went for a Vauxhall Astra GTC 2 litre diesel. Since owning that car I have done roughly 70,000 miles in it, so safe to say it’s been a work horse for me.

After a few years of owning the Astra I started to get that itch for a new car, for a while I toyed with the idea of buying a 6th gen Mustang or a Scirocco R, then came the idea of buying a Skyline GTS-T. Then I found what I settled on, keeping the Astra as my daily and buying a Nissan Stagea. I ended up making the purchase in 2020, however this was not a COVID purchase. I had started the search in October 2019. I was pretty particular about what I wanted, an RS Four S or 260RS (the only factory manuals they made). They are fairly unusual, but not impossible to find, finding them not heavily modified is a bit of a challenge though.

I missed out on 2 of them through auction, one blue 260RS that just went for crazy money (at the time) and a white RS Four S that ended up a bit more than I wanted to pay for it. Third time around I got lucky, a white RS Four S with 178,000km on the clock, lowered, on Nissan Altima wheels. Pretty much how I wanted it. Since buying it I have done nearly 20,000 lm in the car, including a trip to Spa in 2024 to see WEC.

Another few years passed after purchasing the Stagea and I got a hankering for a “new” car. Initially I was thinking about getting a tow vehicle as I wanted a track car as it this point I was working from home and had been for several years and was going to for the foreseeable future. We also lived back out in the country at this point with several animals so a pickup started piquing my interest, so obviously I bought a Jaguar XJ X350. There is a bit of a story behind this though. This car was my dads, he’d had it for over 10 years but they were looking to get rid of it as they were reducing from 2 cars to 1. They offered it to me at about what a garage would have part-ex’d it for so I took it.

There was a problem though, I now had 3 cars, none of them can tow anything meaningful. Therefore I did the most logical thing, in 2024 I bought a tow car, a £1,800 Range Rover Sport L320 from auction. Possibly my biggest mistake of a car purchase but also one of the best things I have bought. It has needed a new turbo, air suspension fixing and a new windscreen so it’s cost me quite a lot so far. However with the birth of my child it works as a family car, moving large things car and tow car all in one.

So that is the current fleet, Astra GTC, Nissan Stagea, Jag XJ and Range Rover Sport. Currently the Astra is being converted into a track car (yes, a diesel), the Stagea is about to go in for some pretty major work, the Jag is normally my daily and the Range Rover is the family car.

In the next blog I will be bringing you an update on the Stagea and its major work (it might be getting a bit faster), so look forward to that!