David Coleman’s Rocket Bunny-kitted tuned Nissan S15 has more show than go, as beneath hides a fire spitting 2JZ…
Let’s not beat around the bush here, the idea of running a Rocket Bunny kit or the likes is starting to get a little bit stale. There was a time, which seems like an eternity ago, when we would have first spied these amazing wide arched cars from Japan on the internet and completely lost our collective shit.
Their almost crude riveted-on panels were the perfect rebellion against the smooth bodywork that had come to be the norm. Today, I’m sure you’ve already scrolled past countless examples on your social media feeds, without even as much as a second look. The problem is that so many of these builds lack substance. Sure, they look good, but there’s not really much under the surface.
David Coleman is one of the rare few who was aware of this when he started this project and it certainly shows in the finished article. There’s definitely no shortage of substance here.
This isn’t David’s first rodeo. His last car, an aggressively styled V8 powered AE86 Corolla, caused quite a stir when it hit the streets for the first time. It broke away from a lot of the typical AE86 conventions and most impressively was street legal. It might not sound like a big achievement, but in Ireland, it really is. The struggle to perfect a build and re-engineer things just to get it on the street is one that a lot choose to forego and instead commit their own projects to being for the track only. Not, David. His cars have always been about their street performance, although he’s been known to take in the odd trackday too. This is what makes his cars and this Nissan Silvia S15 all the more interesting. Building a track car is one thing, building a street-car is a whole other proposition.
As we rolled to the photo location, I did have to laugh to myself at the exaggerated width of the car on the narrow Irish roads behind me in my mirror. The S15 is so wide that it needs to hug the ditch in order not to cross the centre line of the road. While the Rocket Bunny kit and aggressive stance are the strongest visual points on it, it’s what lies beneath that really impresses. There’s nothing wrong with the SR20DET this S15 would have original been equipped with. With a little tuning, the two-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine can even make respectable power numbers. It wasn’t enough for David, though. He had his sights set on something far impressive.
The compact inline-four has long since been removed. In its place, in the tidied and smooth engine bay, now resides arguably the greatest inline-six engine ever built: Toyota’s 2JZ-GTE. For diehard Nissan fans, this would obviously be a problem, in that he chose the 2JZ over Nissan’s own RB26 GT-R motor. For the…
Want to know more? Check out the full feature on David Coleman’s Nissan S15 in Fast Car magazine issue 378 on sale now in all good shops or alternatively download Fast Car magazine 378 now.
