AS THIS WAS A UNIQUELY
AUSTRALIAN INITIATIVE, A
LOT HAD TO BE DONE
TO THE CAR
engineeredFordCorsairaspartoftheButton Plan’s model-
reductiontarget– therebykillinganychance of the R32 Skyline
rangereachingAustralianproduction.While opening the door
fortheR32GT-R.
“Wealwayswantedtoconnectourmainstream product with
motorsport,otherwisewhybother?”Beranger says. “And after
wefinishedbuildingSkylineatClayton– which itself was a bad
decisionbecauseit wasa goodmoney-maker for us, and a good
cartoo– wethenhadtothinkofanother way of making the
motorsportconnectionwork.
“Wedidn’thavea localcarthatwoulddemonstrate that what
weracedonSundaywouldsellonMonday. So a guy called
TedArcadipane,whoisessentialtothisstory and was in our
businessplanning group,puttogether a paper with me on
importingtheR32GT-R.”
TheDR30andHR31Skylineracecars(wearing Peter Jackson
tobacco livery) had maintained Nissan’s race presence but
couldn’tholda candletotheR32.
“GivenhowhardFredGibsonandhis team struggled with
thepreviousSkylines,bythetimewegot to the R32, I guess
wewerepre-emptingwhatultimatelyhappened – that it was
goingtobethegunvehicle,”Berangerrecalls. “We didn’t predict
thatit wasgoingtodestroyGroupA [therules were changed in1993, effectively banning the all-wheel drive Nissan], but we
certainly had a strong feeling that it was going to be the gun car
in Australia for motorsport.
“That’s also why we decided to import 100 production cars.
We put a business case together with what I knew at the time
were the local changes required to get the car ADRed. That went
to local management, who approved it, and then we went back
to Japan and said, ‘Please can we do this?’”
Nissan Australia imported a couple of R32 GT-R road cars in
about August ’89 and unveiled them at Bathurst that October,
flagging what was to happen with the race team the following
season, and one of them was road-tested by Modern Motor
in its April 1990 issue. And then the local engineers set about
getting their heads around what needed to be modified for the
road cars to meet the notoriously fickle Australian Design Rules.
As this was a uniquely Australian initiative, a lot had to be
done to the car. “That was our biggest challenge”, Beranger says.
“Japan agreed for us to do [the GT-R], but they threw it back on
us, saying, ‘Okay, we will support you, but you do the work’ –
which was very substantial. The GT-R was only built for Japan’s
domestic market, so we needed to make all sorts of changes- radios, headlights and taillights [done by Hella Australia],
mufflers for drive-by noise, seatbelts...”
MAIN
Formerproduct
plannerPaul
Berangeradmits
themarketing
groupgotgreedy
withtheir$110K
pricingandwould
havemademoney
ataslowas$85KOPPOSITE
HeartoftheR32
GT-RisNissan’s
highlymodified
twin-turbo
straight-six,though
it madetherace
carsnose-heavy➜
88 september 2019 whichcar.com.au/motor