When a Front Wheel Drive Prototype Raced at Le Mans 

If this video is familiar to you, you're not dreaming. This vid is a reupload of the original video with audio issues and other issues fixed. (if you're watching this within 1 hour of upload the sound will still be bad, but that's just youtube still processing.)

Putting 1k hp TO THE FRONT WHEELS was already a recipe for disaster

Not putting subtitles on the Japanese speaking driver is gold. I love your humor 🤣

I still think Nissan spent most of the projects funding on advertising during the Super Bowl than the car itself.

This is one of my favourite race cars ever just for how it did what nobody else was doing. Unfortunately it was never fully built and we never got to see what it could've done. I still wish they didn't pull out and put a fully developed car in. Would be nice to have at least seen it at full power and not at basically only the 500hp of the engine

Bro really just dissed the Panoz Esperante ☠️

I still think it's sad that they didn't give the idea another shot, but you made some compelling arguments on why it was a bad idea. I tried too many out of the box ideas at once. Moving the engine to the front to have more room for aerotunnels alone would've probably worked, even if that would mean they'd have to put some driveshafts in. The FWD layout was mostly done for packaging, and to keep the rear tires skinnier to have more room for aero. It could've worked on older layouts of Le Mans, as FWD isn't a such a big disadvantage once you're up to speed. But whilst modern Le Mans still has a high flat-out percentage, much of that time is spent accelerating. The flywheel system was unproven, and turned out not to be up for the job. Whilst the system was originally chosen for its compactness and weight, I feel like spending another year to develop an electric solution would've been the right choice. Especially since halfway through development they chose to add regenrative braking to the front wheels. Personally I would've entered the car in the Garage 56 category. It was certainly experimental enough to warrant it. And it would've allowed to bend the LMP1 rules a bit and allow the engine to send energy to the rear wheels by simultaneously regenerating from the front wheels and deploying through the rear wheels. Afaik under LMP1 rules this would count towards the 8MJ of energy, as the engine is only allowed to power 2 wheels, but under Garage 56 you don't have this restriction and could argue that you were never storing this energy, just redirecting. And when it comes to PR, whilst it wouldn't quite have the same ring as winning LMP1 or even the entire race, coming up with a prototype that finishes in front of the LMP1s would still create a lot of publicity for the project. And if you fail it wouldn't be as big of a deal, after all it was just an experiment

They suffered from a rushed timescale. Considering they hit the speed trap just a tiny bit slower than Porsche 919 while running 100% on the combustion engine with no hybrid, suggested that their design concepts have huge potential. Being a FWD also means, they cannot be driven around corners the same way as the RWD cars. The idea of coasting around the corners instead of pushing it seems workable, too bad they choose not to go full time. Now my wish is to see Nissan coming back as LMDh.

Thank you for this video. With the possible exception of the 1997 Lola Formula One car, I struggle to think of a racing car in my living memory that promised much but delivered nothing after being rushed into competition without the necessary development. As Edward Lear wrote: 'There was a young man from Thermopylae/Who could never do things properly./ But they said 'If you choose/To boil eggs in your shoes/You will not be welcome in Thermopylae!'' 😂

i remember when they first unveiled this car. i always thought it was a bad idea from the start🤦🏾‍♂️

Having worked with a few people that were on this program, there are so many other behind the scenes issues, hybrid system that worked approximately one time, management taking money and running. Terrible car design, part design and production. Just so many things

5:03 That was cheeky. CHEEKY, I TELL YOU!

This car always caught my attention. Love it

My new favorite channel!!! Great job 👏🏻

You almost guessed Mark Shulzhitskiy's name's spelling right :)

Awesome video! Such a cool channel, and real a breath of fresh air amongst all the cookie cutter motorsport channels out there. 👍👍

I actually love the idea Nissan (or Ben Bowly, specifically) made front engine FWD race car. However, it seemed the design is too areodynamic-oriented. They forgot the durability and placement of hybrid system, which they thought can "just copycat" to existing hybrid car in 2015, even with new design. If I were in their position, I'd bring 2.0 L V4 turbo engine from super GT in front and bring hybrid technology with brake and engine recovery system, not from turbo or flywheel, but the heat from the engine block itself. Hope they back to the WEC near future.

Great video! I came to this channel from the Skoda videos, and I would like to recommend the Seat Cordoba WRC! Please consider it, and mention Seat's Ibiza Kit Car as well!

I love the vision, idea and design of the GTR LM NISMO, but my god, 1250 hp to the front wheels only… Edit: 550 hp

If they hadn't rushed the car so much, maybe it could have been better. Also, when you realize a comcept doesn't work no matter how revolutionary it may seem, you stick with what works and work from there. Look at 2023-24 Peugeot. The wingless car, while it had some flukes of success, largely wasn't great. They knew it and owned it, and they put a wing on it. So Nissan should have made a normal LMP1 car, and maybe it would have lasted for more than ONE race.

Yo love the video could you make a video about the Mini rally program ?

Ah, the longboi

The N in Nismo stands for N Cereal

UUUUNDERSTEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRR

im curious how good it would have worked had it been designed right

At least it had potential (Unlike AstonMartin's abomination) and in defense of Panoz, it actually won a few races in the American Le Mans series. (P.S. the comment i made earlier today was for a Transformers: Earthspark video, but got posted here instead because of a glitch.)

Love the videos

You deserve more attention

Awesome one man

I know Gran Turismo 7 doesn’t have the most realistic physics but this car has almost no front end grip on acceleration in the game.

Nissan GTR LM fail to be a hybird due cheaping out of the hybird system !

Classic. Madness on all fronts 🤣🤣 I expect a video on the DeltaWing at some point in the future No 917 mentioned as the Greats? 😢😢 Laughed way way too hard at the Poor Panoz bit 🤣🤣🤣🤣

At least it was cool and interesting

banger content! I just wish for a songlist in description. Keep up the good work!

>"and Mark Shulzhitskiy who doesn't come from a real country" ok this was 10/10 driver introduction

It could have been good if they had the hybrid system working

imagine the pain of accelerating note: i thought that at around 4:05

I remember them trash talking the other LMP1 teams in the lead up to Le Mans, so pathetic and unproffesional, then their car ended up being so bad it would actually hold up the GTs at certain points of the track, hilarious.

in the video you said that you have left a video about technical stuff of the nissan in the description, but it seems to be missing( P. S. Video is great, just as the other ones, keen to see your growth and future videos

To be fair to Nissan, the GTR LM is probably the fastest front wheel drive racing car ever produced and the top speed trap figures were impressive. If they had had a decent battery/capacitor pack and about 300hp of electric motors to the rear wheels, neither item would have been that difficult to engineer into the vehicle, then I think it would have been much closer to the other LMP1s than people realise. For Le-mans their extreme low drag configuration was potentially the right way to go, for all the other race tracks on the WEC circuit, it was not. This was possibly the final nail in the coffin, the car was a one trick pony that needed to be competitive at a range of venues. You can see the same failing of specialisation in the 2023 Peugeot Hypercars, having all your downforce produced by the underfloor is great, except when the track has any bumps at all and all tracks have bumpy corners.

TECHNICALLY front-mid-egined, FWD. it is technically an MF(er). I actually love the design and the idea seems revolutionary, but it needed to work in order to be a proper revolution. The drivers included gamers, that guy who backflipped at the Norschleife and Michael Krumm, so even if underperforming, it shouldn't hurt much... right?

Nissan and Inhouse tuner nismo are good car producers, the skyline/ gtr's have very relaible engines, i rank it in top 5 moterblocks, Older Vw/ Porches aircooled, Hemi, G M Ls5 and the big Bentley/ Roll's royce block

Champion in Gran Turismo 6, but way far behind in class IRL.

Has Nissan recovered from the amount of money spend the 2015 lmp1 project?

The LM24 was in July in 2015?

People who deem the front-wheel-drive Nissan GT-R LM Nismo a utter failure seem to have missed the fact that the car was faster than all but one of the LMP2 cars at Le Mans, even though theoretically its V6 engine produced slightly less power. This proves that aerodynamics and chassis concepts can work. With a working hybrid system and more time to properly optimize the car, it's quite possible that the GT-R LM would have been much faster at Le Mans, and who knows, maybe even competitive.

Let be real this Nissan mind do well if they developed alot longer and Nissan mind also bring this cars LMH rules better with down powers seem work better for they design idea...

Calling the mid 2010s the golden age of prototypes is laughable but great video otherwise

I believe it had potential if they would have just kept at it and finished it

The humour is a bit rough, and the fart jokes are overused and feel somewhat forced.

Forget ur Audi junk and Yokohama engines Toyota can't even make their own and that diesel sucks fwd forever 91 Nissan sentra Ser . . neo vvl they need a 3.0 v8 billet block twin vvl heads. Massive potential

Yep the gran tourismo movie was bullshit

I could tell it sucked from Forza lmao