Going From Z-to-Z with S30 World

From the moment Chris Visscher laid eyes on a 240Z as a child, he was hooked. It wasn’t just the low fastback profile, the long hood or the classic signature silhouette, it was something deeper.

The memory of that first encounter with the Japanese sports car never faded, yet it would be much later on in Chris’s life that the passion was unleashed. After a life building successful businesses, the time came to step away, and to focus on his dreams.

His love for the Z resurfaced, but this time he had bandwidth to truly dedicate himself to it. The stars aligned and it was around this time that he met Gustav Oplasnik, a Hungarian artisan who specialized in restoring classic cars. 

Chris’s entrepreneurial nature wouldn’t allow him to simply buy his own 240Z and be content with the ownership experience; he had to step things up a notch or two. Rather, he decided to set up a one-stop shop for everything and anything S30 related, a way to truly sustain the global Z community.

That’s how S30 World was born.

Alec and I flew into Amsterdam last month to meet Chris, to really understand what he and his team are trying to do. S30 World is made up of two workshops and a museum, but more importantly, a network of trusted suppliers and consultants that feed into what has already become an impressive business.

We visited the area where the R&D shop is based, which I’ll get into on a separate feature that will show a totally new – totally crazy – project that Chris has been working on for a good few years. The main restoration workshop is in Hungary, where all the metalwork and fabrication gets taken care of, a place I hope to visit on my next trip to Europe.

What I was really there to see was Chris’s personal collection, which he has neatly laid out in the S30 Museum, right on top of the shop. Chris has spent the last few years buying as many special Zs as he can get his hands on, in an attempt to feed that passion born in his childhood but at the same time learn and research the evolution of the chassis; very little aspect of what made these cars so special during their production run.

Some of these cars have been restored via the different packages that S30 World offers, a perfect way to show owners of the 240Z what each one entails. 

Chris is obsessed with keeping these cars fun and usable, not to mention as beautiful and as factory perfect as can be. This is where Gustav comes in, able to shape and create steel body panels and structural components out of sheet metal to perfectly restore every single area of the chassis and body. Then there is the attention to detail. 

Frustrated with the lack of good quality parts, Chris has taken upon himself to create them from scratch: door and window seals, interior and exterior trim pieces, carpets and even getting the texture of the vinyl seats just right. It all comes together in creating cars that, as he says, are better than when they came out of the Nissan factory in 1969.

I felt that straight away, opening and closing the door to the #0023 HS30 240Z that he has restored to perfect condition. Never has a door opened and closed so effortlessly on a Z since 1969, the rubber seals doing their job beautifully! 

With his Masterclass restorations he preserves a tangible vintage feel, but his obsession with making these cars fun and usable in today’s world has led him towards developing different packages; some a little more modern and easy to live with. He’s gone so far as to develop his own hydraulic power steering, not happy with the feel of the electric units out there.

This mindset stretches right into the engine and suspension packages, something I felt for myself driving two of his development cars. One a raw, more 70s take on tuning that stays true to what an oldschool modded Z feels like. The other offers a more plush drive with custom seats, a more ‘massaged’ engine with a silky smooth mid-range and dampers that allow you to drive effortlessly over long distances. 

Through these packages, Chris helps Z owners keep their cars on the road – not just as weekend garage ornaments, but as machines to be driven, enjoyed, and cherished. He’s seen the disappointment of cars that sit idle because of wiring faults, fuel issues, overheating and so on. He’s engineered solutions to make the experience satisfying and worry-free.

All of this research, know-how and – most importantly – execution, has led Chris and his team to slowly build up the epitome of the perfect Z. It’s a car that most would classify as a Z that dreams are made of, but to find out more you’ll have to come back soon for the next installment in the S30 World story!