September 22, 2009

Horse 1038 - Nissan GTR, The Menace of Godzilla

GTR: Three letters that either bring peril to the Australian Touring Car fan or lament, as they remember the terror that was "Godzilla"*.

Somewhere in Victoria, presumably Clayton Business Park the so called "Car of Tommorrow" is being built and tested, and although it might be the first technical step forward for the V8 Supercars, the finished product will more than likely be yet another single overhead cam, rocker driven, 2 valve, 5 Litre V8. How dull.

Why do I even mention this? Well over in Japan, the GTR wasn't killed off. In fact the car continued to be raced, and the Japanese Group A series developed into the Japanese Super GT Series. The cars themselves are quite mental, and the letters GTR still hold a great deal of menace.



The Nissan GTR GT500, is now a 4.5L, camless, 4 or 5 valve per cylinder (depending on which produces the best tune for the circuit) V8. Like the rest of the cars in the series they're limited to 500bhp.

Now this is a bit of Wild Mass Discussion (WMD) but I'm wondering how difficult it would be to take that 4.5L V8 and bore it out to 5L, and then drop the whole drivetrain into a Nissan Maxima.

Actually come to think of it, there are a whole slew of V8s that are already raced in the world hovering around the 4.5L mark, such as Lexus' SC430 in Japan and their IS-F in America, BMW's M3, as well as the DTM Audis and Mercs. Would Holden and Ford let anyone else play with them though? Of course not. Holden and Ford are whingers.

PS: Even more mental looking than the Nissan GTR GT500 is the Toyota Corolla Axio GT300. It's a Corolla?!



*or indeed if they're even older than that - the GTR-XU1.

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