Our Cars: Nissan 200SX S13

Funny thing, misguided enthusiasm. It’s a bit like using crayons in a restaurant – charming in the young, but beyond a certain age it just makes you look a bit dim. And I should know. Not because you’ll ever see me scrawling in blue and green on the menu in Bella Italia, but because misguided enthusiasm once caused me to do terrible things to a poor old car that never deserved it.

But I was 18 at the time, young enough to be making foolish mistakes, and I’d never be so daft nowadays. Which is why I’m quite happy to share the story with you now, safe in the knowledge that you’ll not judge me too harshly for it. After all, it was more than half my life ago.

Now, these Our Cars pieces are typically running reports on cars we own or are living with right now. This is the exception. It’s a one-off, a story I assumed I could never write because try as I might, searching high and low and trawling through boxes of old junk in the loft as I did, I just could not find the photographs that I knew I took of the car almost 20 years ago. No pics, no story. But one day last month, my mum sent me a photo of a flash drive with a note saying ‘You’re going to like what I’ve found,’ and I knew right away what was on it.