3000GT VR4 Hello so you answered my question about the fuel pump and i was wondering sense smoke came from the dash under the passengers side any idea what it could of been sense it is also causing the car to not turn on and also sense this is an import car do i need to get a special mechanic to look at it or can it bee any licensed car mechanic?

It doesn't need to be a specific import mechanic - most mechanics can work on Japanese cars as well as domestics, since they're designed similarly. If you had a European car (BMW, Audi, etc) I'd recommend a Euro specialist though, since the Euro cars often do things "differently" and a familiarity with that school of thought is valuable.

Do you have any aftermarket electronics installed in the car, either after you became the owner or before, that you know of? It's not common for OEM electronics to just up and die like that, but if there's any aftermarket stereo, cell phone, alarm, etc equipment or wiring, which wasn't there when the car was built, it wouldn't have the benefit of having its wiring incorporated into the car's harnesses. Therefore it'd be more likely that a power wire or other powered sensing wire might chafe and short out against the metal framework inside the dashboard.

Try removing the glovebox from the car - it shouldn't be more than a few basic screws or bolts and it should drop off the bottom of the dash. This will let you see up inside and possibly give you a better idea of what is up there. Be very careful if you have a passenger airbag though - static electricity from your body could detonate it if you mishandled the connectors for the system. Airbag connectors by law are bright yellow, so avoid touching them and you'll be OK in that regard. If you can take a look up there and see if anything looks suspicious, that will help. Also, turn the car on, engine on, and try to use every single feature in the car, and see if any of them have stopped working. Once you've exhausted all possibilities sitting still, go for a drive and test the rest (such as cruise control) and make sure all of them work. Arm the alarm and try to set it off any way you can - if you can identify any features or subsystems that don't work any longer, but which you knew to work recently, that'll be a huge first step in our figuring out what happened. Try it out and let me know what you find and we'll go from there.