"The problem was we wanted to build something totally unique. But right now I think we have nearly achieved it" - Dan (owner)
Image Credit - Joint Gathering Photography
What does it take to build a 350Z as eye catching as this? It is no easy task considering how popular a choice of car it is within the scene, this one pushes the Japanese styling to the next level. Let's dive into Dans 350 and see what he has done to get it to this stage.
Even in silver, the Z looked absolutely epic with that aggressive styling.
Dans 350Z landed in his ownership as they often do in these write-ups, A totally standard or near standard example of the model, within his 10 year ownership the car has went through four main phases, but the plan was always to build a crazy looking Z with a really aggressive bodykit. "There are so many things you can buy for these cars, the problem for us was we wanted to build something totally unique, but right now I feel like we have just about reached that goal I set out to achieve, this car is not a trailer queen, it's not shoved in a garage and never used neither. It is a driven daily, it is used how a car should be" Dan told us.
"The bodykit on the car is quite unique, the front bumper started off as just a normal Nismo V2 bumper, but we chopped the front lip and fitted the Rocketbunny lip to, we also removed the small canards and added custom made canards for a 180SX Pandem kit, fibreglassed everything together and moulded the canards into the roccketbunny front lip to make that really aggressive styled front end we were after, the Nissan badge was removed and smoothed over as well"
"The front wings on the car were originally just cheap rocketbunny replicas shipped over from Poland, but when we fitted them we realised they sat way too high on the rims, so we cut out the front arch and used the original wing to mould a lip on the RB wing to make the arch sit lower, we also fibreglassed a piece over the bumper to make the wings fit the bumper" The vents on the wings were made using GT86 pandem wing vents which were chopped up a grafted into the front wings along with some 370Z indicators, the bonnet is also a replica RocketBunny one, but that needed a lot of work to fit correctly because it was pretty poor quality. The sideskirts on the car are made out of 2.5" square downpipes bolted together and moulded into the rear quarter and wings, the Z has been painted in Viola Parsifae - a Lamborghini colour, Dan told us "Iwas scrolling through Instagram one day and I spotted an Lamborghini painted in Viola Parsifae, and then I knew that was the absolute purple I was after, such a great colour to show off such a crazy car".
Photos 2&3 credit - Joint Gathering Photography
"We fitted Tarmac Sport side window louvers and I had already purchased a 1 of 10 Aluminium rear louver called, along with this we also fitted some carbon fibre mirror covers, Black B pillar covers and painted the door handles black"
"The rear bumper has some custom made canards made with a Top Secret rear diffuser and custom fins and a bumper tuck done to fit the single exit ISR exhaust"
Photos 2&3 credit - Joint Gathering Photography
This is one of my favourite details on this car the custom heart taillight covers, it's just an amazing bit of extra personality to a car so full of character already.
Dan told us - "The rear taillights were painted black but it looked grubby so I purchased one of three sets of taillight covers, my girlfriend printed some heart shapes on them and Cliff cut them out with a multitool"
Photo credit - Joint Gathering Photography
"The headlights on the car were awful, they let the whole car down so we sent them down to Dan Skippy Thomas for him to make us a custom headlight design which made the full front end of the car look like new"
Photo credit - Joint Gathering Photography
"We fitted the Airride Performance kit in three days"
Once the airride was fitted Dan was needing a set of wheels, so he reached out to IIsaac at Rimscarnated as he hasd seen two wheel designs he liked but had decided he wanted something totally custom to give the car that extra level of uniqueness.
Photo credit - Joint Gathering Photography
Whilst the car was away at the paint shop Cliff a had stripped the full interior out of it to start doing an interior build. "we went with a similar theme to the exterior of the car, white or cream was a thought but we decided against it due to the car being driven daily, and being used to drive home with dirty work gear on, the headlining, pillars, centre console and the boot were done in Bride purple material, we then went to Tarmac Sports to source the NRG neo chrome steering wheel and NRG prisma seats, the boot build consists of the two air compressors, both with stands and the air management system with a custom front on a stand."
Photo credit - Joint Gathering Photography
"We already had a nice little duck tail spoiler but I also wanted to go for the big executioner style big country labs wing, issue was it wouldn't fit, so we cut part of the ducktail away to mount the brackets inside it so I can run dual spoilers, to finish it off we had custom perspex end plates made up."
"It's my dream car and I couldn't possibly have had it if it wasn't for the expertise of Cliff Anderson who has pretty much built it and helped me every step of the way. Over the last two years we have hit the car scene big, the car has came away with 16 awards, which for an average guy lacking money is 16 more than I ever thought it would get."
"The car has literally just had this custom livery installed done by the guys and girls down at Blossum Automotive near St Helens, I am absolutely over the moon with the livery and the way it suits the build, highly recommend them. We are currently waiting on a Fly 1 Renegade carbon bonnet coming over from the states, and we are building a custom made diffuser for it. Plans for the future are to do an engine bay wiring tuck and colour code the engine bay to the exterior." Dan told us.
Now time for my personal thoughts, why did I chose to feature this car? I think this has been one of my favourites of the feature cars so far, the attention to detail on this is absolutely insane, the extreme styling has been done to not only a high standard but it has also been done to a level where it doesn't look tacky or over the top, it looks absolutely bang on, this is how you do a widearch 350Z properly and it is an absolute credit to Dan and Cliff, your eye for detail is second to none.