Another day, another donated classic car – this one, in much better condition than the GMC camper we featured recently. This 1988 Nissan 300ZX is a low-mileage survivor with one female owner since new, who apparently drove it sparingly given there’s just 40,355 original miles on the clock. It’s not the sportiest version of a Z31 you can buy, and the automatic transmission will further reduce the fun-to-hustle factor, but it’s still a great platform for a grand tourer that seems to be ticking upwards value-wise as of late. You can find the Nissan here on eBay with bids at $4,550 and no reserve. Thanks to Barn Finds reader Russell G. for the find.
The Nissan was donated following the death of the longtime original owner. The family that donated it noted that the owner traded a Porsche 924 in on the Nissan in 1988, so she clearly had a taste for sports cars. She also evidently took great care of the things she owned, as the Nissan still presents quite well with unmarked alloy wheels, lustrous paint, and not a bumper scrape in sight. This is also about as plainly as you can equip one of these later Z cars, with no spoilers, turbos, or digital gauge cluster, but the owner did spring for the T-top roof.
The seats are standard-issue 300ZX fare, and the lower-spec models made do with gray mouse-fur fabric. Nothing particularly sexy about them, but they are in great shape and retain bolsters in good order with no signs of excess wear. The higher grade models got leather seats with custom embroidery proclaiming it as a special edition of some sort, either an anniversary model or for being equipped with a turbocharger, but those often look fairly tired by this point. The super limited-production Shiro Special came from the factory with Recaro buckets, but those are exceedingly hard to track down – a nice OEM upgrade if you can find them.
Under hood is the standard-issue Nissan V6, with nice cosmetics and no sign of modifications. The seller notes the Nissan benefits from a recent timing belt replacement and brake service, which included new pads and rotors. Tires are also fairly recent, and the air conditioning and power antenna incredibly all still work. These are fairly reliable drivers and buying a clearly-loved example like this should make for a low-risk entry into classic sports car ownership. Factor in the ability to remove the T-top panels when the weather gets nice and it’s hard to go wrong with a no-reserve option like this.
With all the aftermarket support for these models I can imagine a stick can be swapped over if that’s your fancy.
As a child of the 80’s this one is really tempting to me. 300ZX wasn’t my favorite then, but this looks so mint it’s hard to resist. With the nice weather coming, just take off the T-tops, pop in a favorite cassette tape, and go cruising to the beach…if we’re ever able to do that again!
This car is beautiful and I’m digging the lower spec model. I don’t mind the auto considering the car will probably come reasonably priced. I lived the updated tail lights as a kid, but in hindsight I think I prefer the earlier 300Z tail lights.