Staff Bio's >> Manuel (Seyath)

General Chat Moderator
Nissan 240SX Moderator
Spanish Moderator

My passion for cars began the day I was born. Most of my family is involved in some form of mechanic either as a profession or a hobby, although no one in my immediate family is mechanically inclined. I spent the first 12 years of my life watching Formula 1 and Rally in television. Seeing that I lived in Italy then, I was never exposed to the wonders of JDM Tyte motoring.

At the age of 12, during a summer long vacation to England, my uncle Charles took me out for a drive in his Lancia Delta Integrale. I swear, I fell in love with that car the second I sat in. The car was not stock in any way, with a complete roll cage system, and extensive modifications which at the time were pretty much obscure to me. That one day, whilst out on a rally course on the outskirts of Cambridge, he stopped the car on the side of the road and told me “OK! Your turn.” So I spent the rest of the summer sneaking out with him every chance I got and drove as much as possible.

The following summer he began taking me to the racetrack where he taught me fundamentals of racing, like proper accelerating, braking and cornering techniques. That same year I moved to the big old US of A and at the time, end of 1999, everyone had either a Ford Mustang or a Dodge Neon. The concept of rallying and track racing was still obscure to most of my friends as they only knew drag racing and Nascar. I started to look into the cars I admired while rallying and was disappointed to find that the US never allowed any Evo’s or STI’s in the country.

At the age of 17 I was still without a license because my mother found out about all the driving I did in England and my continuous escapades with her old ’90 Mitsubishi Mirage. However, I did began working on cars. I figured I could drive them well enough, so why not learn how to tune them. My first project was a ’81 Toyota Celica 2dr Sedan. I worked on a few more old school Toyota’s including Hachiroku’s and a sexy ’88 AWD Celica.

Since then I have owned a few cars so here’s a list. I’m sure I’m missing a few…

1981 Toyota Celica
1984 Toyota Corolla
1988 Toyota Celica AWD
1988 Mitsubishi Cordia Turbo
1990 Mitubishi Mirage
1991 Ford Tempo
1989 Nissan 240SX Coupe
1991 Nissan 240SX Hatchback
1994 Nissan Maxima GXE
1994 Nissan Maxima SE
1996 Nissan Maxima GXE
2004 Nissan Maxima SE


Once I got my first Nissan, the 1994 Maxima GXE I quickly searched through different forums and was pretty active on Maxima.org. I grew tired of the flaming and didn’t agree with the way the forum was run sometimes though and eventually stumbled on Nico. It’s been my E-home ever since and my primary resource for the two cars that I own now, the ’91 240SX and ’04 Maxima.