I might as well start with a little intro.
In case you stumbled upon this blog and was not directed here via my posts on various GTR forums, social media outlets or referenced here from a friend, I'll give you a bit of background...
I'm John and I'm a certified Nissan Skyline GT-R fanatic based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Canada's been one of the countries blessed with a little automobile importation law that permits any vehicle built for foreign markets to be legally imported for our use so long as it is at least 15 years old. In 1989, Nissan Motors Co Ltd. released a little gunmetal gray AWD car called the Skyline GT-R. According to wikipedia:
"This car was nicknamed "Godzilla" by the Australian motoring publication Wheels in its July 1989 edition. The BNR32 (R32 GT-R) would end up winning 29 straight victories out of 29 races, in the Japanese motorsport. The GT-R proceeded to win the JGTC Group A series championship 4 years in a row, and also had success in the Australian Touring Car Championship winning from 1990–1992, until a regulation change excluded the GT-R in 1993.[1] The Skyline GT-R (BCNR33) was also the first production car to lap theNürburgring race track in under eight minutes."
If you do the math you'll see that the R32 was legal to be landed in Canada in late 2004. Mine arrived in 2005 and was one of the very first ones in Canada.
Before Godzilla landed, I was full of anticipation and concern. This is a car with ZERO sales figures, parts and technical support in Canada. How will I keep it running? Being a big car forum user starting with my account "JohnnyZ" on the Z32 forum, Twinturbo.net, I decided to start an online forum called GTRCanada.com. Original goals were very modest. I figured we'd probably get at most 20-50 GT-Rs and assorted Skylines brought in by import car nerds like me. All I wanted was a means to get group buys going for parts like brakes, belts, gaskets, etc.from Japan to save shipping. Maybe we'd have a swap meet every so often, or a nice cruise. When membership reached 100 members, we even celebrated and gave the user "Anton" a special title. After 9 years, we now have over 32,000 members. I say "we", but really it should be "they" as I sold GTRC to Daryl Henwood in 2010. At the time I was just getting too tired of running the forums, haven't owned a GT-R for over 5 years, and just thought time was right to pass the reins on to someone who could inject new life into the forums. Little did I know I would buy a beautiful midnight purple R33 in 2011 which eventually was traded for a gunmetal gray 2010 R35 in Sept. 2012. Life works in funny ways.
But hey, this is not a blog about GTRCanada, it's about my love of all things Skyline (and Nissan) GT-R.
I plan to use this place to document the build of my current 2010 R35, reminisce about my past Skylines (the 1989 gunmetal gray BNR32 and 1996 purple BCNR33), the community in Canada and internationally, post breathtaking glamour pics of these cars, and my talk about my occasional forways on the track.
Please come back often to see what is up. I just ask you to be civil, mature and keep language on a PG level as my kids may read this in the future.
Happy motoring,
John ("JZ") C.
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