Why did I buy a 2003 Nissan 350Z?

Ironically the primary motivations for me buying a 20+ year old Japanese sports car don’t have that much to do with the car itself. I found myself chatting with my wife one day about my streak of meloncholy mornings and realized that I needed a social outlet as well as a creative outlet.

The social outlet

My social life basically evaporated during the COVID pandemic and I was struggling to rebuild it. Many of my friends moved to be near their families or to pursue the next chapter of their lives. A lot of my favorite places to hang out closed or went out of business.

I found that most of my remaining social life revolved around people I knew from work, so I wanted something that I could use to connect me to a new group of people. I have a decent amount of history in the automotive industry, and sometimes I find that I enjoy passing on that knowledge and experience to others.

Consequently, I thought it could be a good idea to join a car club. In the USA, the primary clubs that I knew of that could be reliably found in multiple cities in nearly every state are BMW Car Club of America (BMWCCA), Porsche Club of America (PCA), and the Nissan Z Car Club of America (ZCCA). There are others, but many of them do not hold meetings primarily for the purpose of socialization or the vehicles for said club are outside of my price range.

These clubs also had appeal because I already had some local BMW, Porsche, and Z car owners in my network. It is important to note that these clubs also do not require owning a vehicle from the brand to be a member of the club, you’ll just fit in better if you do!

The creative outlet

Now, buying a car just to socialize is a very big commitment, so I can’t pretend that was the only reason. The additional reason I had for making the purchase is that I wanted something to tinker on in my free time that would give me the opportunity to develop or exercise various skills that I’m interested in. Being that I was a BMW Master Tech in a previous life, I have some experience turning wrenches, but since then I’ve developed additional knowledge in the realm of software, computer hardware, and CAD design and manufacturing. I don’t have many personal areas of interest that I could also use for socialization that could integrate those skills outside of work, so the idea of a project car where I could make my own ideas come to life and share them with others also had appeal.

The purchase decision

So now I have a goal in mind… how did I end up purchasing this car? A long time ago I put roughly $2K into a stock and forgot about it, and I happened to check it last year and it had grown to roughly $15K. I figured I’d use this as a hefty down payment on a car or buy one cash. Well, if you are an auto enthusiast or have looked at car prices in the last year, you know that $15K isn’t actually a “hefty” down payment for any new sports car. On the “cheaper” end of the spectrum, a new Mazda Miata or GR86 is still going to run you more than $40K after taxes and interest. That’s before any additional modifications, projects, event attendance (the fun stuff we’re buying this car to do in the first place). Actually getting into BMW / Porsche / New Z territory is going to add tens of thousands of dollars to to that entry price. Also, sports car clubs tend to have events at race tracks where you are able to legally receive education on how to drive your sports car really fast. This isn’t an activity I would want to frequently engage in with a vehicle that the bank still owns (yes, supplementary insurance is available but it’s even more expensive for new cars), and it would be a bummer to have to abstain from such activities until the vehicle was paid off, so the solution seemed clear: we’re buying a car cash.

Fortunately there were (and still are at the time of writing) a handful of fun cars at the $15K and below mark. The following is a list of cars I considered. This isn’t an exhaustive listing of sub $15K sports cars, just the cars I was interested in at the time.

For car club affiliated options:

• Late 80s to early 2000s BMW 3 Series (probably not a M3 though)
• Porsche 944 (I really like the S2, non-turbo cars)
• Nissan 350Z (Z33) and 370Z (Z34)

For “black sheep” options:

• First generation Scion FR-S / Toyota FT86 / Subaru BRZ (yes, one car with three names)
• Older Mazda MX-5 Miata (generations with codename NA, NB, or NC)
• Toyota MR-S (third generation “W30” MR2 Spyder)

If you are familiar with cars, you’ll notice that there is a bias to these choices. They are all rear wheel drive. I have a bias for enthusiast cars that I can describe reasonably concisely:

The formula for an interesting sports car to me is a vehicle that is not too heavy, can fit wide tires without [destructively] modifying the bodywork, is mid-engine rear-wheel-drive (MR) with double wishbone / short long arm (SLA) / multilink suspension in the front and rear, and a limited slip differential (LSD), or has a good aftermarket differential available for a reasonable price. Some enthusiasts may wonder why I didn’t mention transmission options. I’m actually not a manual transmission absolutist, I think modern dual clutch and high performance automatic transmissions are pretty good and don’t necessarily remove from the driving experience, however manuals tend to be appealing due to lower on average maintenance and repair costs.

Why the Z33?

The Z33 is most of those things for a pretty good bargain of a deal:

The car’s weight (roughly 3200 lbs for the trim I have) is not unreasonable for what it is. It weighs the same as BMW M3s of the same era and has similar power.

It can fit 275/35/18 tires on all four corners without rubbing or modification to the body (for most cars these would be considered quite large).

The car isn’t MR in the traditional sense, but front-mid-engine rear-wheel-drive (FMR). I think this is a fair compromise, as there are still many great, if not legendary sports cars that are FMR¹ designs. This also will make me less wary of letting other people drive the car, as MR cars have a reputation for being a bit less forgiving at the limits of traction.

It has multilink suspension in the front and rear

The vehicle I purchased comes with a six speed manual transmission that is well regarded overall, and the updated version from the later production years (that, at the time of writing, is still available for purchase new from Nissan) is even more robust.

The trim on the vehicle I purchased comes with a Viscous LSD, which is not the best but better than nothing at all. Many upgrades are available though.

It also fits in with one of the three car clubs I was interested in joining.

All of that said, I was able to buy this car from the original owner for $10,000. It also only had about 100K miles on the odometer at the time of purchase.

Why not the others?

The other cars are quite good, just not quite what I wanted at this time. This is less of a list of complaints and more of an opportunity for me to write a little about my favorite cars.

BMW 3 Series

I’ve owned a BMW 3 series before (a E30 325i, to be precise) and have worked on and driven probably thousands of others. They’re great cars and it wouldn’t surprise me if I ended up owning a 3 series again, but I was always aware of the compromises made for the front suspension (McPherson strut, although really well designed on the newer cars), the struggles with tire options, as well as the high cost of replacement parts and the premium charges from the aftermarket vendors just because of that Roundel (the blue and white propeller logo) on the hood. I can work on these cars with my eyes closed though, so sometimes it’s still quite tempting. The lower trim E36s (early to late 90s 3 series) are mechanically quite similar to their M3 counterpart, so there is a lot of cool swapping that can happen there, but those cars also are known to need some chassis or body repair due to subframe or other mounting points failing, which makes the the E46 or E90 (early 2000s 3 series) more tempting.

Porsche 944

I adore the Porsche 944 S2. I’m a sucker for pop-up-headlights and late 80s design sports cars. I just wanted something that I could spend more time driving and less time restoring. It also doesn’t tick some of the other technical boxes but I don’t care because it has so much cool factor.

First Generation Toyota 86

The first gen Scion FRS / Toyota 86 / Subaru BRZ is honestly not a bad car, but the only ones in the price range I was looking for were… eagerly longing for their return to the earth from which they were wrought. They were all wrecked / maimed / abused, and nothing like the condition I was able to find clean Z33s in. The first gen “ToyoBarus” are also fairly underpowered, so that’s more money to spend just to get them on par with other cars in their class. They also don’t tick some of the other technical boxes.

Mazda MX-5 Miata

The MX-5 Miata is great on paper. FMR layout. Good LSD. Double wishbone / mulilink suspension. Lightweight. Violence is required to fit large tires but the car is so light you don’t really need anything crazy. The only problem is I just don’t fit in many of the older cars comfortably. The Miata cultists “enthusiasts” will tell me that I can cut out the floorpan and part of the transmission tunnnel to make me fit, but they are often mystified when I reply “why don’t I just spend that time and money with a car that fits properly?” It’s fun to joke about with the Miata drivers in my personal circle, but to people that aren’t in this hobby it really does sound like a bizarre idea. Also, clean Miatas can still be pricey. Prices are all over the place last I checked, seems that there are a lot of neat special options that you’d need to be a Miata cult member enthusiast to properly appreciate.

Toyota W30 MR2 (MR-S)

As for the Toyota MR-S… I’m not going to lie, I actually still want one and might end up buying one in the next few years. It has a traditional MR layout, and despite being roughly the size of the Miata it has more legroom than the 350Z (which is really my main problem with 2 seaters since I have very long legs) and has similar headroom when equipped with a hardtop. It has McPherson strut suspension in the front and rear, which is not that common on sports cars, but it doesn’t seem to hold it back due to it’s excellent chassis balance and light weight. This car cheats when it comes to fitting wider tires because all four fenders / quarter panels are bolted on instead of welded or glued, making it one of the only cars at this price bracket that can be fitted with a widebody with zero cutting of sheetmetal. It’s kinda fortunate that it looks so unassuming (at least in stock form, take a look at the APR widebody kit if you want a glimpse of what it could look like), as that probably has caused people to look towards the Porsche Boxster instead of this car which has helped keep the prices low.

Nissan 370Z (Z34)

The Z34 is quite sharp and has more power along with a few other interesting features, but cleaner examples were still a bit north of $15K at the time I was looking. Also, they have some issues with the Concentric Clutch Slave Cylinder (CSC) failing prematurely that I simply did not want to deal with at the time. The early Z33s like mine have a traditional clutch release fork and bearing instead of the concentric hydraulic release bearing. For the non-car people in the audience, this means if (er, when) the hydraulic cylinder fails on the Z33 it’s a simple matter of sliding under the car, swapping the cylinder, then bleeding the system (I was able to do this on multiple cars in a parking lot when I was a teenager). The Z34, on the other hand, requires removing the transmission to replace the failed hydraulic release bearing. Is this within my skillset? Yes. Not something I want to spend a weekend doing if I can avoid it though, and definitely not something I want to be doing on the ground at a track day.

So… how’s it working out?

Social Stuff

I purchased the vehicle in November of 2024. I became a member of the local ZCCA chapter in January 2025 and made it to every meeting for the year of 2025 and gotten to know a few interesting people along the way, so the social aspect has been a success. I didn’t get to go to ZCON this year, but maybe I can attend that in 2026.

Creative / Technical Stuff

I’ve done some basic mods / upgrades to the car to sort out some aging components. I probably won’t be doing any in-depth writeups on those since it was mostly just “follow the instructions.”

However, there were some interesting projects of note that I will write about more in depth here:

1. As of writing, I think I’m the first person to ever put a mechanical 1.5 way LSD from a RZ34 into a Z33 (and I don’t believe it has been swapped into any other Nissan FM cars yet either). I did a basic writeup of my findings on r/350z, but I’ll likely be doing a more in-depth writeup here since it’s easier to edit and I have no love for social media platforms these days.
2. I’ve successfully reverse engineered my first CAN Bus signals using the Z33 as my test subject. I experimented with a few different approaches in order to be able to squint at the data and figure out which patterns were correlating with which changes on the car, and I think it will make for an interesting read. At the very least, I want to write down some of what I did so I don’t forget how I did it (or have a quick reference for if / when I do forget).
3. I’ve succesfully created my first piece of hardware in CAD and had it CNC machined from aluminum. Doing a writeup interests me because I think it really highlights just how accessible the design and manufacturing process has become. The end product is only a small cosmetic item, but it was a great educational opportunity and has boosted my confidence for tackling some projects I have planned for the future.

Speaking of future plans, I hope to elucidate that in the next blog post. I fear this one has already gone on for longer than I initially planned. I hope this has been an interesting read!