Nissan Silvia (S14)
Why 4.5: The SR20DET chassis between the boxy S13 and the S15 everyone eventually wants — heavier, softer, and for years the forgotten middle child. Import buyers are now catching on to what drift purists never stopped using.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
The SR20DET revs to 7,500 and adds turbo spool and blow-off chatter over a smooth little four. But it is a well-insulated two-litre with no induction character and a thoroughly muted factory exhaust. Marginally more voice than the S13, and still anonymous.
4-cylinder · turbocharged · 7,500 rpm redline · rated 4.9 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €7k (2005) → €31k (2026), trending up · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
Same timing applies to the four-seat rear bench.
S14/200SX sales in Europe, Australia and NZ ended in 1998, a year before ISO 13216-1 was published — no production car anywhere had compliant anchors yet.
Genuine 200SX handbook mirrors (nissan-manual.com, manualzz.com) exist but blocked direct access — this is timeline-reasoned, not a direct manual quote.
Wikipedia (ISOFIX: ISO 13216-1 published 1999) + Nissan S14/200SX Europe/Australia/NZ sales window (owner-community sourced, not manufacturer documentation)
The long version
For a long stretch this was the Silvia nobody specifically asked for, overshadowed by the S13 that came before it and the S15 that followed and got all the credit for perfecting the formula, so it stayed cheap and got treated like the disposable drift tool its reputation suggested. The 25-year import window is only now pulling American buyers toward it, mostly because clean S15s have already been bid past what a lot of them want to spend. What is left in Japan still skews toward cars that never stopped getting driven sideways, because nobody was paying enough to make anyone stop.