Having worked since the age of 16, and always trying to live life to the full whenever I was back at home, cars have always been a kind of release for me. At the age of 20 I decided to buy a car that, to me, stood out from the crowd and was within my budget: a UK 1993 300ZX Twin Turbo, it was to be my 21st birthday present to myself.

It was this car that really gave me the addiction to speed that seems to have driven me to modifying my current car to its present state.

After 18 months of ownership, I took the 300ZX for a service in St. Helens and it was there that I first saw the Skyline GT-R. That garage was Middlehurst Motorsport and they were the official dealer of the UK R33 GT-R, of which there were only 100 made.

I remember looking round a dark blue Skyline in the showroom and a salesman asking the questions they always do: “Is everything OK?” and “Do you need any help?”

I stood there chatting for about an hour about the car and was told how the four wheel drive system and four wheel steer systems worked. And then finally the question everyone wants to hear popped up, “Would you like to take one out for a test drive?’.

Hardly the kind of person to say no, I jumped in the passenger seat of their demo car and was driven out towards a dual carriageway by Andy Middlehurst. Many of you will have heard of Andy, but at the time, he was just another salesman to me and I thought nothing of him opening the car up in a straight line.

You’ll have to picture if you can, I’m in the passenger seat in a brand new £50K Skyline with a salesman, complete with pencil behind his ear, approaching a roundabout at a speed I would have never have dreamt of attempting. My initial thoughts were ones of “there isn’t an exit on the other side of the roundabout, it’s left or right and we are carrying a lot of speed here” which I personally would have been trying to shed a few hundred feet earlier.

The next thing I know, and without warning, I have my face almost pressed against the window as we are now very sideways going around the roundabout but facing the centre of it. Not once or twice, but three times we circled the roundabout with all the tyres fighting for grip. Andy looked over at me, he must have been laughing to himself inside, and pointed out the torque meter. The gauge that shows how much torque is being distributed to the front wheels was going from 0-50 constantly as the computer fought to keep the power down on the road.

The most memorable words from Andy of the whole event, as I was obviously grinning like a Cheshire cat, were “welcome to the Skyline smile!”

It was that experience which led me to buy my first Skyline. At the time I couldn’t afford a brand new one, as £50K was too hefty for me. Fortunately they also had a couple of imported cars and I purchase a Sparkling Silver R33 GT-R a couple of months later once I’d sold the 300ZX.

Six months later and I took my import R33 back for its first service. I got chatting to Andy again and they had a couple of UK R33’s that needed selling before Nissan launched the R34 and was offered a substantial discount for buying a UK car.

So, on February the 15th 1999 I took delivery of the car I still own today, a Sonic Silver UK R33 GT-R V-spec number 96 of 100.

As those who have driven the Skyline will know, standard power is soon not enough and that’s where the next part of my story starts…

read the feedback section >>
feedback, tell us what you think >>>>>>