Please explain more
Basically Nissan wouldn't touch the R34 GTR (except I guess Middlehurst but they were much too far away from me) which meant for servicing, etc you had to take it to "specialist tuners", which basically meant rolling up on someones converted farm somewhere while a self-professed Skyline guru did
something and produced an invoice with a randomly generated number on the bottom of it.
That's basically the long and short of it... by the time I sold it I had invoices for regular oil changes and services which varied massively (like hundreds of pounds difference sometimes). Fixed price servicing was unheard of and of course you pretty much had no comeback whatsoever on the work or parts.
Politics wise the community was (and maybe still is) fractious with people pushing their own particular tuner-of-choice agenda (to get preferential rates I guess), rubbishing the work of others, etc. As a complete outsider who just wanted to get things worked on you had no idea what to believe and it just got depressing really. On more than one occasion I heard completely unfounded rumours that had gone around about my car purely because I decided to take it to tuner X instead of tuner Y, etc.
Also being as the cars are so moddable on a few occasions I bought some parts from Japan to get fitted, and of course tuners hated me doing that because they figure "you wouldn't bring food to the restaurant". No, I wouldn't - but when the food is 3x the price and identical I'd probably feel pretty cheesed off after I'd eaten it.
I think basically the Skyline scene suffers (or suffered - it may be different now) from a combination of unregulated tuners and people owning them of vastly wide ranging incomes. With my R34 particularly I had to deal with the mindset that tuners would get blank cheques thrown at them for work whereas I wasn't prepared to do that, I wanted to know
why I was being charged X, Y, Z on a bill... so basically I wasn't exactly their best customer.
Also picking up a ~£40k car from a farm with the most pot holed road ever (because that's great for cars that are already low right?) with muddy footprints on the carpet and a valet that consisted of some mechanic spraying it with a hose didn't really feel like an experience commensurate with the vehicle value.
Quite honestly when I downgraded to a Civic Type-R I was just so happy to get a manufacturer warranty and not having to p*** in a portacabin while I'm waiting for my service to be finished, and not paying an invoice with a number on it that someone just plucked out of the air.
Great car, amazing driving experience & attention grabber, terrible maintenance experiences.
the person that bought it off me didn't keep it for long then
Most seem to be pink lol