Ferrari Dealer Visit!

Ferrari Roma

If you're a fan of Ferrari cars and enjoy seeing them, where can you see them? Besides spotting them in the rich part of town, at the race track, or a fancy car show, just go to your friendly local Ferrari dealership! In Charlotte, that means Foreign Cars Italia. Since I had some time to kill while my wife was at an appointment nearby, that's where I went! PRO TIP: It's easier to goof off like this if you don't have a job and school only lasts 3 hours a day. That frees up more time for doing what you want to do!

Another thought on visiting your local cool car dealer is that you are doing RESEARCH! Yes, important research on what snazzy cars they have, just so that you are 100% prepared for winning the lottery! By doing your research in advance, you can save a lot of time when your ship comes in or you inherit a bazzillion dollars. Now wouldn't you feel bad if you won the lottery and then had to start thinking what to do with the money? This research is a big time saver!

Another happy thought is that while there are lottery jackpots, there are also HUGE LOTTERY JACKPOTS! Once in a while the prize money goes up over 100 million dollars, or even a BILLION dollars! Now with that much money, you wouldn't have to decide on which car car to buy, because you'd have to decide HOW MANY super-duper cars to buy. 

But then, if you were purchasing multiple super cool cars, your next rich-person headache would be where to store them! Luckily, I've done some research in that department as well, so I'd go for building a new top-secret NMS HQ with car facility, and just go ahead and join some rich race car club that lets  you store your cars on site at a private club racetrack. Recently I saw an ad in a magazine for a newish track like this near Knoxville. From what I remember of the ad it said membership was about $250,000, and then you could buy a lot there for about a million dollars, and then build your dream garage for whatever price. It's the getting the millions of dollars in the first place that has me stumped!

Normally a black prancing horse on a yellow background, here's a black and white logo shield to go with the black and white car above. 

A cool go kart modeled after an older Ferrari F1 car. 

Automatic Transmission Overhaul Class Update #2

Inside the automatic transmission valve body. Looks like one of those games you tilt and try to move the marble through the maze. Transmission fluid goes down different passageways to activate different gears and move parts. I don't remember seeing anything like this when I went to music school at the home of the NATIONAL CHAMPS OHIO STATE! (I knew i could work that in here somewhere!)

Other than not knowing ANYTHING about automatic transmissions, this class has been great so far! Since most people learn "hands-on" better than other learning methods, this has been the main focus of our class. If you want a fancy term for hands-on, just say "experiential learning!" As a great example of this, here's how our first week went. 

One of the valve body gaskets.

The first two days were in the classroom, and this was to learn the names of all the parts and the basic theory on how these crazy things work. During this time our instructors would talk about a part of the transmission, then grab one from a table and show it to us. This is a very effective thing to do, and way better than just looking at a photo of the parts in a book. 

Here's the transmission we dropped out of a Chevrolet 1500. Next, we're attaching the red half circle on top so that we can clamp it on the workbench (the clamp is on the left edge of the table.) PRO TIP: Eye protection. 

After two days of that, we went straight into the shop with our small groups to work on real transmissions. Most of the groups (including mine) had a vehicle on a lift, and the simple instructions were to take the transmission out. Sure, easy, there ya go! I do this all the time, no problem! Oh, the instructors are there to assist us but just going ahead and doing something is a great way to learn how to do it. See also, "sink or swim."

Clamped on the table and rotated to drain a bit more oil out, it's time to start taking this apart. Good view of the transmission fluid pan that has a built-in filter. 

For my group, we have a 1996 Chevy Silverado. We were just about ready to pull it out at the end of that first class (ok, it's a three-hour class) but we were advised to get it first thing the next day, just so that we wouldn't be rushing to finish and make a big mistake. Not wanting to drop an entire transmission and damage it, this was great advice!

The cover is off the valve body, and we keep tearing it down. The lights on the power wrench make it look mean!

So ok, after two days in the classroom, plus about 3.5 hours of work, we had our transmission pulled out and sitting on a table. The next 2.5 hours was about how long it took to disassemble the transmission, inspect the parts, and for the teacher to order the replacement parts that we needed. We were feeling really good about getting this thing broken down pretty quickly, but then we were reminded that we'd only done the easy part of the job, since it would likely take us a full week to put it all back together. Oh well!

PRO TIP from our instructors: Take it apart and lay out all the parts in order. Don't throw anything away until it's put back together, back in the truck, and running! One reason you don't throw out old parts is just to confirm that your new part looks the same and will fit. Maybe you can't do that when you buy a new box of Cheerios to replace your old box of Cheerios, but for car parts it works!

In all my other classes so far, we'd dealt with simple stuff you work on regularly like brake pads, headlights, and an oil change. Getting those parts from a dealership or your local parts store is easy, because you can probably find it in stock right now. With our school's business accounts, I've seen parts get ordered online or on the phone and get delivered the same day almost as fast as a pizza! The only difference is that car parts are not as delicious!

Some of the parts go in the Viper-Jet washer. They came out looking much better!

After the cleaning and starting to reassemble with new clutch packs, gaskets, seals, etc. as needed. 

But with our transmission internals, these parts get ordered from a specialty shop in Charlotte and generally take maybe 24 hours. This isn't really a big deal, because I'm sure there's other projects for us to work on, or homework to do. Hey, stay tuned for more Automatic Transmission class, and hopefully next time we'll have this job all done with everything working great!

New parts

2025 Track Night in America Schedule Released

One of my laps at Track Night in America last year on the Charlotte ROVAL. 
Top speed 116MPH. 

One popular program from the fine folks at the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) is the Track Night in America. For 2025 they are marking the 10th year of this cool program too! These events came about as a contrast to the typical weekend only track driving events that cost hundreds of dollars per day. What's the contrast? The TNiA driving fun events are during the work week, don't take all day, and cost under $200. The general idea is that if you can get out of work at lunch time, head to a local track, and get 3 sessions driving your car on track!

Are these things fun? Well, yes! 

Are they safe? Yes. 

Do you need a roll bar, a race car, and bazillion dollar race tires? NO!

I've done two TNiA days and had fun both times. The 2025 schedule all across the country is listed below, and here's the link: 

    2025 TRACK NIGHT IN AMERICA

In addition to the two closest places to NMS at Carolina Motorsports Park and the Charlotte Motor Speedway, I'd like to add an event at Atlanta Motorsports Park, Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, or up at Virginia International Raceway this year. It helps to retired and not working for these weekday events too. Now if they just didn't get in the way of going to school...

2025 Track Night Schedule

Atlanta Motorsports Park, Dawsonville, GA – March 19, April 16, August 13, September 10, October 15, November 12
Blackhawk Farms Raceway, South Beloit, IL – May 21, June 18, July 16, August 20, September 24, October 15
Brainerd International Raceway, Brainerd, MN – May 23, August 29
Carolina Motorsports Park, Kershaw, SC – March 12, May 14, September 10, October 8, November 5
Charlotte Motor Speedway, Concord, NC – April 30, June 26, July 23, August 19
Dakota County Technical College, Rosemount, MN – April 25, June 13, July 11, August 15, September 26*
Daytona International Speedway, Daytona Beach, FL – June 19, July 31, September 19*
Dominion Raceway, Thornburg, VA – May 15, June 12, September 11, October 9
GingerMan Raceway, South Haven, MI – April 24, June 3, July 3, August 28, September 25
Harris Hill Raceway, San Marcos, TX – March 12, April 9, May 1, June 4, September 10, October 8, November 5
High Plains Raceway, Deer Trail, CO – June 25, September 24
Lime Rock Park, Lakeville, CT – April 17, May 8, June 5, July 3, August 7, September 23
Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, Braselton, GA – May 13*, June 12, July 18
MotorSport Ranch, Cresson, TX – March 19, May 20, September 10, October 7
Nashville Superspeedway, Lebanon, TN – March 15, April 26, June 7*, October 11
Nelson Ledges Road Course, Garrettsville, OH – April 19
New Jersey Motorsports Park, Millville, NJ – April 23, May 21, June 18, July 16, August 20, September 17, October 15
NOLA Motorsports Park, Avondale, LA – April 17, September 25, October 30
Palmer Motorsports Park, Ware, MA – June 12, September 4
Pikes Peak International Raceway, Fountain, CO – May 2, July 25
Pittsburgh International Race Complex, Wampum, PA – April 16, May 15, June 18, July 8, August 7, September 17, October 15
Pocono Raceway, Long Pond, PA – April 22, May 13, June 3, July 9, August 28, September 25, October 21
Portland International Raceway, Portland, OR – April 18*, May 23, June 27, August 22, September 26, October 10*
Ridge Motorsports Park, Shelton, WA – April 23, May 21, June 18, July 23, August 13, September 24
Sebring International Raceway, Sebring, FL – March 27, April 22, May 22, October 16, November 18, December 11
Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park, Thompson, CT – April 29, May 20, June 24, July 17, August 21, September 11, October 14
Thunderhill Raceway Park, Willows, CA – March 13, April 10, May 15, June 12, September 18, October 23, November 20
VIRginia International Raceway, Alton, VA – April 2, December 4

* tentative event dates

350Z Rallycross Update #2

2004 Nissan 350Z

We had a day off of school/work, so what did NMS do? Worked on the Nissan 350Z Rallycross car of course! As a quick summary, this car came pretty cheap, so that's reason #1 we're planning to abuse it by driving it competitively in an off-road rallycross in March. Some problems are bigger than others, so we're sorting through the important stuff, and pretty much maxing out our car diagnosing and repair skills. Hey, if we were expert mechanics, it would be easy!

Brake pads? No problem!

Top issues we're looking at are an electrical drain of the battery, some error codes relating mostly to the automatic transmission, and then making sure the suspension and brakes will hold up to a lot of bouncing around in the dirt. After watching a video on the Tesla Cyber truck, I bet it would do pretty well off-roading, but then again, we didn't spend the Tesla's asking price of $90,000 and up on this Nissan!

One good thing of this plan: we're planning on using the NMS-South truck and trailer to get the car to the event, so even if it totally blows up (yes, that's a technical term) we'll be able to get it back home. Or just light a match and burn it down in place. Ok, that was a joke, we wouldn't be so irresponsible to burn up a car. On purpose. 

Easy job #1: the NMS-South Diagnostics Car-Inspecting Team suggested new rear brake pads, so we knocked that our quickly. Safety note: WITH the car safely on 4 big jack stands. This is a cheap car, we're going to drive it roughly in an off pavement environment, so what kind of brake pads did we use? Good question. Answer. The cheapest ones we could find! Rear brakes don't' work as hard as front brakes, and it's a low cost thing, remember?

OK, not the worst pads in the world, but we replaced them. 

Easy job #2: To start dealing with the transmission, we wanted to at least look at the transmission fluid, see what shape it is in, and check the level. There can be a lot of expensive bad things going on here, so we tried the cheapest/easiest things first. One thing we learned is that this car has a transmission dipstick, which is cleverly bolted down. Instead of just pulling up on the typical dipstick that has a handle or ring, this doesn't have that! Good to know info! Short answer: this car was good on fluid level at operating temperature, so now we wanted to take a peak.

Under the hood, the dipstick and tube is in red, with the arrow pointing at the bolt holding it down. 
PRO TIP: See the lower left what looks like a Phillips screw? That's the coolant bleed-off valve if you're adding coolant. 

We drained the transmission fluid out of the pan, and while sure it was very black, it didn't smell super bad, and didn't have big chunks of metal in it either. This was as far as we really wanted to diagnose the transmission for now, so we replaced the amount of fluid we took out with new fluid, and moved on, even though we haven't fixed it yet. 

We drained about 4.5 quarts of automatic transmission fluid. 

Easy job #3: Test drive  with scan tool. Bad news, as we drove the battery was showing less than 12 volts. This thing just drives terribly, from the transmission to the steering, and including the non-adjustable seats. 

Scan tool ready to work. 

Conclusion for now: We have a new alternator we can put on and probably fix the charging problem, but I can' imagine that's going to help with the transmission and seats. 

New fluid ready to go. 

The engine seems to be OK and is putting out some power, but we're starting to have to question if we can address all these issues, or if we need to reconsider. For now the NMS executive council is going to have to put their heads together and decide where we go with this project. 

Top Selling Cars from 2024

TOP SELLER!

Automakers generally release their sales figures every quarter, so now that we're into January we can see what cars, trucks, and SUVs sold the most in the USA in 2024. Maybe you have a vehicle or two on this list, or maybe you don't, it doesn't really matter. To me the important thing is that this list is NOT the BEST vehicles of the year, NOT the FASTEST, and NOT EVEN the MOST RELIABLE. These are just the ones that sold the most! The BEST car for YOU is the one that does what you need it to do! 

If you need to haul and tow stuff for work every day, then you probably need a full size or bigger pickup. If you need a reliable car that gets good gas mileage to get to work, then maybe a cheaper hybrid is the way to go. On the other hand, if you need a car to go fast on a race track, well, then just maybe you NEED a new Porsche! Your mileage may vary, and there are not a lot of wrong answers if it works for you. 

This list includes Cars, Trucks, and SUVs. Not really a spoiler alert, but you might know that a LOT of the top few are trucks. 'MERICA!! We read this article in Car and Driver Magazine, compiled from the manufacturer's sales numbers, and you can check out the article at this link: 

CAR AND DRIVER: 2024 TOP SELLING

25 Nissan Sentra: 152,659 units sold

One of us had a Sentra way back in the 1980s, and they're still selling! NMS-South continues to add to his collection of Nissan 350Zs, so NMS owns more of this brand than any other for now!

24 Toyota Tundra: 159,528 units sold

And here come the trucks to dominate this list! Toyota still has a great reputation, and more on this list to come from them. 

23 Subaru Outback: 161,814 units sold

One of 3 Subarus on the list, and we can say NMS is happy with one in the family. 

22 Kia Sportage: 161,917 units sold

Welcome to the first of several Korean (Kia/Hyundai) vehicles on this list. 

21 Honda Accord: 162,723 units sold

We're going to see some more Hondas on this list, and NMS is very happy with their current Accord Hybrid. 

20 Toyota Highlander: 169,543 units sold

Are Toyotas and SUVs popular in the US? Yes, and yes. 

19 Subaru Forester: 175,521 units sold

A second Subaru on the list. 

18    Subaru Crosstrek: 181,811 units sold

The Crosstrek takes top selling Subaru honors for 2024. 

17 Toyota Tacoma: 192,813 units sold

The mighty TACO TRUCK continues it's run with the top sellers. For the mid-size truck segment, I'll just spoil it now and let you know that you're not going to see a Ford Ranger, Nissan Frontier, or Chevy Colorado on this list. Point to Toyota. 

16 Ford Explorer: 194,094 units sold

The Explorer has been around forever, and sometimes I forget that they still make them. Almost 200K sold last year. 

15 Chevrolet Trax: 200,689 units sold

Another US brand hits the list, with more to come from Chevy too!

14 Hyundai Tucson: 206,126 units sold 

The Tuscon has been around for a while also. It's the top placed Korean brand on this list.

13 Chevrolet Equinox: 207,730 units sold

Guess what? Another Chevy SUV.

12 Jeep Grand Cherokee: 216,148 units sold

Hey, look, a Stellantis/Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge/Ram product! Almost in the top 10 too. 

11Toyota Corolla: 232,908 units sold

OK, almost to the TOP TEN, and the venerable Corolla still sells over 200,000 cars a year!

10 Honda Civic: 242,005 units sold

Welcome to the TOP TEN! All the cars in this part of the list should be no surprise if you're paying attention to all the vehicles you see driving on the road. One new thing about the Civic this year is that they've brought back a Civic Hybrid, and you can find a shiny new one in the NMS-South garage. Great mileage, and we're counting on great Honda reliability too. Built in Ohio, just like the NMS drivers!

9 Nissan Rogue: 245,724 units sold

One more from Nissan, the ever-popular SUV Rogue. 

8 Toyota Camry: 309,876 units sold

The Camry sold way more than the comparable Honda Accord in 2024, but it's still not Toyota's top seller! We loved our 2011 Camry. 

7 GMC Sierra: 340,946 units sold

OK, time for the big boys, top sellers, and pretty much all trucks and SUVs from here to the top seller. 

6 Ram Pickup: 373,120 units sold

Finally another Stellantis/Chrysler, and this makes two full size pickups in a row. 

5 Honda CR-V: 402,791 units sold

A few SUVs are up here fighting for top honors with the trucks, so I'd have to guess that a Honda CR-V is hugely popular again. 

4 Tesla Model Y: 405,900 units sold (estimated)

It's almost still surprising to see a Tesla on the list, but hey, compared to when I saw one for the first time (maybe 10+ years ago,) they're all over the place these days. 

3 Toyota RAV4: 475,193 units sold

The top seller from Toyota, the RAV4 has been around, and this year sold more than the Honda CR-V. 

2 Chevrolet Silverado: 542,517 units sold

Over half a million brand new Silverados sold in 2024. I guess you could average that out to over 10,000 in each of the 50 states, or say they sold 1,486 of these every single day all year long! That's a lot! Even NMS has an older Silverado. 

1 Ford F-Series: 732,139 units sold

Again, the Ford F-Series takes top honors. Sure, this includes a lot of models of F series Ford, but come on, this is nearly 200,000 more than the #2 Silverado, and almost twice as many as the Ram. 

And Now, a New Semester in Automotive Technician School!

Now you've seen the inside of a torque converter.

This week I started a new semester at York Technical College and their Automotive Technician program. More specifically, I started with Automatic Transmission Overhaul class, and after that will be Auto Diagnosis, and then Advanced Auto Diagnosis and Repair. Like for my last semester, I'd like to thank the state of South Carolina for offering FREE TUITION for Senior Citizens! Also, thanks to my wife Julie for suggesting I get out of the house, I mean, further my education! 

Funny thing about automatic transmission class, is that normally it comes AFTER the manual transmission class, but since I started in January instead of the fall, I've got them out of sequence. Hopefully that doesn't make things too difficult, so I know going in that all my classmates will be fresh off of manual transmission class, and I'm always up for being the slowest guy in the class too!

Internal gaskets

Lucky for me we have some automatic transmission cars at NMS, so just maybe I'll be able to learn some very practical and applicable information, and even get to work on our cars for this class. The instructors decide what we're working on in the shop, so we'll see how this turns out.

PRO TIP: If you're taking an automatic (or manual) transmission out of a car that is up on a lift, and you have the transmission on your transmission jack, STRAP IT DOWN! If you don't, you risk having the transmission fall off of the jack, crashing to the floor, and ruining the transmission case like this one here. This is the view inside the "container of shame" AKA "metal recycling barrel."

Happy New Year 2025!

What is Brian doing now?

Everyone at NMS hopes your 2024 ended on a high note, and that 2025 is off to a good start. For a lot of people, both years might include spending time with family and friends, and of course, working on cars in the garage! (or the driveway...or the side of the road if need be!) If you're lucky like the NMS team, you can work on your car in the garage WITH your family! Hey, it's bonding time. It's fun! You're building memories! And most importantly, your family probably works for FREE!

Wheel change day is easier with a bigger jack, a 1/2 inch impact wrench, and a new 1/2 inch split-beam torque wrench. 

Up at NMS-North, New Year's Day was partly spent in the garage, throwing the wintery tires on the Cayman, and adding a bit of power steering fluid. In your average front engine car the fluid thing wouldn't be a big deal, because odds are the power steering fluid reservoir is easy to get to right under the hood. If you're in Great Britain, sure, it's under the bonnet. You say Potatoe- and I say Potatoe! With the Cayman however, it means a couple of extra steps to take off the carpeted engine cover and the aluminum engine cover. Oh well, I'm getting pretty good at it, since the car seems to have a very small leak of fluid and I've done this a few times.

In the red circle you can see where I wrote on my Porsche engine cover with a permanent Sharpie to remind me of what size Torx bit to use. 

One fun bit of trivia, I took a Sharpie permanent marker and wrote on the Porsche, just to remind myself that the metal engine cover takes a T30 Torx bit. Plus, I always wanted to write a sentence that included "wrote on a Porsche with a Sharpie permanent marker" in it. 

Aftermarket rear spoiler kind of blocks the driver's view from the rear view mirror, so let's take this thing off! You don't really need to look behind you in autocross or rallycross, but it comes in handy the rest of the time.

Rear spoiler now deleted, and that's when we saw a total of 6 holes in the rear hatch. Our best guess is that this car wore at least 2 if not 3 different spoilers since it was new in 2004. Hmm,  now how in the world do you patch these holes on a beater race car?

Down at NMS-South, we did some work on the white 350Z, and I'm glad Brian was able to get it into the garage, because it was a bit chilly in South Carolina! If you live farther north than us, you can laugh at 22 degrees being "chilly" but I said what I said!

Voila! Grab some stickers laying around and cover up those holes!
Ask us about the yellow Chevy Aveo!

We started with some basic stuff to fix on the 350Z, keeping in mind that right now our plan is just to Rallycross this thing on dirt, so we're not exactly prepping for the Indianapolis 500 or a fancy car show here. Odds are pretty good it's going to blow up, so we plan to tow it to a rallycross weekend in North Carolina and see what happens. As seen above, we removed an aftermarket spoiler that had just been screwed into the rear hatch, and revealed other holes from other spoilers in the past! Hey wait a minute, with no spoiler and a few holes in it, the car weighs less and therefore must be FASTER!

Next easy fix, we addressed a rubbing sound in the front left wheel area. Turns out that the splash shield had worked loose and was rubbing on the tire. In fact the shield had a hole in it from a LOT of rubbing (in the yellow circle above.) For now we just fastened the shield with 3 missing pins, and that should take care of this problem. 

While we had the wheel off, we checked the brake pads in front and back, and the front looks OK. Rear pads need replacing, so we'll order some that are "good enough for rallycross" (translation: cheapest available on planet Earth) and install those later. Lots of rust on this rotor and wheel since it hasn't been used much lately, but that's no big deal. 

Next came some general inspection, and the end result is that we have some trouble codes relating to the engine, a seat belt light is on, there are multiple transmission codes, and a CAN bus communication error code U1000. On top of just the trouble codes from the scanner, we also know that there is an oil leak possibly from the main crank seal and/or rear main seal, and something is draining the battery. The NMS-South scan tool gave us the trouble codes for most of this stuff, so we'll have to dig a lot deeper to see what's what. I'm hopeful that the communication code is related to most of the others (transmission codes, speed sensor, etc) and if we're lucky it's an easy fix to get all these components and modules talking to each other again. Maybe the speed sensor is just a loose or bad connection and not a bad sensor. Let's take a look at the airbag sensor issue next. 

Brian knew about the front air bag sensor issue, so here's a look at that. The sensor is circled in green, and the yellow stuff in the red circle is the connection to the sensor. We had another airbag sensor from the other 350Z and plugged that in, but the trouble code came right back. So, not fixed yet. 

Just for fun, I circled the front hood latch in yellow, so you can kind of tell we're looking straight down in front of the radiator. 

One more fun thing! We took out a bunch of wires that used to be connected to an aftermarket stereo and/or subwoofer system. This picture is just part of what we took out, so if nothing else we're claiming a big weight savings, which of course makes the car faster!

We're not sure where we'll end up going with this car beyond a Rallycross weekend, but we'll keep you updated as things go along. Looking at these various issues on a 21 year old car with 180,000 miles, you can only do so much! At this point it drives OK, and we fixed a few things like a big overheating problem, as well as these minor things in today's blog. Oh yeah, and the driver's seat doesn't really work like it should, so we'll likely replace the two seats, put on some stock rear brake pads, and that should get us through a Rallycross in March!

Brian erases our time travel into Ghosts of Rear Spoilers Past by covering up the holes on the rear hatch!

Now that I think about this project, I have a new theory that car repair (or home repair) is like time travelling. By seeing what weird stuff someone else did in the past, you can trace history back through time. Maybe Neil DeGrasse Tyson has some thoughts about real space time travel, but this is what I came up with today! You can just see the former spoilers, stereo system, and little bits of damage on this car! If anyone knows how to really time travel, I'd suggest going into the future and getting that Sports Almanac so you can win some big bets like in the movie Back to the Future!

NMS Targets for 2025

NMS Rallycross car unveiled for 2025, another Nissan 350Z!

Good-bye 2024, and hello to 2025! 

During a press conference held at the NMS World HQ of Racing, the Sporting Director and Chief Operating Officer of New Project Developments Brian Nixon announced a surprising new direction for the racing team. 

"Yeah, we've raced on tracks, paved parking lots for autocross, asphalt go-kart tracks, and certainly we'll continue all of that in 2025. However, our engineering research team has determined that our drivers would do better on a different racing surface." When asked what in the wide-wide-world-of-sports that meant in English, Nixon replied that NMS was announcing a new Rallycross effort in 2025. 

Rallycross is best described as an "autocross held on grass, dirt, mud, and gravel" according to Nixon. He further explained that NMS-South has some previous experience in this discipline, since they raced several events some years ago in the South Carolina Region of the SCCA. While NMS no longer has a connection to the famous Ford Probe, or Dirtie Dirtsun Datsun B210 that is currently being run by Shellie's House of Speed, the NMS squad says they have a new car for 2025 Rallycross, a 2004 Nissan 350Z. To avoid confusion, Nixon stated that this is an entirely different Nissan than the main track weapon, which is a 2008. He then confused us by saying it's also not one of two other 350Z cars in his driveway. 

In other updates provided for this exclusive report, the NMS team will continue running the #77 Porsche Cayman in Autocross and track events, as well as the NMS #86 Nissan 350Z on track. An expected contract for one of the NMS drivers in Formula 1 did not happen for 2025, so rumors continue to build that at least one, if not both NMS drivers are available and under consideration for the 2026 debut of Cadillac racing in Formula 1. 

The team is developing the Rallycross 2004 Nissan 350Z that is alleged to actually run, have about four tires, and just statistically might complete a full event without breaking down. To clarify, NMS stated that this is a different Z than the 2008 350Z that is being prepped for NASA Spec-Z Races on track. It appears to this reporter that the NMS squad is making a move to conquer the Nissan 350Z world, with these efforts in both track and off-track rallycross events in 2025. More to follow as this story develops and the NMS garage gets to work on this 190,000 mile used Nissan. Reporting from Irmo SC, this is NMS-Racing.Net.