The Replacement

Words by Alexi Smith Photos by Mark Pakula

"I'm going to get myself a cheap track-only car, so it shouldn't be too expensive and it won't take too long to build." How many times have we heard that before? Probably a fair bit if you have a lot of mates who are "gonna, wanna, shoulda" offenders, but the real question is to ask how often does the result actually end up looking as clean as this?

It's something that happens all too often. The second banana, the backup, the little bit on the side, call it what you will, suddenly becomes number one. Usually it's by voluntary choice that we decide to re-prioritise what we give our attention to, but thanks to the fickleness of human preference, some things just have a way of cheekily skipping to the front of the queue when you don't expect it.

Some things are a bit more active than others in making sure they move up your list of priorities, like that girl who wants you just a little bit too much, and leaves one of her lipsticks in the glovebox for your missus to find. Even more crazy than that is if your admirer was to, as in the movie "The Talented Mr Ripley", murder you and then assume your identity as well as your life. Any movie that involves Matt Damon stretched out on a lounge in a pair of budgie smugglers isn't exactly an appropriate example for this article however, so let's just move right on from that and say that most of our readers would also agree that our cars can also seem to have a spooky predisposition for slowly gaining a stranglehold on both our time and our wallets.

If your daily driver is a nice Nissan S15, like our subject Ben's car is, it can be a fairly serious decision to heavily modify it for track use. Add up the risks of potential damage, modifications that make it uncomfortable to drive on the street, and the fact that you just think that nothing should be done in a half-arsed way, a secondary car that can be built single-mindedly and without compromise starts to seem like a better and better idea. Since the car was never going to wear a numberplate, it didn't need to be in the sort of presentable condition that most import cars need to be in to pass compliance. That was a good thing, since most of the front end was crumpled up like a used chip packet in a previous accident. It didn't need to be anything special, right? It was only going to be a track car.