2 GTR’s at Stillen Day

Posted by pikesan on Jun 23, 2008 in Racing | 0 comments

Even if you are only slightly interested in Nissan and Infiniti cars and trucks the Stillen Nissan/Infiniti Customer appreciation open house is a great show to see. Set right behind John Wayne Airport in Costa Mesa, California is Stillen. The performance shop owned and run by the most successful driver in IMSA history, Steve Millen. Steve was a factory driver for Nissan in the 90s and has special place in his shop for Nissan/Infiniti vehicles (Ford too but that’s another blog!). Steve had heavily discounted Nissan/Infiniti parts on hand for customers as well as discounted dyno runs and free installation on anything purchased that day.
All of the streets directly in front of Stillen were closed down by Costa Mesa PD and opened up for customer cars. Now I am not too good at counting and easily get side tracked when the bright and shiny are in front of me, so I lost track at the number of cars around 150 or so and that was easily only a quarter of the number of vehicles on display. There were vehicles from the last 30 years on display, a first generation Prince motors Skyline, 240Z’s, 240sx’s, Titans, a whole mess of 350Z’s and G coupes as well as a heavily pimped out 2000 Q45 to name just a few of the models on display. Steve also had his engineering cars on hand to show customers some ideas and offerings for everything from the Sentra and Versa to the new Altima coupe, Nissan/Infiniti FR cars (front engine, rear drive) and all of the Nissan/Infiniti truck and SUV line up.
Nissan even had a few employees head out to answer questions about the newest offerings from Nissan/Infiniti: First there’s the GTR! Two GTR’s were on hand; a white engineering prototype and a Red press car. Then there’s the new FX50 and the newly unveiled Maxima which holds to its roots as a sport inspired sedan with new flowing lines and bulging fenders. The white GTR showed up a little late, still 20 minutes before the show officially kicked off, as the street were shut down and people were already lined up around the block. It had a little trouble pulling in to the open space right in the Stillen parking lot set aside for it as people immediately surrounded the car for photos and glimpses of Godzilla as it pulled in. Reaction to the GTR was absolutely amazing! There were 2 guys walking around with the sales sheets to show they had a GTR coming to them and had Steve and the Nissan Staff sign the order form. In my 29 years of existence I have rarely seen anything have such an effect on such a large mass of people as the GTR did pulling in. This is true auto enthusiasm at its best.

This story is the first from my friend and huge MyRideisMe.com supporter Joe Nagy. Joe’s been working on the GTR for about 4 years now. Yea, I know, that kicks ass. Big thanks to the guys at Stillen for the great event and for letting us use a few of their pictures. There are alot more pictures HERE. There’s also a great story about Steve Millen driving the GTR for a press event. Video’s too!

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