“It wasa very complex car and the Japanese offered us
supporttodoit,and from the very beginning we had Japanese
engineersinAustralia,” Beranger says. “And clearly their job
wasnotonlytohelp, but to report back. And, therefore, I
believetheywere continually explaining to Japan what we
weredoing.
“Japan wasn’t negative about it – they were offering
suggestions– butI think at the same time they became aware
andrealisticthatwhat we were doing was probably in advance
of whattheywere doing. Part of the problem was that in
Japantheydidn’treally have to develop the car because they
controlledtheformula. The more they developed, the more
theyhadtospend, whereas we had to keep developing, and at
everyracethecarchanged. The Japanese were aware of that.”
TheAussieoverhaul of the R32 racer was comprehensive,
as Gibson explains: “Suspension, wheels, gearbox, clutch,
engine...Likecylinder blocks, for example.
“We put an engine on the dyno and cracked the block
becauseoftheextra power we were trying to get out of it with
a differentengine management system. So they had to make
specialblocksforus. They were good at doing that, but it took
time– andmoney. A lot of money.
“A part of going local was to save money because the
Japanese parts were just silly money.
“A competition water pump from
Japan was about $15,000 and all they
did was change the impeller on it,
which we could do here and use the
normal water pump. A dog box gearbox
was $60,000.
“Nismo were there to make money,
whether we were Nissan or not. They
still charged an arm and a leg. So we
went away from using Nismo stuff.
“The wheels, the suspension, the
gearbox were all local. They made the
cylinder blocks, but the Electromotive
engine management system was done
for us in America. We did it all ourselves,
which was still very expensive, but not
as expensive as getting all the bits from Japan.
“Our budget was huge. We were very fortunate to have good
sponsors as well as Nissan Australia.”
Beranger: “We had no alternative (than to do local
development) because we would’ve gone broke quicker if we
hadn’t done that. And that caused some angst between us and
the Japanese. The Japanese (management) in Australia wanted
to know why we weren’t using NISMO parts. We had to show
them actual receipts to prove the big difference in cost.
“The problem was that Nismo owned the Group A series
in Japan. All the cars were raced with Nismo parts, so it was a
closed shop, whereas in Australia, we’d never looked at it that
way. We’d always had Fred to do what we needed to.”
By 1992, even Nissan Australia was baulking at the cost and
Winfield came on board as sponsor, boosting the factory’s
$1 million contribution to a $4 million annual budget. More
than a quarter of a century later, that’s a figure most Supercars
teams would envy.
“We were struggling when we first did GT-R because we
didn’t have enough money to do the job properly,” Gibson
reveals. “We were lucky to have cigarette money come along
because it was a very expensive car to run.”
Initially, Gibson was enthused by the on-paper specifications
of the forthcoming Group A R32.
“When Paul first told me we were going to have a twin-turbo“WE WERE
STRUGGLING
AT FIRST. IT
WAS A VERY
EXPENSIVE
CAR TO RUN”