The RISE of ‘GODZILLA’! | How Gibson Motorsport Group A NISMO R32 GT-Rs DOMINATED The 90's 

Elequntly said sir.Glad you enjoyed it. It (this project) has been a labour of pure passion.

Not just a legend but a legend that built nissan, the ATESSA was put into a bunch of cars like my B13 Nissan SUNNY 1800 GT-S

We had hours of amazing footage with Alan, so hard to whittle it down! What a legend.

100% ❤

Was the same for me also, but unlike you by the sounds of things I haven't gone back to watching the V8's.

Absolutely

So glad you enjoyed it Jason.

Don’t lie 😂 heaps of folk hated it when it was around lol

Well said MrAmv! I too remember watching this car race as a kid (once in the flesh too). I was also luck enough to have a mate who's dad owned a Nissan dealership and we got to ride in one of the first R-32's in Australia. These are the memories that stay with us and shape our passions.

Well said! We had the pleasure of a few days with Alan and his knowledge and passion was amazing. Glad you loved the doco.

So very well said! I remember watching this very car race too. I was too young to get caught up in the gripes, I just loved watching cars race! I was also lucky enough to ride in a street R32 GT-R when they were launched as my good mates dad owned a Nissan dealership. These memories are woven into our fabric and influence our passions ongoing. We’re privileged to open the office door every day to be graced by her all these years later.

An absolute gent. We thoroughly enjoyed our time with Alan and and are lucky enough to have him still looking after her now.

So glad you enjoyed it!

Us too Vincent

Agreed Paul, and thanks for the kind words.

So glad you enjoyed, so did we through the process!

Precisely! This is a globally significant piece of engineering art.

@@chrometemple3291 I absolutely love r32 gtrs they have such a history and just look so tough and angry!!!! Japanese muscle

Tyres were bigger on the GTR too, go figure what was happening? The rules that were going on why some cars were helped and others limited was baffling. I am not sure what the agenda was, but it would seem that ATCC had some under handed tactics going on? Something never made sense. Was Nissan involved with the ATCC with money? Was it Winfield money? I guess we will never know, but the rules didn't make sense, atleast to me.

Simon's world, couldn't agree more..never raced a car, never driven a race car but had an interest for 50 odd years.. Absolutely loved the interview about the gtr, the development and the cutting edge technology, the incredible team behind the car but at the same time was thinking how much money did they throw at these cars and how could Johnson and brock even compete with this technology and money.. To have such a car and also drivers like gentleman Jim is mind blowing.

​@@SimonWorlds The rules were specified by Group A which was a global category. The skyline was developed by nissan to be an optimised compromise inside those rules. The 2.6L capacity with turbocharging was the result of the power target they had set (550hp) without going outside the engine capacity that i believe would put them into a different weight class, and the 4wd system was decided on because they knew the group A tyre size limits would not handle the amount of power for long. All of this resulted in increased weight. There was nothing underhanded about it, the car was designed within the rules and gibson motorsport developed a fantastic race car. The street car did what it was supposed to do as well. Outperform a porche for less than porche money. Your MX5 wont do that in street trim and didnt exist at the time. I get why you say they are 'overrated' but it seems to be in hindsight and comparing decades newer tech? How overrated is it when at the time it dominated everything in its field? Comparing an LS3 which was produced from 2008 to the RB which arrived in 1989 is a bit spurious. Especially when the tech was actually pretty new back then. The RB30 was the first Alloy headed engine for holden ever and that was 1986. That was brand new! As an engineering practitioner you would know the expression 'engineering is the science of compromise'. The skyline like everything else was a result of balance. Sure, the car might have been able to shed some of its weight by pouring more money into more exotic engine materials etc but that of course increases cost and the target market was sub porche market. Its a strange thing to hear someone say a car developed 30 years ago is overrated because it doesnt compare favourably to cars 20 years newer made for different purposes despite its enormous racing success.

​@slickstrings I guess I should have elaborated, yes when dealing with the era when the Skyline GTR was created it was indeed a great machine, but in today's society of so called "car enthusiasts" we have a culture of "Emotioneers" (Engineers with emotional drive instead of science 😉) and the RB platform is still held in huge regard in today's world and technology. The point is, we have moved on and my point of being "overrated" is more to do with the mindset of today's society of car culture more than then. I hope that makes sense? Even back in the day, I still think about how much money had to be thrown at it to make it quicker than a Commodore makes it very over rated from an engineers perspective. The technology was mind blowing, it paved the way for other things, but it still had the kitchen sink thrown at it to achieve what it did. The problem with the RB is the inherent design of the inline 6 engine. Sure BMW have refined it better than most, but having and engine that long is where the problems lay. The block will crack and flex, the crank ultimately is the culprit. You can keep throwing a stronger block, crank, girdle etc at it to stop it, but it is a runaway issue that keeps coming back to mass. A V engine, say a V8 is already 33% shorter, a V6 is 50%, the torsional twist is reduced, thus the weight can be reduced too, not to mention the weight being moved back in the chassis. This is not so much an era of technology, but an oversight of engineering principles that had been understood and developed many decades beforehand. It is a fundamental principle that in my opinion kept the GTR limited in its true potential. The reason I use the LS3 as an example specifically, is due to the architectural differences between the two. No DOHC, no turbos, quite a large bore spaced engine, but physically small considering. The engine is short in length and height and with a race trim version can put out huge amounts of torque and power. Yes we didn't have them back in the day, but having a 2.6L engine at 30psi is a dynamic capacity of 7.8L, this is not something you'd see in a rule book today. BOP is much better these days. I guess having regular discussions with guys in this era now, it has become apparent that still people worship the 32GTR today and still think it is relevant, but it is far from that. Yes you are right, we are 30 years apart in technology and I guess I was addressing two different era's of my analysis without distinguishing them. I also understand that Holden had no other engine in terms of architecture available to them at the time, except for the early VN headed alloy design that came to be right when it was changing to V8SC. I guess my main point is, a front engine 6 cylinder is not my first choice in engine that I would look at in designing a race car. The MX5 of mine was a 94 model, which they originally came out in 89. Yes it was faster per lap than my old Time Attack GTR around certain tracks. Both were street trimmed. The NA MX5 is one of the best chassis sports cars ever made, this is the same era of the GTR. The MX5 chassis actually got less competitive as the years went on until the latest iteration of the ND.

​@@slickstringsthe enormous racing success? 1 second per lap with the difference in budgets of serious proportions is not success really, if you throw enough money at it, this is what you'd expect, but the amount of money they needed compared to a Holden Commodore, I would have expected a lot more performance. This has been my experience with my racing GTR too, unbelievable amounts of money to make it go "fast". On track, $120-$130 per minute in running costs. An MX5 of the same era, quite seriously atleast a 5th of the cost. This is what mass does to our wallets 😉 700hp atw 34GTR vs 300hp atw MX5, the MX5 wins in so many ways, except Fanboy adoration 😉

Agreed, it's great to hear about the finer details. Also there's an ATTESA-equipped early 1970s Celica in Victoria also :-) but with a Toyota v8

Absolutely, Alan was a wealth of knowledge and abundant passion for this car and the category in general. It was a real pleasure.

R32 didn't have Attesa

Yes they did. If it was gtr​@@jamieaitken8943

@@jsleeio Do you know what they've done to adapt the sump? Sounds like a total weapon 🤙

A true gent and wealth of knowledge. As passionate today as back then I would imagine.

Glad you enjoyed it. We loved the process

@andrewscully4516 - I really want to see it do a lap against a current Gen2/3 supercar now too!

@cloverchambers1032 that would be incredible!

Agreed that the people is what we took from this story the most. The foundation car was great, but it was the people at Gibson Motorsport that mate it globally recognised as amazing.

We learned a LOT through our time with Alan. So very switched on.

Data an iPhone could probably do today but impressive for the time and testament to the Gibson teams relentlessness for better.

It needs NOS 😀

Imagine if Ford and Holden Australia decided to compete with 4wd turbo cars, what could we have now.

Ford & Holden's car output was woeful, compared to the like of Nissan, Ford Europe etc. Best they came up with were ancient designed pushrod iron blocks and rear deive

Peter Brock got Holden to reduce the capacity of the 5 litre to 4.9 to keep it in a different weight class. Same thing as Nissan. they simply optimized the rules. Perkins was always sour at the GTR's becuase they were simply faster and he couldnt beat them.

Agreed. It wasn't just the car, it wad the amazing Gibson Motorsport team that took something good and made it exceptional, all within the rules.

@@andretorben9995 Brocky wanted to use an even firing 3.0l 6 cylinder but Holden insisted on a V8

Jim Richards was also a total class act driver, especially in the wet.

That's what I thought too. And yes, 1982 is correct. 1985 for Australia though the first Group A cars ran on Australian tracks in late 1984.

I believe thats right. An initial homologation of 5000 units and an 'evolution' model of 500. So you had the normal GT-R and then the N1 i think. Thats where the extra bodywork, turbo's, engine block stuff came from. I think the evolution was where the RS500 came from as well.

Correct

Items pretty common for manufacturers to throw things into their production cars to benefit the racing. The N1 block is rumoured to have been developed for the road cars due to Group A.

How so Pete?

@chrometemple3291 art is about expression. Design and engineering isn't about the designer/engineer, it's about solving a problem. In this case the problem is how do we go fast and wipe the floor with everyone else. Art isn't the pinicle of design. It's a while different category, with a different purpose.

@@petewitt2867 I guess that's where the expression about art being in the beholders eye came from then...

@chrometemple3291 that's beauty, not art. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" Art isn't always beautiful, and things that are beautiful aren't always art.