Originally posted by Y2KMondeoSVT:
Yup , his car is a '96 200SX SE-R . While I agree that the beam axle thing is a bit "old-school" , it REALLY works on the car . I was at a local Auto-X 2 months back & he literally STOMPED loads of big dollar rides with that beam axle . Out of 180 entrants , he was 4th or 5th fastest 
. I drove his car that day (as a 2nd driver) and all I can say is "That car handles !" . It's pretty light on it's feet & turns like it's on rails , all that with the stock suspension , an open air filter & good DOT approved street tires .I wasn't suggesting that it was exactly a poor handler, but just that it didn't have quite the same feel and communication of its predecessor.
FWIW, just about any beam-axle rear end vehicle will do fairly well on most autocross courses...usually a smooth, level surface on which to demonstrate perhaps the one nice virtue of a beam-axle: no camber change during suspension travel. Throw in some potholes, ripples, and expansion joints, and she'll behave a little bit differently--handling demons like unsprung weight and scuff change (the latter of which Nissan seems to have excised from its beam designs with a fancy Panhard rod linkage) begin to rear their ugly heads. That's not to say that the your buddy's SE-R won't still outhandle most of the other cars there, but that it will lose more of its handling predictability than a comparable IRS vehicle in the transition from the autocross course to the real world.
