For most Kiwi race fans ‘of a certain age’ it would have been the race-winning performances by our own ‘Gentleman Jim’ Richards and youthful Aussie understudy Mark Skaife at Bathurst (way) back in 1991 and 1992 that made us aware that there was something very special about the car the pair were sharing, one of Nissan’s then all-new, twin-turbo RB26-powered, 4WD/4WS BNR32 Nissan Skyline GT-Rs.
For those a little less ‘long in the tooth’ however, it was – and incredibly for a volume-produced road car that first went into production back in 1989 still in a way is – the efforts of three different Kiwis on the dragstrips here and across the Tasman from 1999 through the years of the new millennium in locally developed twin-turbo RB26-powered 4WD/4WS BNR32 Skyline GT-Rs which captured their imaginations.
Me? I was stuck somewhere in the middle by age and circumstance, and to perfectly honest, it’s only really now, with the benefit of hindsight, that the hallowed place the BNR32 Skyline GT-R holds in the performance road car firmament, is really becoming clear.
So clear in fact that here in New Zealand I believe it should be seen as the 1990s/early 2000s version of – say – an early-to-mid-1960s MK 1 Lotus Cortina, or its contemporary equivalent, the 2007-2022 Nissan GT-R R35.
All three were – in theory anyway – available for sale here in NZ, with each casting particularly long shadows; the Mk 1 Lotus Cortina on New Zealand’s fledging circuit racing scene in the early to mid-1960s (before the advent of the ‘anything goes’ Allcomers’ category anyway), the BNR32 Nissan Skyline on the Australasian Group A Touring Car and Import Drag Racing scenes from the 1990 to this vey day, and the GT-R35 in Targa NZ events on the road as well as the dragstrip.
In terms of circuit racing success, the all-new BNR32 Skyline – which went into production on August 21, 1989, and was not officially replaced (by a GT-R version of Nissan’s R33 model) until January 06th 1995.
In that time Nissan built and sold a jaw-dropping 43,947 BNR32 Nissan Skylines GT-Rs, most, no doubt, acquired courtesy a ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday experience,’ because believe me, there was plenty of the former going on, particularly at home in Japan where the BNR32 Nissan Skyline seamlessly took over the mantle of ‘car to beat’ for 1990 from the 1989 Japanese Touring Car Championship (JTCC) series-winning HR31 GTS-R of team owner/driver Masahiro Hasemi.
Though it was Kazuyoshi Hoshino who actually won the first JTCC title (in 1990) driving one of the new BNR32s, former Japanese F1 driver Masahiro Hasemi came back to add the 1991 and 1992 JTCC titles in a BNR32 run by his own squad (Team Hasemi) to the one he won driving the HR31 back in 1989.
Incredibly, from the day, in early March 1990, when the BNR32 first appeared in the JTCC, to the final race to be run under Group A rules late in 1993, all 29 races were won by a BNR32 Nissan Skyline; an amazing achievement and one unlikely to be repeated in my lifetime.
One not lost on fabled Aussie driver-turned-team-boss, Fred Gibson, either the man whose job – as the bloke in charge of Nissan’s racing efforts across the Tasman at the time – was to successfully launch the BNR32 there.
Though he used the team’s by this stage quick, reliable and extremely well sorted HR31 Skyline GT-S for the first six rounds of the 1990 Australian Touring Car Championship, it was team boss Fred Gibson’s decision to move his #1 driver, Kiwi great, ‘Gentleman Jim’ Richards to the all-new RB26-powered BNR32 GT-R at the penultimate round at Barbagallo Raceway in Western Australia in June that year, (where he finished fourth) that finally morphed Richards into a serious title prospect.
Heading into the final round at Sydney’s Oran Park, for instance, the expat Kiwi led the series’ points standings….but it by just 3 points over two-time and defending series title holder Dick Johnson and his (up until this point anyway) all-conquering Shell-backed Ford Sierra Cosworth RS500.
That final round of the 1990 Australian Touring championship series at Oran Park in July was a real game changer, however, Richards absolutely dominating proceedings in the brutish new BNR32 GT-R, a car quickly dubbed Godzilla (after the city-destroying monster created for the 1954 Japanese Kaiji movie of the same name) by Wheels magazine.
In saying that, however, the 1990 Bathurst endurance race proved a harder nut to crack. At which point you might like to check out this Nissan Australia-produced video as Mark Skaife talks us through an ‘Aussie-spec’ BNR32 and how it differs from a Japanese original.
First there were brake issues in practice which meant Gentleman Jim and Godzilla (just) missed out on a spot in the Toohey’s’ top 10 shootout on Saturday afternoon, while on Sunday, though considerably quicker than any other car in race trim, an engine misfire hamstrung the team’s efforts, Richards and Skaife finally credited with a lowly 18th place.
1991 proved an altogether better year, with Jim Richards winning his fourth ATCC title (in six years) with teammate Mark Skaife second, before – this time – the pair absolutely dominating the 1991 Toohey’s 1000km race at Bathurst.
Along the way Mark Skaife not only set the quickest lap time in qualifying then went even quicker to win the Top 10 Shootout (which you can watch here https://youtu.be/cV-_zeAaI60) to guarantee he and Richards’s pole position for the race, but he also set the fastest race lap on his and Richards’ way to an emphatic victory over the Holden Commodore V8 of Brit Win Percy and Aussie Alan Grice, with a second BNR32 Skyline GTR in the hands of Aussie duo Mark Gibbs and Rohan Onslow,third.
1992 started off as another stellar year for the all-conquering BNR32 across the Tasman, as well. Storm clouds, however, started gathering above the Sydney-based, now Winfield-sponsored squad, even before the ATCC series – which Mark Skaife duly won from teammate Jim Richards and BMW M3 driver Tony Longhurst – had begun.
First up, the ruling body of motorsport across the Tasman at the time, CAMS, (aka the Confederation of Australian Motorsport) not only mandated that any BNR32 GTR competing in the ATCC that year had to carry an extra 40kg over their 1991 weight of 1360kgs, but they also decreed that the Nissans be detuned via pop-off-valves on each turbo.
While its probably fair to say that team boss Fred Gibson postiviely thrived in this sort of adversarial environment, fans soon tired of the sheer relentlessness of the team’s victories in the ATCC and it all came to an unfortunate head when Skaife and Richards were announced as the winners of the rain-lashed and crash and incident-full, race and invited to take the top step of the podium, only to be met by a chorus of boos and catcalls from a baying crowd below.
I can still remember the look – a mix of shock, horror, and fear – on a young Mark Skaife’s face, for instance, as the then 25-year-old struggled with what to say and do in these new and obviously unprecedented circumstances.
Fortunately, Skaife’s long-time co-driver and mentor Jim Richards did know what to do (when a crowd is agin ya!) launching a spray of such truly epic – indeed heartfelt – proportions that it still resonates with me today, some 30 years on.
“I’m just really stunned for words,” Richards started, before going on to say, “I can’t believe the reception. I thought Australian race fans had a lot more to go than this, this is bloody disgraceful.
“I’ll keep racing, but I tell you what, this is going to remain with me for a long time. You’re a pack of arseholes.”
A pack of V8 Ford and Holden-lovng a***holes as it turned out because as of January 01, 1993, CAMS officially introduced its new Group 3A touring car category…which saw low-tech, locally manufacturd OHV V8-powered Holden Commodores replace hi-tech 4 & 6-cylinder imports like Ford’s Sierra RS500 Cosworths and Nissan’s BNR32 Skyline GTR.
And so, one era ended, and another began, with Kiwis again to the fore, this time on drag strips up and down the motu here, and across the ditch in Australia. That, however, is a story for another day.
Comments