Early on July 16, four Montreal drivers formed a convoy bound for Toronto. Two more joined as they passed Ottawa, and the young men—who for the most part had never met—carried on to Canada’s largest city.
So what made six complete strangers band together for a small road trip? Their cars.
Skymeet 2011 was an event that started as a thread on a forum. GT-R Canada, the website responsible for organizing the meet, is one of the few groups that cater to drivers who have imported a Nissan Skyline GT-R, a right-hand drive model sold around the world—but never in North America.
“[Our] link got posted on some other sites,” said Daryl Henwood, President of GT-R Canada, when I spoke to him early on at the meet. “It's going to be the biggest one so far,” he said while admitting he wasn't be sure how many would actually come.
Previously, owners met in mall parking lots or anywhere they could find space, but thanks to Right Drive, a dealership specializing in right-hand drive vehicles, they finally had an officially sponsored location.
"The biggest goal is to get people to meet each other in person. A lot of these guys talk on the forum but never meet face to face.”
Owners meet for the first time
Blake Trickey, one of the six owners driving from Ottawa and Montreal that day, had never met the guys he came down with. Trickey said “it was a definite” for him to make the trip “just to meet people,” as he waved to someone he said he speaks with often on the forum but had never met before in person.
The GT-R Canada forum, he said, is well moderated and something he used for direction in repairing his car after its turbocharger failed. Trickey's story is far from unique; every owner at Skymeet had stories about mining the forum for tips.
Marc Nelson, another of what Henwood called the “Montreal guys,” had spoken with Trickey over the forum several times, but never met him in person. Nelson not only spends time modifying his Skyline, but makes a business out of it. His company, NelsonMX, manufactures custom carbon fibre parts in house, many of which are sold to members on the GT-R Canada forum.
“You really have the chance to travel into this realm that fuels your passion,” Nelson said. “This fuels my passion for business. I see how many people are happy with what they're doing [to their cars].”
Nelson said he does all the work on his car himself, including a motor rebuild last winter. He spent the last two years working on it, and claims to have sliced hundreds of pounds off the car by using his own carbon fibre parts.
“The forum helped me the most,” he said, “in one to 10 minutes there would be a reply” to his posting. “If I had trouble, people would help,” Something Sunny Patel, Nelson's friend and fellow Skyline owner echoed. “If you put a question up, within 24 hours you have five to six solid answers. Even if I think I know what's wrong I will post to hear everyone's experience,” Patel said.
The infamous "Sharpie Car" owned by one of the club members
Forum more than advice
For Montreal owners, forums like GT-R Canada mean a lot more than advice. In 2009, the Quebecois government stopped registering right-hand drive vehicles, putting an end to importing Skylines and hurting Quebec's Japanese import community.
Patel and Nelson now have a limited supply of parts for their cars within their own province. “They're just selling off the parts they have,” Patel said of retailers. That legislation makes a network of friendly and concerned owners infinitely valuable because according to Patel there is often someone getting rid of the part he may need and vice versa.
Humble beginnings
That tight-knit mentality is exactly what GT-R Canada founder John Chu hoped for out of the site. Chu imported the second-ever Skyline to Canada in 2004 when it became legal and jokes about how is friend “beat him to the punch” by about a month. The forum went live in the same year, “We thought it was going to be an old fart's club,” he said. “We never thought it would go past 15 members.”
Chu said he thought importing Skylines would be too expensive for a younger crowd, and it may have been until businesses started opening to act as middlemen. “I never expected dealerships like Right Drive,” he said.
Though membership grew slowly in the beginning, once Skylines became more available numbers on the site jumped beyond what they ever hoped for. “We actually thought it was one of those [advertising] bots,” said Chu who vividly recalls sending the forum's 100th member a congratulatory message. Now, GT-R Canada boasts more than 20,000 total contributors and just over 1700 active members who regularly participate.
Fifty-five Skylines made it to Skymeet 2011, affirming Henwoods’ expectations. The event was the largest meeting of Skylines in Canada to date.
“The biggest goal,” he said, was to “get people to meet each other in person. A lot of these guys talk on the forum but never meet face to face.”
Editor's note: We love forums. Our Forum isn't enthusiast-focused, instead, it's a place where you can ask for car help and get valid advice from experts…or just hang out and share stories.
