The legend of the Sileighty(シルエイティ)

Back in the ninties

1995-98,Japan
Drifting has became a lucrative sport for the youth on the mountain roads of Japan. Being the drift legend that it is the Nissan 180SX quickly emerged as the choice for the twists and turns of the touge. But,soon enough accidents happened and drifters with damaged front-ends were left with a choice, buy the expensive and a bit heavier 180SX parts or go for the cheaper and lighter Nissan Silvia parts, thus creating the first of the unofficial Sileightys.

Kids Heart and the “official” Sileightys

Unknown to the public until the release date, these end user modifications inspired a Japanese auto shop,Kids Heart, to produce a small number of so-called “official” or “real” Nissan Sileighties.Takayama San opened up Kids Heart in the late 90s as a tuning shop and used car dealership specializing in drift cars. His first project was a C33 Nissan Laurel, which he converted from an N/A automatic model into a manual turbo car using parts from another crashed Laurel. Since then he has gone on to build many, many, special drift cars, including D1 cars. They received modifications to distinguish them from their home-built brethren by the distinctive “Sileighty” name on the rear dressplate and quarter windows such.Also they were fitted with a new ECU,limited-slip differential,suspenition tuneand an increase in turbocharger boost from 7 psi (0.5 bar) to about 13 psi (0.9 bar), resulting in approximately 230 hp (172 kW), versus 205 from the standard Silvia’s SR20DET or the 180SX’s 175 hp (130 kW) CA18DET.Only about 400 of the “official” Sileightys were sold.

Variatons

Onevia is the oposite of a Sileighty, a 180SX front-end on a Silvia.
Occasionally the S15 front end conversion is referred to as the ‘strawberry face conversion’ due to the Japanese words for 1 and 5 which are ichi and go and when put together (ichigo) they make the word ‘strawberry’, hence Nissan S platform vehicles with the S15 front end conversion occasionally being referred to as strawberry faces.

Sources
[Wikipedia] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sileighty)
[Driftworks] (http://www.driftworks.com/blog/2012/03/outsiders-kids-heart/)