Chris Visscher

My name is Chris Visscher, here is a bit of my car related history.

I was born in the Netherlands in the year that the Ferrari GTO, the Maserati Sebring and the Alfa Romeo Giulia came to the market.

As the youngest son of a Simca dealer (a French brand, now part of PSA) the first word I could pronounce was Simca. In 1973 the Simca 1000 Rally 2 came to the market, and as a kid I was really impressed by this small boxy car with 2 double Weber carburetors and tweaked suspension.

Another car that got my interest as a kid was the Alfa Romeo Giulia Super. At school when I was bored I was always drawing the front of the Giulia with the 2 big and 2 small headlights. The first time I saw a Datsun 240Z was a bit painful. I was riding a bicycle with a friend when he looked backwards and screamed “A Ferrari”! I looked back and as a result we collided, and I fall with my bike in a barbed wire. After some tears we walked to the car, and it was not a Ferrari but an orange Datsun 240Z, I never forgot the amazing design of the car. Due to the fact that only a few were sold in the Netherlands, the car was hardly seen.

While attending high school, I was always working in the dealership of my brothers. I attended Business School and in the end of 1984 at the age of 22 I became the youngest Renault dealer of the Netherlands. Really loved the brand and their Renault Sport branch and also the Alpine’s A110.
As a Renault dealer and later as we became a Nissan dealer in 2003, I was always trying to give my own twist to the cars by making our own special editions. Being always busy with special cars was not unnoticed, and in 2006 we became the only Renault Sport dealer outside France. I had a nice collection of classic Renaults and Alpines:

In 2008, I bought my first Datsun 240Z in the US, unfortunately, I didn’t have enough knowledge to buy the right car.
In 2008, we became also the first and only GT-R dealer in the Netherlands. As a logical result of this, we started in 2013 as importer for the Netherlands for Infiniti.

Also in 2013 I became part of the Alpine Advisory Board, together with a member from the UK I was the only non-French member. We gave input on the design and development of the NEW Alpine A110 that was introduced in 2017, Carlos Tavares was the chairman of the group.

I’m very proud that in 2014 we became the first sponsor from Max Verstappen in Formula 3 and that we recognized his talent. Now it seems very obvious, but back in 2013/ 2014 apparently it was not. In 2014, he drove for the first time a Formula 1 car at an event from which we were the name giving sponsor “2014 VKV City Racing”

In 2014, we had also another project that was absolutely not relevant for the business, but it was a lot of fun. We created a street legal Renault Megane RS (310 HP) that was made as light as possible, and because of that could do the same lap times on track as a Nissan GT-R and a Porsche GT3. Doing this I learned how important the weight is for the dynamics of a car and that horsepower is important but not the only way to go.

Finally, in 2019 when our company was the largest Renault-Nissan dealer from the Netherlands, I started to sell my shares to be able to do other things.

So in 2016 I bought my second Datsun 240Z, my…. my ….. I got really intrigued by the car. The design is incredible, the way how it is build is very smart and logical. The sound, once you put some triples on it and a good exhaust, is incredible. For me, it is one of the most amazing cars out there. Basically, it is a homologation special. In the early seventies people in the US put the car on a lift, changed the brakes, the struts and sway bars and tracked them. With the other parts from Datsun Competition, you could make a monster out of it in 4 hours. A nice story about that is the Omega 240Z, build by Car&Driver in 1970. To learn about the S30’s, I took some very early cars apart to understand the car and to understand how it was developed over the years. I searched the internet for special parts and knowledge.
In Europe there were only a few people I know that were working on S30s like Romas Tamulevicius, Sean Dezart, Jacub Nurzaj, Duncan Pearcey and Ad Verkuijlen. I travelled several times to the States to meet people like Rob Fuller, Jim Frederick, Bob Sharp, John Morton, Carl Beck and several other people all over the US, and they shared their knowledge with me and many became friends.

In 2018 Kats Endo visited me in Utrecht in the Netherlands. We had a great time talking about Zs. Later that year I went to Japan to meet him, was able to see his nice collection of S30s and even his PS30. He let me drive in his Z432, but I was a bit shy to push the throttle. Also saw his ZG in a museum next to 2 Toyota 2000 GTs. Saw a lot of PS30s that were for sale. Learned a lot and had a great time.

I realized that those cars were produced for the Japanese local market, the North American and Canadian markets, Western Europe and in total the car was shipped to 6 continents. So I more and more was thinking about the car as an S30, because that is in all the VINs of the cars build between 1969-1978 (Although in Japan the last years there was S31 in the VINs).
I started restoring HLS30-00023, but during the process I realized how difficult it was. I not only just wanted to restore it, but my ambition was to make it “as it came out of the factory”.
Every detail, if you see it or not, had to be correct. You need a line-up of very dedicated craftsman and years of experience.

From 2016 on, I started using Zs for trips and as a daily in the summer. Also trips to France, Italy and Switzerland. Those trips were between 3.000 and 4.000 km each.

I also did the Tulpenrally in 2021 with a Datsun 240Z. It started in Bordeaux in France, and it ended after a week finally in Maastricht in the Netherlands. My 919 yellow has a special “Intrax” suspension, a Silvia gearbox. An LSD, and about 230 HP. My navigator wanted to know everything for sure. So I needed to drive a lot and fast, it was great fun!

Then I crossed paths with Gustav Oplasnik from “Datsun Hungary”.
We met several times in Hungary and the Netherlands, and I was really impressed by his experience, knowledge and passion for S30s. At that moment, he had already a track record of restoring 45 S30s.
We realized that together we could make our S30 dreams come true. In the beginning, I flew almost every 2 weeks to Budapest to follow the restorations and to define the level of our work together with Gustav. We also started to make parts that are essential but not available any more, like the fuel tanks.

The story became bigger and bigger and the desire was to build a platform to connect and to provide the S30 community from all over the world, and S30.world was born.
Again, I crossed path with another important person in this story: Florian Steinl (DE). He was working on his own platform, but after meeting several times, he decided to join me and to focus on building the S30.world platform. Soon followed by Nils Ehrat (CH), Alan Thomas (UK), Kats Endo (JP), Jon Prinn (UK), Mike Brame (USA), Jos van der Aart (NL) and Jeff Agner (USA). And as a bonus, we have Miyazaki San as a member of honor! Here some pictures made at our last meeting! We just started working on the platform/website, but with all the people from the team that are helping us, we are motivated to create something very special and in the main time gives us a lot of fun.

So follow our work and visit our S30.world website, where you can see restored cars, our “Masterpieces”, our library and first paint cars the “Icons” and the heroes who plaid a part in our history.