Over the years, I had seen rally racing in small doses, but now I was obsessed. So, it was decided that my father and I would find a car, modify it, and go racing. After plenty of research, we sort of came up dry. Nothing I could find locally (within 250 miles or so) was anywhere close to a capable chassis to build a rally car within my budget. Plenty of drift-ready cars, 240SXs and the like, but none fit the bill of a potential rally car. So, I eventually settled on my rally racing dream coming to an end and bought my ’93 Ford Bronco.

In the present day, I find myself sitting at my computer, watching a play-through of a video game called My Summer Car. A game developed around the idea of building a car as a young Finnish man, left to his own devices over the summer. I downloaded this game and started my own virtual build. The videos I had seen of this game heavily featured the idea that this car should be built to run in the local rally race. As such, my interest piqued almost instantly.

So now I find myself in the position of dealing with my curious mind. I wanted to know what the car in my new favorite PC game is. A brief search revealed that the in-game car is based on a Datsun 1200. Naturally, I wanted to see if I could find one to build instead of just fantasizing with this little rally-rocket in the virtual world. But my searches turned up nothing.

It wasn’t until I stopped looking for the 1200 that I actually found what I was looking for. Thanks to a friend, I had recently become obsessed with Datsun and early Nissan cars. In my time searching for a “Z” car, I happened to come across a listing that was too good to be true. “1980 Nissan 200SX Coupe 2D” the listing read. But the pictures and description told a much different story.

In the first line, the listing corrects itself to say the true identity of the vehicle in question. “1980 Datsun 210 coupe 5 speed project” and as those words flowed through my brain, my excitement grew. Unfortunately, at the time when I found the listing, I didn’t have the money to invest in a new project. Plus, I still had the Bronco sitting in the driveway and couldn’t justify turning my home into a used car lot. Well…I could justify it, but the Mrs. wouldn’t care for it.

So, I had to sit on it for a while. Like most potential buys, I saved the listing and waited for it to update to “sold” status. Two months go by and the rusty, old Datsun is still listed. I looked at my budget for the upcoming month and messaged the seller to verify that it was, in fact, still available. The seller and I exchanged a few messages before I made my offer and then we made our arrangements for pick up.

In my twenty-five years of life, I have experienced plenty of things. However, none of those experiences included driving with a trailer. It took me at least six tries to get my borrowed hauler down my driveway without losing control of where it was going. This should have been a premonition of things to come because as I pulled up to the seller’s location to get the car; he took pity on my feeble attempts at backing the trailer and did it for me. But a few moments later, and after exchanging money and the title, I had my newest money pit loaded up and ready to make the four-hour drive back home.