There are cars you photograph, and then there are cars that feel like they’re letting you visit their habitat.
Alan’s 350Z is absolutely the latter.
Chapter 1: Back on the Old Pac
Man, it had been ages since I’d shot something just for an owner. No brand guidelines. No workshop deadlines. No magazine editor breathing heavily into my inbox. Just a mate, his car, and a stretch of tarmac we both used to know like the inside of our own gloveboxes.
Alan’s instructions were barely a sentence.
“Just do what you do.”
Dangerous words to offer a photographer who hasn’t been let off the leash in a while.
So we met up north, at our old hunting grounds. The Old Pacific Highway. Or simply The Old Pac if you’ve burned enough fuel and tyres along its spine to earn the shorthand. Alan and his 350Z had done exactly that for almost two decades. Dawn raids. Midnight decompressions. Endless loops between rainforest walls where the air still smells faintly of eucalyptus and brake pads.
The Z has been his since new, which already puts it in a rare category: unmolested, unflipped, un-abused, and unbothered by the trend cycles that chewed through so many of its peers. He’s tuned it with the same philosophy I’ve always chased with my own Evo: enhance, don’t erase. Sharpen the edges, don’t redraw the outline.
Sliding back into this environment felt strangely nostalgic. Like I’d revisited a version of myself I’d left parked behind when life added kids, mortgages, and 4,000 unread emails to the garage. Shooting up here again reminded me why this road still has a gravitational pull for so many of us. It’s not just the corners; it’s the quiet moments between them.
We wrapped the morning with a car that still looks right at home in its natural environment, and a reminder that I probably need to get back here more often. I’ve already pencilled in a return run, this time with a plan to show you more of the road itself, the scenery, and maybe a few delicious corners that made the Z dance.
Until then, enjoy the stills from our little reunion with the Old Pac.
P.S. Alan’s 350Z is hitting Carsales soon. If you’re seriously hunting for a well-kept modern JDM icon, flick me a message. The good ones don’t last.
