Jay Duca’s RWD, 2JZ Nissan Prairie – the man who just loves vans

Children of the 1980s will remember the Nissan Prairie and its rival the Mitsubishi Nimbus as the cars of choice for families who didn’t want to go all out on a Nissan Vanette or Toyota Tarago. 

The Prairie’s flexible seating capability and sliding rear doors no doubt appealed to parents, but was otherwise deeply uncool when new. 

Fast-forward to 2022 and oddball Japanese cars like the Prairie are now attracting stacks of attention at Cars & Coffee events or All Japan days due to their rarity and general 80s nostalgia. 

South Australian mad mad Jay Duca has a Prairie, but he’s not exactly a Cars & Coffee kind of guy. In fact, he  has been concocting mad cars like this for decades, which he is now documenting on his Low Standards YouTube channel. This drift-spec Prairie is the latest machine to roll out of Jay’s stable, completed just in time for its debut at the LZ World Tour drifting festival at Calder Park back in late October. 

It was originally his brother's car, but very different to when it used to cart the boys to Street Machine Summernats and back as young lads. Gone is the asthmatic, carby four-pot, as well as the front drive floor pan. Yep, the whole damn floor!

To make the Prairie a drifter, Jay sacrificed the whole floor and underpinnings of a KE70 Corolla, dropping the Prairie’s body on top. That means it now uses all Corolla drift suspension, allowing Jay to slam it down to the rails. 

As for power, it comes from an aspirated 2JZ. Jay custom fabricated the gorgeous headers himself, using Haltech for brains and a killer set of ITBs for all the dorts. 

A last minute thrash on the Prairie got it done just in time to make the trip over to Melbourne for debut at the LZ World Tour, where Jay was doing demos all weekend long. It was drifting alongside his other 2JZ, RWD-converted van, a Honda Odyssey. 

“This is my favourite car now, it turned out better than I could’ve imagined,” he says. “I just love vans!”