I love the idea of adding your own personality into a car, everyone does this in their own unique way. That doesn’t mean I love all builds, I have preferences, I’m sure you do too, and that’s fine. As much as I can appreciate the work that goes into some of the crazy wide body builds. They are not my style. I am more of an OEM+ kind of person. I like keeping things as factory looking as possible but modernising and upgrading.

That OEM+ car has always been my vision for the Nissan Stagea, I don’t want to make a drift weapon, or even a track monster. It’s always been a car I just want to drive.

So where am I with this? 

When I bought it back in 2020 it had some of the work done, larger (but still Nissan) wheel, 18’s instead of the factory 16’s, spacers so the fitment looks correct, coilovers, Recaro SR3 Confetti drivers seat, aftermarket head unit and sub. Quite tasty already. Since it has come into my ownership it has had a new custom exhaust fitted, an Android Auto head unit fitted (so it no longer thinks it’s in Japan) and general maintenance to bring to back to OEM standard, the HICAS has had new steering arms, new drop links, new coils on the suspension to mention a few bits.

After 190,000km on the original turbo it was starting to be unhappy, so it was in need of replacement. I could swap a like for like turbo on but they are increasingly hard to find in OEM spec and it doesn’t quite fit with the vision I have for the car. I equally don’t want to put on some huge turbo and make it unusable as a daily-able vehicle. After some discussion with friends I settled on a hybrid turbo set up, this allows for a decent power bump whilst still keeping it close to factory specification.

However it’s not all that easy, being a pre-OBD-II car you then really need to change the ECU, provide it with new sensors for the ECU, a new fuel pump and fit new injectors. This turbo change is now getting pretty expensive.

I opted to get a specialist to carry out the work, whilst I can fix and bodge many things, I’d like this to be done properly, especially the new tune. For this I enlisted J’s Garage for the work. As I write this the car is currently being worked on and I am impatiently waiting for updates. The plan is for around 400hp, which should be more than enough to embarrass a few cars off the line.

Once I get it back, what’s next? First off, I want to enjoy it over summer. Once summer is finished there’s some interior trim work to be done, the handbrake has seen better days, there’s a nick out of a door card, the gearstick boot cover has seen better days. I’d also like to get the seatbelts redone as well. My vision is for a white car with purple accents, it’s not everyone’s taste, but I think the seatbelts in purple will fit my mental image.

There is also some exterior work to be done, after 190,000km there is some paint that has chipped out, a couple of dents in panels and scrapes on the front and rear bumper that all need to be sorted out. By no means is this meant to be a concourse car so it won’t be a full bare metal respray but something to bring its condition up a little.

Once that is all done I am sure something else will have gone wrong or I will find something else to do. Cars like these end up as never ending projects, much to my wife’s annoyance.