This is no ordinary S-body Nissan. This is Carl Taylor’s freshly-built 180SX, and it’s come here to kick sand in your face and pinch your lunch money…
There’s a lot of drift cars out there, and a lot of S-body Nissans, and the crossover on that particular Venn diagram is pretty sizable. But when a car as flawlessly put together as Carl Taylor’s S13 presents itself, we can’t help but take notice.
This is a machine whose entire spec list exudes such perfection, such inherent rightness, that you can imagine it taking home show trophy after show trophy until its owner’s house was creaking under the weight of silverware. But instead, this S13 has been built with performance and aesthetics on a level pegging. And given that it looks divine, you can imagine the quality of the engineering beneath…
Naturally, given the ostentatious way that the ever-surprising Mr Taylor lives his life, this was always bound to be a star-studded build, rocking all the correct scene-friendly parts and crafted to be a flawless show-winner as well as an eye-bleedingly fast and ear-shatteringly noisy creation. If you’re unfamiliar, Carl is one of the brains behind the Players Shows, and these effervescent shenanigans are really all in a day’s work for him.
He’s also a marketing superhero for Air Lift, with ties to Rotiform along with a variety of the most aspirational brands in the aftermarket, and what he doesn’t know about badass show-stopping rides could be comfortably felt-tipped on the back of a postage stamp.
You could argue that there’s a certain formula, then; a Carl Taylor build will usually feature a ground-breaking new wheel design from Rotiform in a set of hashtag-worthy widths and offsets, some manner of wide-arch kit or other aggressive bodywork finished in an attention-grabbing shade or pattern, plus endless power and some bespoke Cobra seats from which to enjoy it all.
But to generalise his work like this would be to do him a great disservice – Carl’s one of the guys who works hardest to push our scene forward, and when he decides to have a crack at an S13 180SX, that’s something for us all to be excited about; you may most closely associate him with E36 BMWs or big-power Audis, so this is quite an entertaining new string to his bow…
Want to know more? Check out the full feature in Fast Car magazine issue 396 on sale now in all good shops, the Fast Car online shop or alternatively download Fast Car magazine 396 now.
