Find a good part of it Touge, A group A-inspired R32 Nissan Skyline GT-R, and don’t forget the camera fatters. It is a standard formula that guaranteed the Instagram algorithm. Just remember the batteries …
I would probably forget my head if it was usually not ruined. But this time I was prepared. The four -hour ride from Kanagawa to Mie to meet Masayuki Kani And his family threw enough weight to ensure that I checked my camera bag with triple.
While I stopped halfway for coffee, cakes and a fast yoga stretch to loosen my lower vertebrae, ping my inbox with a message from Masayuki-San. “It is snowing at our shoot location. Only a millimeter, so it should be good. ” Just a flurry then. Nothing as difficult as the road works that the Honda Civic Specialist Tuning Shop blocks that I originally booked to comprehend …
By the time I met Masayuki-San at the gas station, with cars waiting in the street to fill, the flurry had changed a full snowstorm. It felt like this might be my last shoot before the world ended. Better make a good …
The wife of Masayuki-San, Erika, had come by for the ride, just like their two young sons, five and three, their small faces pressed against the rear windows to take the strange foreigner photos of their father’s car.
This skyline is a family affair on more than one. You see, Masayuki-San was once the child in the back seat. His father rode an R32 and R34, so he looked like Little Masayuki-San on JTCC legend Masahiro Hasemi.
From 1998 to 2003, father and son Pilgrimages would take Fuji Speedway, Suzuka and Okayama to see how GT-RS dominates the JGTC competition. By that time, the R33 Skyline GT-R was of course on the schedule, his predecessor was retired in ’95. But the father of Masayuki-San had witnessed the successive victories of the R32 from ’90 to ’93, well before his son could even say “901 movement.”
If there was ever a real example of “Win on Sunday, sale on Monday,” This one for the Nismo Marketing Department would have brought a tear to that of Nissan 901 movement Project leader Yutaka Kume’s Eye.
In 1998 the father of Masayuki-San donated him his HCR32, and shortly thereafter a BNR32 appeared in the driveway. An R34 followed, but when a family crisis penetrated the sale, both father and son were deeply sad. The loss of his father’s cars was ultimately the catalyst for Masayuki-San to buy his own R32.
In 2020 the father of Masayuki-San unfortunately died and Masayuki left a deep regret behind it never got the chance to buy the R34 back. In a sense, it feels like Masayuki-San’s car has become a tangible connection with his deceased father, and the joy of driving such an iconic machine is something that can be passed on from generation to generation.
The BNR34 is perhaps for many ‘Peak GT-R’, but the R32 Skyline GT-R will be known forever as the Japanese monster that has conquered Group A Touring Car Racing.
The R32 of Masayuki-San is a tribute to the A Skylines group A Skylines from the 80s and early 90s with an RB26Dett fully built with an N1 24U block and a Reinik RB-X GT2 Motor pack with a forged Krappers, Connection bars, Buien and a metal head pack. It is the same 2.8L setup that Nissan Koki has developed for group A.
In contrast to Jun-San’s group A-inspired GT-R that I played a while ago, Masayuki-San remained faithful to the competition cars by keeping the Twin-Turbo setup intact, with an invaluable cast aluminum Reinik intame as one of the highlights of the engine space.
The engine was built by Hitoshi Maeda at J.ing Techno Engineering. Maeda-San worked as a group A rally engineer and worked with Reinik to develop a prototype V12 engine for F1 in the mid-90s, so Masayuki-San could not have found a better person for the job outside of Reinik itself. That company, now acting as Reimax, will still build a motorcycle for the price of a small planet.
An M600 from Motec, a brand that has long been synonymous with group A racing cars, gives the shooting orders. With 660PS and 69 kg/m, the power and torque numbers of the engine are also comparable to group A GT-RS. That output is transferred via the stock of BNR32 5-speed tray via an ORC Twin-plate coupling and to Cusco LSDs front and rear.
Driving through a snowstorm was not exactly what I had planned for this shoot; I had hoped that we could take the car on a few winding mountain passes and let the horses run wildly. A gallop to express respect to circuits such as Bathurst and Suzuka, where the Skyline GT-R became a motorsport icon.
But in a sense I am happy that the snow fell on Mie that day. It delayed time for a heartbeat, and the beautiful silence was only broken by the roar of a side group a tribute.
Toby Thyer
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