One of the most popular platforms in the tuning market. Whether you’re looking to go road racing,auto cross, drifting, drag, or just plain fast the Nissan 240sx is one of the best giant killers around.
Introduced in 1989 the 240sx has everything a great sports car should. Rear-wheel drive, independent suspension, disc brakes, and a light weight chassis. Extremely popular in its native Japan the 240sx has been well known among many for years as an ideal tuning platform. The one major drawback however as seen by many is that when it came to our shores in the U.S. Nissan loaded these cars with the KA24DE which by all means is a perfectly decent engine and has a lot of tuning capability, but considering that in Japan they were selling with the much more popular and more powerful SR20DET its hard to not feel like we got cheated a little.
Fortunately for us however one of the best parts about the 240sx and most Nissans for that matter is that they are amazingly good candidates for engine swaps. The most popular swap around is the turbo charged SR20DET, but people are also cramming in everything from skyline motors to even LS1 out of corvettes. The 240sx is just one of those chassis that can not only handle the new found power but also keep its great handling characteristics. Also due to the 240sx being such a hot platform for tuning there is basically an unlimited supply of parts from mild mods to full tilt race setups.
Tips on buying one: The first gen cars are going to be the ones that will fall into the sub-$1000 dollar price range and there are still plenty of un-modded cars out there to be found for cheap. However keep in mind that these cars are still sought after and a clean chassis will command a decent price. A good tip for those of you looking to do a swap already is to find an unfinished project that somebody else let bite the dust. Doing this can allow you to save some major cash on parts and maybe even have a good head start on getting the car where you want it to be faster. For those of you with performance in mind I would recommend staying away from the convertible models as they tend to be much heavier and have less chassis rigidity.
So if you are looking for your next tuner project its tough to go wrong with a 240sx no matter how many there are out there you can always have a chance to make it your own and have something that is fun to drive and different.