The most celebrated Nissan with pop-up lights debuted for the 1989 model year. In Japan, Nissan sold the car as the Nissan 180SX, powered by turbocharged CA18DET and later SR20DET engines. In North America, the fastback chassis arrived as the Nissan 240SX S13, equipped with a torquey, naturally aspirated 2.4-liter truck engine (the single-cam KA24E, followed by the dual-cam KA24DE in 1991).
The front-end design featured narrow horizontal slits, the early "pignose" bumper (1989, 1990) and the smoother "chuki" bumper (1991, 1994), flanked by motorized headlamp buckets. Unlike the Japanese Silvia S13, which featured fixed brick-style headlights, the 180SX and North American 240SX fastbacks retained their pop-up assemblies throughout their entire production cycles. The 180SX stayed in Japanese production with retractable lights all the way until December 1998, long after the rest of the automotive industry had begun abandoning the styling trend.
Decades of grassroots drifting depleted the supply of rust-free, unmodified S13 chassis. As a result, prices diverge wildly depending on chassis integrity. A beaten, modified drift missile with stripped interior panels and mismatched bodywork sells for $5,000 to $7,500, while an original, accident-free manual fastback commands $15,000 to $22,000.
