Cameron hiding a Ford in a Nissan
A young mechanic’s labour of love is slowly taking shape.
Cameron Rush is elbows deep in rebuilding his 1989 Nissan A31 Cefiro.
The is an important detail – at least to Cameron.
The A31 Cefiro is the last sports version of the Cefiro range. It was closely related to the Nissan C33 Laurel, sharing almost the same chassis.
For almost two years Cameron has been stripping, purchasing, welding, and building parts for the Cefiro. The progress is minimal; the amount of effort tremendous.
The reasoning behind Cam building his Cefiro is because of his dad, who owns and has worked on many cars. These cars have been some of Cameron’s biggest inspirations, and the cause of Cameron’s never-ending love for cars.
Cameron has faced two major struggles within this process. One is the fact that everything is expensive. Cameron has also engine swapped what would have been a classic Nissan RB series engine to a Ford Barra Turbo engine. The Barra is an Australian straight-6 engine manufactured for the BA, BF, FG and FG-X series of Falcons.
“Barra swapping is expensive,” Cameron admitted. Swapping the engine means that Cameron must now find the parts that fit with the new engine. He has needed to modify where and how the exhaust will fit. He has had to find a new gearbox, then make mounts for the engine and gearbox.
He has also had to go through and find the best performing parts for the engine bay, so when the car is put on show people are able to enjoy and appreciate the piece of mechanical art under the bonnet.
The other struggle is that he works on cars all day every day while trying to finish an apprenticeship, which has slowly killed his motivation to work on any large chunks of his car.
“Don’t do it as a living, you lose all motivation to do your own car,” Cameron said.
Cameron has said once the Cefiro is up and running, he hopes to do it all again. This is the first car of the many in the collection that will follow. The next project car he wishes to do is a 1978 Ford F-100 which belonged to his grandfather, Keith who was known as Snow, maybe that gets a Barra too!
