Having owned the S14a for 4.5 years I was running out of inspiration for the car. This lead me to search for a worthy new project to follow up with.

After giving it some well needed and long thoughts, I decided to move on to a new S-body, the S15 Spec S. I opted for a Spec S as I will be swapping a RB25DET engine into it.

Having consulted with some import companies and searching around by myself, I decided to take the big step and import a car on my own. I’ve seen it done before by fellow Wangan Warriors Skippy and Ruud. Searching around on the usual places like Pistonheads and Driftworks for some weeks, Peter ran across an ad of a S15 in Ireland. After mailing back and forth with the owner, I decided to buy the car and arrange the trip to pick it up.

December 9th 5.00am, the day and time Peter (PeeSx) and I left from our home city of Nijmegen in The Netherlands.

Excuse my sleepy head, it was 5am after all. After a 1.5 hour train ride toward Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, we got off the train, checked into our flight and waited 2 hours before we could board the plane. After a 30min delay we finally took off.

We landed in Cork, Ireland, 1.5 hours later. Luckily for us this is the same city where the S15 was located. Being picked up by the guy who sold me the car and his dad, we drove off to their home where we were pleasantly greeted by this view.

After some chit chat and the typical cup of tea, we did the business end of the sale and were ready to set off for the big part of the journey. The -long- drive home. With much traveling ahead, we decided to get the car filled up before we set off.

Our final goal of the day; Dublin, a 2.5 hour drive from Cork.
I must say driving a RHD car isn’t the hardest part. I’ve done that before in The Netherlands. But switching from LHD to RHD, from the right lane to the left lane and driving in a new country at the same time takes some getting used to.

We quickly got to the motorway and from there on things were much easier.

Peter had the time to enjoy the scenery of Ireland.

We decided to grab some food at a small restaurant before we continued on our journey.

After arriving in Dublin, we found out our ferry to Liverpool was running late. Quite the bummer but it gave us some time to walk around the city. We were able to leave the car on a guarded parking lot which belonged to the docks and we headed out to the city center..

..which turned out to be decorated for the holidays. We ended up on a holiday market where we enjoyed a proper hamburger off the grill.

Once we returned to the docks we checked in and were told the ferry was running even later. We started to fear for our Eurotunnel train connection the next day in England. We decided to just leave things as they where and hope we would make it it in time the next day.
Finally having boarded the ferry about 3 hours late we rushed to our cabin. We rented a cabin so would could grab some well needed sleep.

Waking up the next day, we docked at around 8:00. 2 hours later than expected. Having just a little over 5 hours to get from Liverpool to Folkestone, we jumped into the car and started driving.
England welcomed us with this nice sunrise while we left Liverpool.

Peter took over the wheel while we filled up the car again and drove the next part through England.

With Peter behind the wheel and 3.5 hours of non stop driving we made it to Folkestone. Pleasantly surprised we were even able catch an earlier train to France. This was due to the fact that we only had one 5min stop in the entire country. Back home we had calculated an extra hour for stops and a 50min buffer to get to the train. All this extra time was enough to make up for lost time on the ferry.

I took over the wheel again when we arrived in Calais, France, and drove the remainder of the trip.
From here on the trip was pretty much straight forward. No trains or ferry’s to catch anymore. Just driving the car home without having to rush.

After about 30min of driving we already entered Belgium, which was very noticable as the roads are terrible there. After 1.5 hours of shaking and potholes we finally crossed the Dutch border again at around 5.30pm. Driving for over 6 hour got us hungry so we decided to grab a ‘proper’ meal at the McDonalds that is located just at the border.

Having finished our meal we set off for the last hour and a half of driving to our home in Nijmegen. And so, after 39 hours, 1106km of driving and a whole lot of km’s by public transport, we returned home. It was a long but smooth trip with a great goal. Getting the S15 home.

Since the trip, the car has been imported to Holland officially and I started working on the RB25DET swap. Be sure to check out my project updates on the forum.

- Author: Rob Meulenbroeks
- Photography: Peter Graansma

Tags: importing, Ireland, Nissan, roudtrip, S15, Silvia

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2012 at 11:02 and is filed under Spotlight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.