Woah! Another Fan Sent Present... Wow, Simply WOW!

 So I am trying to figure out if it's an early Christmas present or a late birthday present, but the other day this arrived and I was very pleasantly surprised!

Obviously, even without trying to decipher the parts number, I see that it's a gold emblem.  But more exciting was not only the old, yellowed label, but the old Nissan logo as well. This is a period correct, genuine piece!

Yep, one of the few OEM or dealer options that I have not collected over the years (and yes, I do not have the rear gold emblem either).  Never thought to get one actually, since my car is silver and I was never convinced that a gold badge would look good on the car.

Here are the instructions:

And of course I had to fit it to see how it looked. Well, I TRIED to fit it because...

Not sure if this is unique to Series 3/kohki grills, or the front grill badge I just happened to have, but you can see that the lower two "pins" are secured with these metal caps.

On the other hand, the gold badge has these clip-like fingers:

Which suggests that this is not a simple swap. I will have to research this... in any case, I couldn't resist seeing how the gold MIGHT look on my car so:

So what do you guys think? Go for the gold or stick with the silver version? Either way I am good, and to those who are about to ask, no I will not be re-gifting or selling this, as it deserves a place of honor in my collection!

Finally! Super Rare Find #1!

For every car I've ever owned, I love, love, love looking at the catalogs for optional parts/dealer options that are available for each car - not only do they give me some ideas, but as a rule I like to have cars with all the available options - well so long as they aren't too over-the-top - see what I did for my Lexus IS-F - it has every factory option, plus most if not all of the dealer installed ones.

Obviously, for the GT-R, with things out of production, some parts are harder to find than others.  This is one of them.

From http://www.r33gt-r.com/p/nissan-oem-catalog-1996-r33-skyline.html

This is something that I spotted in the R33 Skyline catalog - page above - but never could find until just last week when a friend gave me a heads up that something interesting was on Yahoo Auctions.

Here is the box it came in, alongside another rare find (blog post soon!)

Opening and I found - looks like a tarp, right?

Wrong - this is the Trunk Bag that was a dealer option for both the 4 door and 2 door cars (I was too lazy to scan it in so took a photo with my phone):

Description is: Trunk Bag (4 door sedan (pictured) and 2 door coupe)
9700 yen, takes 0.2 hours of labor to attach.
By unfastening the velcro on both sides, can insert and remove items from either side.  
Also, there are 3 mesh pockets (dimensions are around 270mm tall x 930 mm wide)

I've been searching for this for over 10 years - a long time ago a friend in the car business offered to remove one from one of his cars and give it to me, and I declined. Been kicking myself ever since.

But at long last, here it is.  And here are some shots of front - side flaps closed

Here are some shots of front - side flaps open

And the backside, where it attaches to the underside of the trunk - you use plastic retainer clips and the holes in the yellow belts to attach.

Installation is simple - you don't need to have the cold region spec under trunk liner but it sure does make it look nice, right?

Voila! Except, as I point out with the green arrows, I have to do something about those dangling straps. Any ideas?

So a close up - note the period correct Nissan logo!

To be honest, not sure it is as clean as some of the OEM toolkit designs I've seen from BMW and other OEMs.  On the other hand, I doubt given how it's attached that it could serve the basis of a tool kit.  Most likely perhaps this could be used to store a nice golf umbrella out of the way, and not rolling about in the trunk?

Again, not sure if I will keep this long term in my car, not only because I can't figure out what to put inside it, but also because I think I like the clean look of the trunk lid without it.  I guess I will have to think about this... 

Meanwhile in my next post I found something super cool, and for less than 300 yen.  Can't wait to show you guys!