Staff Bio James (PapaSmurf2k3)
My name is James Sisson, and the first nissan/datsun memory I have is of my father’s Datsun 260z. As I got older, the datsun became a little small for a growing family of 4, and my dad was also working on other things, so instead of neglecting it, he sold it. After that, we went through a few cars and eventually picked up a 5 speed 1995 Infiniti G20. This was one of the cars that I started to learn how to drive on, and was fairly impressed by its driving characteristics, as well as its reliability. When it came time to buy my first car, I decided to make an offer on a 1987 Nissan Maxima that had been for sale locally for quite some time (parked on a side street with a for sale sign in it). I made an offer of $100 because it didn’t run at the time, and the lady took it and said good luck. She was a little surprised to see the car driving away after 15 minutes (just had to cut back the corroded battery cables and re-attach some terminals to them, then give her a jump). I ended up installing a new rack an pinion in it, as well as a few other minor items, and selling it for $1200 in favor of my next car, a 1991 240sx SE coupe, bought in 2002… which is also the year I joined NICO.
It was my only car through the remainder of high school, as well as the beginning of college (University of Rhode Island for Mechanical Engineering and German). I pulled it off the road to rebuild the engine, take care of some rust issues, swap the suspension, and eventually turbo the KA24DE. After spending a year in Germany, going to school and honing my German skills (and also working for Bosch), I returned to the US and graduated in the spring of 2008. Shortly after that I moved to Mississippi and took a job at BorgWarner Transmission Systems as a Manufacturing Engineer. After about 2.5 years in that position, I got a call from Nissan asking if I wanted to work in one of their plants as a Process Engineer. It was a good experience, but ultimately the mountains of red tape drove me back to a position within BorgWarner.
I eventually sold the ‘91 coupe in August of 2015 to a fellow enthusiast, but managed to pull the engine and other goodies from it to install into my 1993 240sx that I turned into a truck. I needed something to haul lawn mowers, mulch, and other things that come with the joys of homeownership, but I don’t like how big trucks are, how they drive, etc. The turbo powerplant just makes it that much more fun.