The 1982 B11 Nissan Sentra was, even by the most generous metric, not a beloved car. Like most automakers Nissan had emerged from the Decade of Disco bruised, battered and choked with performance-sapping emissions equipment. The early Eighties were known for further crippling previously zippy rear-wheel-drive J-tin by transforming cars like the Sunny into a new generation of pullers.
But, the Eighties were also known for birthing the turbocharger! Perhaps the American B11 would not be so easily forgotten if we had received a Sentra-fied version of the 1982 Nissan Sunny Leprix Turbo, which had a 115hp version of the oddball E15ET motor and could apparently bust through colonial deco walls unscathed to foil Tommy-gun-toting kidnappers in a quasi-Western, quasi-1920s gangster orgy of American cinema tropes. But honestly, the Leprix had us already at first sight of its mirror-image “TURBO” grille. Continue reading
