Junkyard Find: 1991 Nissan Sentra SE-R, Maybe
You see a lot of early-90s Sentras in the junkyard these days, most of them having become too beat to be worth fixing when something breaks, but you don’t run into a lot of junkyard SE-Rs. The question in this case is: are we looking at a real SE-R?
The spoiler and trunk emblem look correct…
The engine is gone, which is what you’d expect from a factory hot rod in a self-service yard in which all four-cylinder engines are the same price, regardless of vehicle.
But hold on a minute! Didn’t all SE-Rs come with disc brakes on all four corners?
So, we’re looking at a regular ’91 Sentra with an SE-R trunklid, or a real SE-R with a drum-brake conversion. Which do you think is more likely?
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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I had an '87 Sentra 5 spd. W/o question, the best car I've owned. It cheerfully racked up 256k mi. before it was rear-ended. :(
I was a proud owner of a black 91 Nissan Sentra SE-r (new)... and it had extra tail light inserts that cover the trunk lid on each side of the license plate... I would say this car has badge envy...