Monday, December 14, 2020

One More for the Collection! (Garage Series)

So I think it's obvious, but in addition to being OCD about my car, I DO collect other things R33 GT-R.  And the more unique and rare, the better.  Hope to highlight some of the better ones here on the blog. 

Anyway here is my latest... kind of.  Yahoo Auctions here in Japan can be a treasure trove of interesting stuff, if you know how to look.  So a few years ago, I stumbled upon and successfully bid on what seemed to be an official poster for the R33 GT-R - and more specifically, the poster that was issued by Nissan when the Kohki (Series 3) model came out. And "kind of" because I did nothing with it until just a few weeks ago.

Not having lived in Japan during that period (early 1997) I never saw how Nissan displayed the poster - I have to assume probably at dealerships - but I AM aware of this most awesome commercial:

The narration in summary states how we, in our country of Japan, should be proud to have the GT-R. In addition, I know some people have located this poster and displayed in their homes (although this guy had to fold it in half to get it home...). Plus this same moon image can be found on the back of some of the Mooks, and I always thought it would be too cool to have this as a poster.


Flash forward a few years, and now I have a rebuilt house with a proper garage. And yeah, the walls are bare.  So why not start decorating.  But first I had to make sure that I spent the money for a proper frame, and not just tape it up (that would be... SACRILEGE!).  But it was so large I just couldn't find a universal frame that would work.

I found that a speciality art store called Sekaido was located in the Lumine shopping complex at Yokohama Station, about a 5 minute walk from Nissan Global Headquarters and Gallery.  So when I stopped by after work, luckily these guys were up to the challenge.


Turns out the guy at Sekaido loves GT-Rs as well! And was totally excited about this project. He started asking me about my car, and we engaged in some nerd car talk. Refreshing!  And then at the end, he said, "awesome to talk to an owner... I thought you might just be a Nissan employee or something." Of course I told him I was, which then got him even more excited.  

So I knew the poster was in good hands when I left it with him.

A few weeks later he calls and tells me it's ready, and that he will send it by courier.  So this past Thursday I get it delivered and it appears larger than I remembered:


So in between virtual meetings I go out and begin unwrapping.  One thing about Japan, people sure don't mess around with wrapping!
Felt like 10 minutes to get this all off... I gave up on trying to be orderly, I was too excited!

This was like one of those Christmas presents in multiple boxes... luckily this was the last box, with just another layer of bubble wrap on the framed poster.

Well actually, there was a layer of protective film on top of the clear acrylic (glass would have been too heavy).


And finally:

This is ENORMOUS. See how it basically covers the enter front end of my Lexus?

So now the challenge was to mount this somewhere.  The package came with these wall mounts...

But given how heavy this framed poster was, I wasn't placing my confidence in these mounts (10kg weight bearing each) and their skinny little nails.  Because the walls in my garage are ALC (aerated lightweight concrete)... and I have several of these specialty designed for ALC screws left over from my slatwall project, I decided to see I might be able to use these screws along with the mounts.


But first I had to figure out where to mount this poster.  I wanted it near the car but also visible from my home office.
Perfect! (But wow this is HEAVY!)

So I moved the car forward, got my drill and ladder to make sure it was all done safely.

And the final result...


Ok, you say - but how does it look when the car is parked in its spot?  Well actually I decided to go ahead and take advantage of the car not in its space, and installed another cool item.  I'll post on that one next, give me a couple of days... and sorry about the recent lack of posts, it has been VERY busy for me at work lately...

Check back later this week!

4 comments:

Ahmad F said...

Dude! Soooooooo AWESOME!

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

very cool, hopefully life on your end goes back to normal soon with vaccines starting to roll out.

Aki said...

thanks guys!!