Telling something about myself is not always easy. I have already experienced too much, too much has already been relevant in my life.
But there are three things I want to talk about here.
Family, work and a great passion for old Japanese sports cars.

But let's start at the beginning.
As someone who grew up knowing that cars come from Japan and who was taught that even in the 70s and 80s in Germany you could drive a Nissan with great enthusiasm while your neighbors all drove Opels or Mercedes, you might have a slightly different view of the world.

This early introduction to the Nissan brand, or "Datsun" as it was known in Germany at the time, had a very strong influence on me.
Not only was my interest in these cars awakened, they simply play a bigger role in my life than they do for other people.

This early childhood experience began with the fact that there were several Datsun Cherry E10 vans in the family from a very early age. All in red.
Practical, cheap and rare.
We had them though. Nissan Micras were there too. And Nissan Sunnys and Datsun Specials and a Prairie and an Almera, several Primeras and and so on.
Nissan was a thing. And still is today.

So it's no wonder that at some point, after a few "new" cars such as a 1986 Micra K10 or two Nissan Sunny GTIs, something old had to move into the garage. A Z was needed. Undoubtedly the coolest of all Nissan models.
But where could you get one? 17 years ago, there was no Facebook group full of these cars. You never saw them on the roads. Nobody knew about them and generally it wasn't as if anyone owned one so you could see it, drive it and touch it.

None of that existed at the time.

What there was, however, was time and the internet and platforms on which cars were offered for sale.
But few Zs. Actually none.
Until one day there was a car in Berlin. And one in Mannheim. And another one somewhere else. All of them were full of holes, forgotten and really far away. Driving? None of them did.

This tragedy went on for a while.
I stared at the computer, searched internet forums, looked for postings.

And one day I discovered a 260Z 2+2 in my home town of Frankfurt.
Parked and forgotten since the mid-80s.
Not far away and definitely an exciting story, the owner had moved several hundred kilometers away in the meantime and had simply forgotten about the car there for several decades.
Only the owner of the garage reminded him that the rent had not been paid for a long time and that there was a car sitting there gathering dust.

So the car had to go. And I wanted to buy it.
Fortunately, we quickly came to an agreement and the car ended up driving home on its own wheels, as is typical for Nissans.
What followed was an odyssey of repair shops, so-called experts and lots of spare parts.
But I stuck with it and helped the car to be reborn.

But this one car was not to be the last. It was followed by a 280Z, a 240Z and another 240Z.
The last one in particular was to become a larger project and at some point undertook a journey from the USA to Lithuania as an empty shell.
Here, the signs of the times were skillfully ironed from the wrinkled bodywork to pave the way for a second life.

But that will certainly be the subject of another post.

When I think about it, all my Nissans were “projects” of some kind. Cars that were long forgotten and were put back on the road in my ownership.
My Micra K10, for example, was intended to be used as a car on a caravan and then used for holiday trips.
But the owner didn't do that for long, and the car ended up in a dealer's backyard for many years.
I bought it because the condition was surprisingly good, and the clutch had been replaced a few kilometers earlier.

My Sunny GTI was also such a candidate. The elderly gentleman who previously owned the car only used it for short trips, never drove faster than 100 km/h because the fuel consumption was too high for him and otherwise left the car with him for a very long time and almost forgot about it in his garage.

My 280Z didn't get any love either.
The dealer I bought it from tried to repair the “engine damage” for several years and then eventually moved the car somewhere else. He couldn't get the problems under control.
I helped the car back on its wheels and after a days hours it was driving as it should.

My first 240Z was similar. It was dismantled in 1990, tried to be repaired and stood around forgotten since then.

I probably have too big a heart for old, neglected cars from Japan.

During all these projects, I craved knowledge. I searched the internet for details. I talked to the “old dogs” in the scene and tried to find out everything I wanted to know about my cars.
But unfortunately, everyone told me something different and in forums I found more contradictions than quick help.

So I started collecting all the information I could get my hands on, buying books, studying parts lists, and over the last 15 years, I've accumulated huge stacks of old literature.
Fortunately, my computer's hard drive was always large enough to store all these brochures, advertisements, and workshop manuals in a digitized form.

With the help of kind people like Nils Ehrat, Alan Thomas and Kats Endo, I was able to consolidate my knowledge and understand more and more contexts.
I started a German-language portal with Datsun Autowerk and published long articles on specific topics.
The effort paid off.
By chance, I came into contact with Chris Visscher and we realized that we had the same passion.
Since that day, we have been combining our strengths and expanding the S30.world platform day by day.