9 June: An SOS From A Fishing Boat

There was a new silhouette in pit lane when the teams assembled for Round 6 of the Australian Touring Car Championship. When the cars rolled off Gibson Motorsport transporters it wasn’t just the boxy, rather weedy outline of the familiar HR31 Skyline that we were treated to. Behind it was a new one – taut, muscular and quietly menacing, even in its crisp white Nissan corporate livery. It was clear before it had even turned a wheel that this was no ordinary racecar. This was the Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R.

Godzilla was here.

Nissan a Go-Go
In the late 1980s the Nissan Motor Company was in trouble, and desperately trying to spice up its stodgy image in an effort to boost sales. Motor racing was a major part of that effort. From the relatively humble and relatable touring car grids, to the 400km/h straights of Le Mans, look to a race series anywhere in the world and you could bet there'd be a works Nissan team in the mix somewhere. As product planner Howard Marsden said:

The idea of the Group C programme [with the R90CK prototype] is to present a corporate image improvement for Nissan Motor Company. We will be seen on the same television screen as Mercedes, Porsche, Jaguar, Aston Martin... Nissan? So that's the whole idea. That's one of our programmes. The other programme, because we're different to those companies, we do provide transport for a whole range of people, we're in fact now starting a rally programme as well [with the Nissan 200SX]. So the rally programme is product development, the sports car is corporate.

Although Group A touring cars probably started as another product development programme, it ended up being perhaps the greatest corporate image-booster of all time. Put simply, the R32 defines Nissan's brand to this day.

...Which is ironic when the nameplate was never really Nissan's at all. To quote a typically well-informed article from Dr John Wright:

For decades there has been this divide between Nissan's greatest sports cars and its often unimpressive mainstream models. Much of the explanation lies in Nissan's merger with Prince in 1966, back in the time of the Datsun Cedric... Prince was one of the small players but one with brilliant focus... The Skyline is best understood as a sub-brand permitted to flourish within Nissan. – Dr John Wright, Nissan R32 GT-R: Racing First, Road Second, Shannons Club

The Prince Motor Company's original Skyline of 1957 was nothing to write home about, just a small family sedan in an age of small family sedans. The all-important GT-R badge, however, traced its origins back to the legendary Hakosuka of 1969, and the follow-up model which had won 49 races in a row before being axed by the Oil Crisis. So by the time 1989 rolled around, the Skyline as an ordinary family car remained, but there hadn't been a GT-R model in sixteen long years. With Nissan's sales on the slide despite the booming Japanese economy, management had little choice but to dust it off again. Nissan had to bet the farm, or buy it.

Designed under the code name "Project GT-X", the vehicle that emerged was like nothing we'd ever seen. The shape was understated but poised, with a hint of violence, like a tensing panther. No longer a mere family whitegood, the Skyline had moved up-market to become a high-tech sports coupé, a dais for all the thrusting junior executives and TSE share traders who'd not yet landed the necessary bonus for a chauffeur. Now a rival for Ferrari and Porsche rather than Toyota and Honda, a few wondered whether it was really a touring car or should perhaps have been racing in the GT category, but nobody had asked it of the Jaguar XJ-S back in the day, so they really couldn't ask it now.

According to GTR-Registry.com, production had started in May '89 with HCR32-coded VINs – meaning the factory began by cranking out some 12,000 of the relatively basic GTS-t, a two-wheel drive variant with a 2.0-litre, single-turbo version of the RB engine and, probably more often than not, four doors. Since this was pretty much the same engine as the outgoing HR31, this allowed Nissan to make the changeover with minimal disruption, bedding down their production processes and, let's be honest, beginning the recoup of that massive R&D budget.

That the sums involved would have Midas blush was made clear by the model they started producing in August – the GT-R. According to legend, chief designer Naganori Ito didn't reveal this car was to be GT-R until it made its debut, keeping the secret even from his own design team. But when he did make the big reveal, every touge and ricer fan in the world suddenly stood up and faced Omori: those were some big shoes to fill, and Nissan promised to make them burst at the seams.

Four on the Floor
Knowing this car would be Nissan's new Group A challenger, Ito-san developed the blueprints with a copy of the rulebook handy, taking one of the aforementioned 2.0-litre turbo sixes and giving each cylinder its own ignition coil, its own fuel injector (each of which could be fired individually), and its own throttle body, the sort of layout had been the preserve of Formula 1 only a decade earlier. Bored and stroked out to 2.3 litres, he got a steady 233 kW, which promised to become more like 400 kW in race trim.

Source.

So far so good, but there was a problem. To beat the all-conquering Ford Sierra they'd need at least as much power as the Sierra – preferably more – but the Sierra had already found the limits on that front. The average RS500 now produced so much grunt that their feeble 10-inch rear tyres were literally melting under the strain. Power was no good if you couldn't get it onto the ground; having more of it at this stage would only destroy the tyres faster.

Thinking outside the box, Ito-san turned to an idea Nissan had been trying to get right for years – their ATTESA all-wheel drive system. ATTESA stood for "Advanced Total Traction Engineering System for All-Terrain", and the core of the system was basically the same one developed by Porsche for the Dakar-winning 959, adopted and built under licence by Nissan in Japan. This system had been intended for the HR31, but hadn't been ready in time, and it was touch-and-go whether it would be ready for the R32 either. Three engineering mules had been created to sort it out: one with a standard rear-drive layout, one with an Audi-style fixed torque split, and one with a viscous centre diff. Initially, none had worked well enough to satisfy Ito, and the rear-drive car especially exhibited too much early-corner oversteer. Chief of the Vehicle Experimental Department, Kozo Watanabe, gave his engineers a year to get the drivetrain sorted; if they couldn't, Project GT-X would become rear-drive car, regardless of the consequences.

In the course of development the engineering team decided Porsche had got it wrong. The 959's torque split had been set to 20 percent front, 80 percent rear under acceleration, but in the middle of a corner that much drive to the front meant power understeer. Understeer was a characteristic hard to engineer out of the GT-R thanks to its unfavourable 59.4 percent front weight bias, as the long engine configuration hung over the front axle, contributing to a high polar moment of inertia. Convinced that a variable torque split would be the right move, the engineers developed the new E-TS, or "Electronic Torque Split" version of ATTESA.

Source.

This was a more advanced all-wheel drive system developed for longitudinal engines, where drive passed from the gearbox into a transfer case, which sent drive directly to the rear diff and thus to the wheels. Within the transfer case, however, there was also a chain-driven viscous limited-slip diff (basically a multi-plate wet clutch pack), which could split the drive on command and send some of it to an integrated front diff built into the engine's oil sump (a work of art in itself). Basically, the car had a rear differential, a front differential and a centre differential: drive to the rear wheels was constant, but drive to the fronts could be engaged and disengaged as needed by adjusting the fluid pressure in the centre diff. More pressure would make the clutch packs bite more, sending more drive to the front.

Clever, and sending drive to all four 16x8 alloys (shod with 225/60 Bridgestone Potenza RE71s) would clearly be a huge advantage in racing, but getting it to work in actual steel proved monstrously complicated. The ATTESA E-TS system that emerged, however, completely won over Watanabe. What made the system such a sweetheart was that it wasn't a matter of preset torque running off some mechanical input. Instead, controlling it was the job of a 16-bit computer mounted in the boot, which took readings ten times per second and sensed traction loss by measuring the speed of each wheel via the ABS sensors. When slip was detected on one of the rear wheels (a rear wheel turn 5 percent or more than the fronts), the system would send a command to the E-TS pump to vary the fluid pressure in the centre diff, thereby directing more torque to the front wheels – up to 50 percent, depending on exactly how the car was cornering, as determined by a three-axis G-sensor mounted underneath the centre console.

All of this provided the driver with a vehicle that performed like a rear-wheel drive sports car in perfect conditions, but could recover with a burst of front-wheel drive if conditions weren't perfect – such as when the driver overdid it. From the factory, the system was set up to allow slight oversteer, and in fact the harder the car was cornered, the less the ATTESA system engaged the front wheels. This promoted lively handling rather than the understeer that plagued most AWD and 4WD vehicles, preserving the fun factor essential in a driver's car.

Turning the Corner
Usually mentioned in the same breath as ATTESA was HICAS, or High Capacity Actively Controlled Steering. Nissan's four-wheel steering system had been refined since the bad old days of the HR31, gaining its own digital control box that upgraded it to Super HICAS status, but it still wasn't perfect. Although computer-controlled, it was still a hydraulic system that ran off a pump at the front (separate from the power steering system). The computer took data from speed sensors, steering wheel position and the rate of steering wheel turn to determine how much and in which direction to steer the rear wheels. It then sent instructions to a set of hydraulics at the rear that controlled a pair of track bars – basically a steering rack on the rear wheels. This could give up to one degree of rear toe at low speeds, or up to 0.3 degrees at high.

Source.

Unlike the earlier HR31, it just moved the rear wheels instead of the whole subframe, and being computer-controlled it was capable of much more sophisticated range of movement than before. At low speed, such as in the car park, HICAS was designed to turn in the opposite direction to the front wheels, giving the car a tiny 11.4-metre turning circle. Pitching into a high-speed corner, however, it would first turn in the opposite direction to aid turn-in, then switch to turning in the same direction as the fronts, letting the car track through the corner with ample stability. As you might imagine however, it still wore out bushes and toe links, so the older the car got the more troublesome the system became. It was also prone to leak hydraulic fluid, adding one more maintenance item to an already maintenance-heavy car. Even brand-new, it proved unworkable on trackburners – boy-racers of the 1990s told of all sorts of erratic behaviours from their R32s, of cars that were unstable under braking and turn-in and couldn't hold a line through a corner. Fully electric Super HICAS, which worked a whole lot better, would have to wait for the R33, so if you find someone who says they've never had a problem with HICAS you can bet pounds to peanuts they're driving an R33 or later. For second-hand buyers, or those after a track day car, removing HICAS was usually the first order of business.

All this technical innovation wasn't without cost. Although ATTESA solved the traction problem, it added 100kg of weight to a machine that wasn't exactly a feather to begin with, and that created new issues. Under the 1988 revision to the Group A regs, a turbo engine had to multiply its engine displacement by 1.7, which put the new Skyline in the 4,000cc tier and mandated the use of 10-inch tyres. Since the R32 would be rather heavy for this tier, Ito-san made the decision to bump the displacement up to 2.6 litres and deliberately put the car in the 4,500cc class, where its weight would be about the same as the competition (chiefly the Walkinshaw Commodore) and they'd be allowed 11-inch tyres.

From GT-X to GT-R

Since the old 2.0-litre RB block was no longer suitable, a new block and heads were developed especially to match the 2.6-litre displacement, along with a nice big front-mounted intercooler. The new engine was designated the RB26DETT, meaning RB series, 2.6-litres, with DOHC, EFI and twin Garrett T25 turbos. Today we'd sidestep the complex exhaust plumbing of twin turbos by fitting a single turbo with billet steel wheels (rather than the ceramic of the originals), but in 1989 twin turbos were the only way to deliver high boost without catastrophic lag. Complexity was no object to Nissan at this stage.

It seems almost pointless to list the car's specs from the factory, because you're never going to find one that hasn't been touched inappropriately by a tuner, but nevertheless: official power was 205 kW at 6,800rpm, mostly because Nissan were honouring a gentleman's agreement between the Japanese manufacturers not to exceed that figure. Put one on a dyno and curves that peaked around 260 kW weren't uncommon, and even that was with the factory boost restrictor fitted, which limited boost to 10psi (nearly 0.7 bar). Removing it lifted boost to 1.0 bar, and that added about 20 kW. Max torque was around 368 Nm at 4,400rpm; thanks to the twin turbos the torque curve didn't really kick in until 3,000rpm, but anywhere around 4,500 and the engine would reward you with instant urge. And although the engine was surprisingly quiet under normal operation, it would still give you a nice wastegate chirp with each shift.

With all its technical trickery it was quite a heavy car, with a kerb weight of 1,530kg, but this was at the start of an era when engine power was expected to make bulky kerb weights disappear. 0-100km/h could be dispatched in just 5.6 seconds, while the 400m time was a verified 13.9 seconds – not blindingly fast, given the car's reputation, but more than adequate at the time. The proud 5.0-litre Holden V8 in the Walkinshaw Commodore produced 25 fewer kilowatts, leaving the car roughly a second slower to 100km/h despite weighing nearly 200 kilos less. A relatively high 0.40 drag coefficient didn't hold back its top speed, which could reach 251km/h.

Despite that, a GT-R was also a surprisingly civilised car to live with every day. The interior might have been completely without garnish, but it was all functional – comprehensive instrumentation, minor gauges angled slightly towards the driver, three-spoke leather-bound wheel without airbag. The only weirdness was that the clock in the dash had been replaced by a gauge showing how much torque was currently going to the front wheels – not something you were going to have time to look at if it was actually being used! It was also a rather comfortable place to be – there were cushions in the footwell to rest your leg against, for example, and the vast glasshouse meant visibility was fantastic all-around. The five gears might have been tall and the gaps between them wide, but that didn't matter when there were no real dead spots, so although getting off the line might be tricky, highway cruising was no trouble at all. All four wheels got discs (296mm and ventilated at the front, with four-piston aluminium callipers; 297mm with two-piston callipers at the rear), which combined with ABS provided powerful and safe stopping power. Suspension was a multi-link arrangement at both ends, with the front a proper double wishbone. Fuel efficiency wasn't great – say 15 litres per 100km in town, and maybe 12 on the highway – but you expected that with a sports car, and with a 68-litre tank in the back you certainly weren't short on touring range.

In fact, as long as you serviced it every 5,000km, you were fine to use your GT-R every day. The only hiccups in that case would be that rear legroom was rather minimal, and boot space was likewise at a premium – the boot was certainly better than your average supercar, but it was shallow because of the diff and rear-steering components located beneath it. Nevertheless, those who tried both usually concluded the Skyline was a better car than the equivalent Supra – it was more comfortable, and you didn't have to change down to overtake on the highway.

A brand-new GT-R cost the customer ¥4,445,000 in 1989. Trying to find out what that equals today is a pointless exercise, as what money can buy varies over time according to the literal price of fish, as does how long it takes someone to earn it. Trying to adjust for both inflation and exchange rate is a fool's game. But for the sake of argument: in 1989 one Australian dollar was buying roughly 107 Yen, meaning a new GT-R cost the equivalent of $41,364 Australian. That works out as nearly $87,500 in 2019, or if you like, the asking price of any two EA Falcons or VL Commodores straight off the production line – and again, that was for the car itself, shorn of import fees and taxes. Not a cheap car by any means, but a bargain compared to the Ferrari or Porsche you'd need to match it.

Of course, by the time a trickle of imports did reached our shores in 1991, they cost a hell of a lot more than $41k, but that is a story for another time...

Accelerated Evolution
Wheels magazine first covered the GT-R in July 1989, a couple of months after its launch in Japan, and they pondered a possible Group A version – not yet realising the first 5,000 GT-Rs built were the homologation build run. According to GT-R Registry, Nissan built 968 of them in August, 1,018 in September, 947 in October, 1,007 in November and 1,063 in December of 1989, making 5,003 in all – neatly clearing the Group A requirement before the end of the year. With that, Nissan could turn their attention to the 500 "sporting evolution" models needed to be competitive in Group A. That would be the task of Nissan Motorsport International Ltd, better known as NISMO.

Since the hard work had already been done on the base GT-R, changes to the GT-R NISMO were surprisingly limited. Most visibly, a NISMO bodykit shrouded the standard panels, featuring two ducts in the front bumper to channel more airflow to the intercooler. There were modified side skirts with an extended rear portion, a lip extension added to the bonnet, and a rear flap underneath the rear wing to improve downforce. Next to the big red "R" on the badge, it also got that all-important NISMO decal for limitless car park bragging rights. ABS and air-conditioning were removed, while the rear windscreen wiper was deleted (and with it the rear wiper controls). Also in the cabin, the lower-left ancillary button to control the radio was blanked out. Under the bonnet, steel turbines replaced the ceramic ones of the standard turbos, which tended to break at high rpm, and the engine got a bigger intercooler but lost the intercooler mesh. Surprisingly, the NISMO version was actually cheaper than the standard GT-R, retailing for ¥4,441,000 ($39,082 Australian, or nearly $77,000 in 2019). All told, 560 of these fine machines were produced between December 1989 and March 1990, 500 for public consumption and 60 for competition use. The car was officially homologated for Group A racing on 1 March, 1990.

Even the owner's manual was a thing of beauty. It's like Akira via Vogue magazine. (Source.)

From Yamato to Goushuu
It's a sign of how highly-regarded Gibson Motorsport were that they were the first team outside Japan to be given access to Nissan's new supercar. Fred Gibson had flown to Japan in October 1989 to inspect the first racing GT-R built by Nissan Japan, along with Nissan Motorsport (Australia) Manager Paul Beranger, and engineers Trevor Jones and Andrew Bartley. Fred was initially enthused by the GT-R's specifications.

When Paul first told me we were going to have a twin turbo six-cylinder Skyline, I thought, "Wow, that's going to be great." I expected it to be a V6 twin turbo.

So when it lobbed with a straight six twin turbo, it was pretty rare. One of the problems was that the engine was long and hung out over the front subframe, so it was front-heavy. If it had been a compact V6, it would have been a rocketship. – Fred Gibson, Auto Action #1787

The team would ultimately build five GT-Rs for racing, the first three (or four – accounts differ) arriving in the early weeks of 1990. Amazingly, these were delivered not as bare bodyshells, but fully-completed NISMO road cars, meaning the team had to dismantle them before proceeding with the build. Gibson, Skaife and Beranger all shudder at the thought of how much those discarded parts would be worth today.

We nearly cried when we got the first three cars. They were complete new road cars, and we had to pull them all apart and build them into new racecars. All the stuff we had to throw away! We ripped them apart for the bodyshells. – Fred Gibson, Auto Action #1787

The first car – GMS GT-R 1, or just 001 if you prefer – was built pretty much as a NISMO kit car, with the help of four engineers dispatched from Nissan's experimental department, as well hands from their works IMSA team in San Diego, Nissan Performance Technology. All the parts arrived in assemblies, including the front suspension, engine and gearbox, although some of those would soon become throwaway items as well.

It was a very complex car and the Japanese offered us support to do it, and from the very beginning we had Japanese engineers in Australia.

And, clearly, their job was not only to help, but to report back. And, therefore, I believe they were constantly explaining to Japan what we were doing. Japan wasn't negative about it – they were offering suggestions – but I think at the same time they became aware and realistic that what we were doing was probably in advance of what they were doing.

Part of the problem was that in Japan, they didn't really have to develop the car because they controlled the formula. The more they developed, the more they had to spend, whereas we had to keep developing and at every race the car changed.

The Japanese were aware of that and I think in many ways they were sending information back to Japan about what we were doing. – Paul Beranger, Auto Action #1787

Initial plans were to disable the HICAS steering system until the rest of the car was sorted, but they never got around to putting it back. "We did do away with the rear steer," said Alan Heaphy, "because that didn't function very well with race tyres." Thankfully, the homologation papers had been written so they could run the cars with or without HICAS. The car's homologated weight was 1,325kg, which although much lighter than the road car was still 140 kilos heavier than a Sierra.

Gibson has done his sums. The 2.0 litre Sierras, obliged under local Group A rules to weigh a minimum of 1185 kilos, have about 540 horses on tap. The 2.56 litre GT-R, much heavier at its mandatory 1325 kilos, needs 600 horses to be competitive. Gibson admits the team is on target already, theoretically, anyway. – Peter McKay, Wheels, July 1990

Gibson Motorsport rolled out 001 for its first shakedown at Winton Raceway on 11 April 1990 (three days after Jim Richards had won the ATCC round). Mark Skaife had the honours, while Richo drove the existing GTS-R as a benchmark. Engineers from Japan and the U.K. joined the team for the event. The engine used was a crate unit sent over from Japan, meaning it was stuck with a Japanese management system which restricted boost to 1.3 bar and power was about 410 kW. The Gibson team already planned to replace the Japanese system with their preferred Electromotive system and run higher boost, around 1.5 bar for 430 kW. It is at this stage my source gets a bit wobbly:

During the shakedown, my information was that the team experimented with different EPROMS in the 4WD system. They started out with 45% front bias, and have different EPROMS to deliver 10, 20, 30% splits. [I'm unsure if the system uses EPROMS, perhaps it's a bit of bogus information in the report].

I'm not sure if that's bogus information or not. EPROM chips, or erasable programmable read-only memory, were a feature of the upcoming Electromotive engine management, and the way the team mentioned it pretty heavily implies they wouldn't have had to burn them otherwise:

The Electromotive system, even today is still a better unit than what the Motec M800 is. It had the ability to tune each cylinder and there were other things that it had that the M800 doesn't have. The disadvantage was when you wanted to make a change to the tuning you had to burn an EPROM, which was a lot of messing around. – Alan Heaphy, Auto Action #1787

The video linked below, however, mentions the ATTESA system using EPROMs as well, although frustratingly Skaife himself only uses the word "silicon chips", which could mean anything. Since the system's whole purpose was to adjust the bias on the fly, they could be talking about different bite points for the switch to 4WD. For now I'll just have to throw my hands up and admit defeat.

Source.

In April, Wheels scribbler Peter McKay joined the team at Mallala for another test session. McKay was promised a drive in the prototype, but never got a chance, as the car broke two halfshafts and the team had to wait for spares to arrive from Japan.

This is a test day for a race team... Nissan Motorsport boss Freddie Gibson is the organ grinder; Mark Skaife is the monkey. Lap times are good; great compared with the old model Skyline and better even than Dick Johnson's pole time from the 1989 championship race. But the car looks jumpier than a turkey on December 24. "It's nervous and I'm nervous," remarks Skaife. Nevertheless, he continues to drive the way he knows best. Somewhere between flat out and just beyond the limit.

"The front seems better but the rear is leaping about," Skaife reports quite unnecessarily during one of his many mini debriefs. We could see the tail dancing, bouncing, leaping; he didn't have to tell us. More laps, more stops, more chat, more fiddling.

Then the half shaft breaks on the left side. A couple of mechanics climb beneath to replace it. A nod, and Skaife climbs back in. Three laps later the GT-R crawls back along the pitlane. The right side halfshaft has failed, and that's the end of the test. The spares will have to come from Japan.

This is bad news for Wheels. We've been waiting patiently for the session to wind down, at which time the precious GT-R, the only track version in Australia and at this stage unraced, was to be handed over for a track evaluation. "Sorry mate," Gibson apologises. "We'll see if we can do it next week." We haven't quite gone away empty handed. Photographer Kent and yours truly have each got pneumonia. – Peter McKay, Wheels, July 1990

Another test session was rescheduled for Calder Park on 23 April, and this time McKay did get to drive. Already he was able to report that the Electromotive engine management was in place, as was the Holinger 6-speed gearbox and the first of the Australian-built engines.

This is the full-spec car the team is trucking back to Mallala for its competition debut. Aussie-built engine pumping out precisely 576 horses (429 kW) and, lordy-be, 410 Ib-ft (558 Nm) of torque from that 2568cm cubed, 24-valve twin cam in-line six. With twin turbochargers. Six speed gearbox developed jointly in Melbourne by Hollinger and Nissan Motorsport and Holden. Nissan Atessa ET-S variable torque split four-wheel drive. The Super Hicas four-wheel steering of the standard GT-R is in place but blanked off.

This is a device of some complexity. – Peter McKay, Wheels, July 1990

From there McKay segued off into the question of money, how much the car – the actual racecar he was looking at – had really cost. All they could get out of Gibson at the time was, "A lot. Too much." But since then he's admitted that NISMO parts cost "silly money", saying:

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. – Fred Gibson, Auto Action #1787

He's also revealed, "The Holinger box was about $18,000 back then and the NISMO box was $33,000." Making it even more economical was that you only had to buy the Holinger box once, whereas the NISMO would be an ongoing expense: "The GT-R produced so much torque that it could destroy the Nissan box with little effort!"

Alan Heaphy agreed, saying:

Having done HR31s, they were a very simple car, while these were very complicated – four-wheel drive, twin turbo. We underestimated the build time and we also underestimated the cost, because we had to buy a lot of competition parts from NISMO from Japan, and then we realised how much they were costing.

I remember one time, when Paul Beranger was Motorsport Manager, we owed Nissan Motor Company a million dollars in parts – and Paul said just keep going! – Alan Heaphy, Unique Cars

It was this, and not just the pressing need to beat the fastest Sierras and Commodores in the world, that would lead Gibson down the path of developing all their own parts in-house. But again, at this stage most of that was still in the future.

Then, at last, McKay climbed aboard to experience what most of Australia had yet to even witness, and fired up a genuine, works-built, race-spec GT-R.

As instructed, I flick on four toggle switches, to activate the coolers for the front diff, rear diff, transfer case and gearbox. Clutch is surprisingly light, the non-syncro gearbox smoother than the similar crash boxes in the previous two Nissan touring cars. The rev limiter is set at 7700 rpm. I figure I'll make my upchanges at 7000...

Power comes in with a wonderful steady surge. The evolutionary process in engine management systems has all but eliminated that all-or-nothing feel that characterised turbo cars of even a few years ago. The first racing Skyline, I recall, had nothing underfoot one moment and then 360 neddies the next. It was an absolute brute...

While it hops about through corners, it does leap out like a gooly from a shanghai, with impressive traction and balance. It's not idiot-proof, mind, but the driver soon discovers he can use more throttle than he first believed possible without the car turning nasty.

What's happening is that the brain in charge of the 4WD system directs power to the rear wheels until they break traction. It then transfers surplus power to the front wheels. The transition is, let it be said, managed without any dramatic change to the attitude of the car. – Peter McKay, Wheels, July 1990

The car was given its media launch at Calder Park, with AFL commentator and Collingwood legend Lou Richards getting a spin in it – literally, locking up approaching the Esses at full tilt and suffering a spin, in a car that cost a million dollars. Thankfully, it wasn't creased; Lou also emerged unscathed...

But with that, the flirting was over: the car's next outing would be back at Mallala, Round 6 of the 1990 Australian Touring Car Championship. It was time to see what Godzilla could really do.

6 May: Toying With His Rivals

And now for something completely different.

Colin Bond demonstrating proper cornering technique, Amaroo Park, 1990.

Can Someone Turn the Sun Down?

May in Australia is supposed to be the final month of autumn, but there was precious little evidence of that as the Group A circus assembled for Round 5 of the championship. The venue this time was the storied Lakeside International Raceway, a swooping up-&-down rollercoaster built on the banks of Lake Kurwongbah, less than an hour from the Queensland capital of Brisbane. And for the third race in a row, the weather was unseasonably, implausibly hot – you know the temperature was out of hand when even the banana-benders started complaining. And that fact was getting people in certain garages up and down pit lane a bit hot under the collar, too.

In theory Lakeside favoured experience – many of the corners were blind, and the key to a good lap was the bumps; you had to know where to position the car to make the most of them. As a local boy who'd cycled out to meetings at this track when he was just a teenager, won his first-ever start here before he was 20, and clinched his first championship after a hammer-and-tongs battle with Peter Brock nearly fifteen years later, Dick Johnson should've been in the box seat for this one. The highly-partisan Brisbane crowd had come to see no-one else. But today Dick had the result at Winton to think about, where his Dunlop tyres had struggled in the heat and left him pootling around roughly nowhere. The almost-as-warm Phillip Island race had gone his way, true, but only because Dunlop had brewed up some special rubber just for that event.

That wasn't going to happen at Lakeside. A glorified club circuit outside Bris Vegas was a tad rustic for a big international, especially when it wouldn't help with their major racing commitments overseas. What made that especially awkward was that all last year's data had to be junked as well. In the twelve months since they'd last raced here, Lakeside had been resurfaced, and in Friday practice the new tarmac proved much smoother and grippier than last year. All that extra grip (plus the slightly heavier cars this year) meant, in the course of a lap, the tyres were being squashed and stretched and generally deformed under load more than ever before. And as any squash player could tell you, that could only lead to heat, lots of heat. In practice, the drivers found any stint longer than a few laps and even the toughest tyre would turn to jelly.

The problem was, the rules for 1990 forced everyone to make their tyre choice on Saturday and then complete both qualifying and the race on them – on a circuit where track position is everything, because the narrow tarmac and endless sequence of corners make passing extremely difficult. Drivers faced the unenviable choice of fitting harder compounds, qualifying badly and then just hoping the guys ahead of them would have to stop... or fitting softer compounds, qualifying at the front, and then trying to build a gap before their tyres melted and they'd have to come in.

With no data and everyone being very cagey about strategy, it was virtually a coin toss. In the end, though, nearly everyone with a stake in the championship opted for softer rubber and accepted the inevitability of a pit stop, probably on the logic that you ended up racing where you qualified. Catching up is one thing, after all, passing is quite another; better to be slipping and sliding and holding everyone up, than starting somewhere behind and unable to find a way past (and slipping and sliding anyway). Only three drivers chose to spit in the face of convention, and significantly, two of them had no skin in the championship – Peter Brock, Colin Bond and Win Percy.

In another encouraging sign for the Holden Racing Team, Percy's #16 Walkinshaw had been third-fastest in Thursday practice, but the Pom deliberately opted for harder rubber for the business end of the weekend. That left him only 12th in qualifying, but he was unrepentant. "It's reflected in our qualifying times," he said, "but I'd be surprised if the Sierras don't stop. I'd rather be the odd one out than go with the norm."

Peter Perfect also had two decades' worth of experience to call upon at Lakeside, and a distant shot at the championship if he made the right call. Unfortunately, like Bond and Percy, he probably had nothing to lose. The last time his Bridgestones had worked was in the chill of Tasmania, way back at Symmons Plains, so he might as well bolt on a set of wooden-hards for today and see how it all came out in the wash. The hot weather gave him no real chance anyway.

And Colin Bond? Well, like Brock and Johnson, he too had been racing at Lakeside since before mankind kicked the Moon, but by now he was clearly a spent force. He hadn't won a championship race in over a decade, and he was running on wildcard Toyo tyres anyway. His hand had probably been forced on the no-stop strategy, actually, because he likely didn't have a set of tyres in the right compound to spare anyway. Nobody it seems had bothered to keep a stopwatch on him during practice, and take notice of his remarkably consistent laptimes, even as he stayed out for long fifteen- to twenty-lap stints...

Qualy Capers

Tony Longhurst had walked off with the honours in Saturday's timed practice session, creasing the tarmac with a scorching 53.71-second pole lap. That wasn't too surprising to those in the know: Longhurst and his team had apparently done significant testing here in the lead-up, and Tony had been in this car (TLR2) for eighteen months and had it so well-sorted now that it might even have taken Johnson's mantle as the fastest in the world. Certainly it hadn't appeared to lack pace compared to DJR5, but it's hard to be sure – good rubber covers a multitude of sins, and the Yokohamas'd had a definite edge this year.

On that level at least, Johnson must've been relieved that for once the Yokohama teams were struggling as much as he was. In front of a home crowd Dick had qualified in a respectable 53.76, only five-hundredths of a second slower than Tony. These two were in a class of their own however, because the first of the sidekicks (Alan Jones) was two tenths behind on a 53.97, while the other (John Bowe) was only three-hundredths behind that with a 54-dead. This kind of 1-3/2-4 grid hinted that both teams had taken an each-way bet on strategy, putting their prime drivers on a slightly softer compound and their backups on harder ones. Whether they would be hard enough, we would have to see.

Behind in 5th was Gregg Hansford in Allan Moffat's ANZ Sierra, while 6th and 8th were the Nissan twins Richards and Skaife, another team qualifying line astern. The interloper between them was Larry Perkins, who'd once again put the #11 Walky up where it shouldn't have been – 54.39 seconds was miles faster than a Commodore should've been on a circuit like this. After that we had Colin Bond (9th), Glenn Seton (10th), Mark Gibbs in the GIO Walky (11th), and then the aforementioned Win Percy, whose 54.65 laptime was a full second off Longhurst's pole. Last of the real pros were Peter Brock in 13th and teammate Andrew Miedecke in 14th, whose 55.11 flying lap was the last of the respectable times. Below this, lap times fell off a cliff.

Most of the second half of the grid were in outdated or small-class cars, of course, but poor John Smith in the factory Toyota Supra didn't even have that for an excuse. This full-time professional, with more than a decade's experience and seat time in Formula Holden and sports cars, had to suffer his state-of-the-art Supra Turbo being beaten to 15th on the grid by Chris Lambden in the privateer Beaurepaires Skyline – a gentleman driver, albeit a very dedicated one.

Behind them we had Kevin Waldock's Playscape Sierra, and then the real weekenders started, such as Steve Reed in the trusty Lansvale Smash Repairs VL (not yet updated to Walky spec). At this point it might do to give some very unfamiliar names at the murky end of the grid a shout-out: one of them  was Mike Twigden, a former New Zealand Formula Ford driver who was at the wheel of a BMW 323i. This combination would show up at Bathurst later in the year as part of Kiwi Brian Bolwell's outfit, a team which had been racing this car (one presumes it's the same car) since at least Sandown '86. It seems like a reasonable inference that Bolwell had hired young Twigden to be his Bathurst co-driver and had entered him in this ATCC round to ensure he was blooded before the big day, which just leaves a question mark over the car itself: mysteriously, Bolwell was racing a 3-series BMW that wasn't an M3. Frank Gardner's team had turned a half-finished 325i into an M3 mid-build, so it wasn't like it was a difficult conversion, and the Bavarians hadn't exactly been shy about providing support where it was wanted. So, why hadn't this car been upgraded to an M3? Lack of funds? Lack of interest? Some other priority in his native New Zealand? If you know something, hit up that comment box at the bottom. Inquiring minds need to know.

Johnson putting a lap on Twigden during the race.

The other unfamiliar name was one Maurice Pickering, who qualified his Commodore in 59.73 seconds – just enough to put him alongside John Faulkner's 1.6-litre Corolla. Googling his name revealed more than Twigden and Bolwell, but not by much: it seems later (in the mid-90s) he owned a Chevy Monza sports sedan that he raced a few times at Surfers Paradise, and then in the Noughties he was involved with a Carrera Cup team and lower-tier V8 Supercars. But that was where the trail went cold, because Googling "Maurice Pickering" didn't really turn up anything else.

Googling "Maurie Pickering", however, turned up an interview for a Queensland trade rag, complete with glamour shots and some juicy quotes. Today he's a middle-aged and rather successful businessman, but in 1990 he was a 27-year-old working at a Holden dealership in Wynnum, which explains both the car (an outdated VK) and the location, which was only forty minutes from Lakeside in south Brisbane. The comments from the man himself are gold.

I started in karting in the early 1980s, and a few years later I was racing against Peter Brock and Dick Johnson! I only had a tiny budget back then because I was very much a privateer, but I recall sitting there next to them in the briefing room and having to pinch myself!

I bought a Group A Commodore, but we then entered the era when we were changing from VK to VL Commodores – when Brock started driving BMWs and Sierras.

We were trying to compete in a VK, which was essentially a taxi with a carburetted engine built in the 1960s! We pushed the envelope to try and keep up but then the Skyline arrived. The last race I had in Group A was at Oran Park. I had 485hp and was coming out of a corner when a Skyline came up on the inside, left four black lines, and was gone! I thought, "What are we doing this for?!".

Sadly, despite pausing the video frequently, I couldn't find a car I could definitively identify as Maurie's. Nor could I find anything through Google images (although thanks to an enthusiast webpage, images of his Monza are apparently plentiful). So if anyone has a snap of Maurie Pickering's #36 VK Commodore, again, the comment box is below. I'd love to see it.

The Bake on the Lake

When the green flag flew the pace was immediately as hot as the weather in the Sunshine State itself. The key to the early laps was that both DJR drivers made very good starts, and neither TLR driver did. Dick made an absolutely perfect start and leapt into a half-second lead on the first lap alone, while Bowe likewise shot away like a Queensland cockroach when you flick the kitchen light on. That corked the bottle nicely, as both Alan Jones and Tony Longhurst unexpectedly found themselves trapped behind him. From a 2-4 start the Shell Sierras were now running 1-2, and both Jonesy and Tony would now have to pot a red before they could try for a colour.

Behind, there was the usual first-lap fustercluck: the pack shuffled Gerald Kay in the Jagparts Walky off into the weeds, and none too gently either, but he was able to rejoin without stirring up anything more than some dust (he would later land in the sand trap and lose four laps extricating himself, but that was another story). Jim Richards was then similarly hung out to dry through the Karrussell courtesy of Larry Perkins, but he too (of course) was able to keep it together and rejoin without incident. Kevin Waldock in the Playscape Sierra, however, was not so lucky, leaving the track somewhere near Hungry Corner and coming to a rest with damage to the front-right corner of his car – just a bent guard, thankfully, with no obvious puncture or wheel damage. He was able to continue, but he didn't feature in the race again.

Reasonably sure this is Lakeside, probably in a practice session.

The next few laps were brilliant viewing for the race fan, thanks to one Anthony Lawrence Longhurst, who was all over Bowe's car like a rash. In the course of ten laps or so Tony threw everything he had at Bowe trying to force a way past, ducking and diving like Muhammad Ali fighting a tennis ball machine. The body language of the yellow Sierra made it clear Tony hadn't planned on winning this one by conservation; he needed to get past, now, and Bowe's demon start had wrongfooted his strategy completely.

These laps were some of the most aggressive we'd ever seen from Tony, a man who'd learned his mentor Frank Gardner's ways and was better known for driving smart than driving hard. But as these laps proved, on his day, he was up there with the very best this country could produce. Against Bowe he lacked for nothing on pace and fighting spirit, but it couldn't last. Within ten minutes his tyres were toast and he began falling back, leaving Bowe to run his race unmolested.

Guest commentator Allan Grice pointed out that Jonesy, on the other hand, was "driving a lot straighter than we'd seen him." It seemed the Longhurst drivers had opted for a tortoise-and-hare team strategy, but the Johnson team's lightning-quick start had rather shoved a stick through their spokes. With thirteen minutes done, Dick was nearly four seconds ahead of Bowe and still pushing hard – slight puffs of smoke from the front tyres under braking gave that away, no matter how neat and tidy it all looked from the outside. Longhurst was still 3rd but now falling into the clutches of Gregg Hansford, neither of them pushing as hard as they had in the opening laps. 5th was Jones, then Larry Perkins (who'd won an early scrap with Win Percy, carrying on their usual intra-Holden grudge match), then Bond, the two Nissans (Skaife ahead of Richards), and Peter Brock, who was having a dice with the slow-starting (but fast-lapping) Glenn Seton. After another substantial gap, we then had Andrew Miedecke in a tooth-and-nail fight for position with Win Percy. Neil Crompton revealed Percy had suffered an early spin the cameras didn't catch, but had rejoined without incident, dropping from 7th down to 13th.

Now lapping seconds off his opening pace, Tony Longhurst finally gave up and headed to pit lane for a fresh set of Yokohamas. It was a quick stop, and after taking service he rejoined way down in 14th place. As Crompton had said, the tyre techies were scratching their heads this weekend as the rubber coming off the cars was showing few signs of wear; it was just the temperature that was killing them. The race had been underway for just seventeen minutes, meaning it was about ten minutes too early for a planned stop.

Colin Bond was having a good day, though. Having started behind the factory Nissans, he was now ahead of both of them and harassing Perkins. Another lap and he was past, latching onto the #11 down Motorcraft Hill, then pulling out and simply powering past down the kinked front straight. That was the signal Larry needed, as he headed for the pits a lap later. Not even 20 minutes out of 50 – this was looking more and more like a two-stop race than a one-stopper.

About the same time, Alan Jones was finally inching up on the back of John Bowe – good progress, except his exhaust was now periodically letting out a puff of white smoke, usually on the overrun. "Pretty short-term proposition..." was Grice’s judgement, and he was right. Only a lap later Jones slowed on the approach to the Karrussell, and came out of the corner hugging the inside line to stay out of everyone's way, the smoke from the exhaust now matched by more smoke from the left-side vent in his bonnet. Being a LHD car, that was blowing straight into his windscreen, so there was no way Jones could ignore this one: he was forced into retirement with 23 laps on his scorecard.

Turbos couldn't take the heat even on a mild day, and this was a long way from one of those.

That eased some of the pressure on the Shell cars, but not much. In the space vacated by Jonesy there was now Colin Bond, who'd just relieved Gregg Hansford of 4th place (Hansford took the hint and pitted soon after). 5th and 6th were the Nissan teammates Skaife and Richards, 7th and 8th was the ongoing battle between Brock and Seton, 9th was Win Percy and 10th was Andrew Miedecke.

Exactly what happened next is hard to say. During the ad break there was a flurry of pit stops, and as the Channel Seven broadcast showed neither replays nor basic graphics like positions or laps, the situation suddenly became very confusing. It seemed both the Nissans had pitted, as had John Bowe, but Dick Johnson had stayed out and he was now a very worried man. The in-car cameras showed him asking his team about the gap back to Bond, while he struggled to deal with a feisty Perkins, who was trying to un-lap himself after that early stop. With fresh rubber on – despite being a Commodore – that was looking like a close contest, which showed the highly-partisan Queensland crowd what they didn't want to see: Dick's tyres were dying.

A single ad break, and suddenly Bondy was in 2nd place, having profited from everyone else's stops, while Brock was up to 3rd using the same tactics. With 28 out of 50 minutes done, that was quite a turnaround.

Another lap-and-a-half and Johnson conceded defeat, peeled off over the hill and headed for pit lane. Bond was on cloud nine. It was only now that Crompo bothered to tell us what Bond had been up to in the practice sessions, running long stints and maintaining a pace in the low 55-second range throughout. "That'll obviously win the race," said Allan Grice without a moment's hesitation, "because we saw before John Bowe came in he slipped back to the 68s."

Lapping John Smith's Supra. Again.

For what it was worth, Johnson's stop was quick and tidy, but even so it would be a tall order to catch Bond from there. Could the Caltex Sierra really go all the way on a single set of Toyos? His pace just had to drop off eventually, didn't it? Would it be enough for Johnson to catch him if it did? Johnson put in a mighty effort, pedalling the #17 like he hadn't needed to in over two years, but the question was settled late in the race when he overdid it and had a spin, dropping him from 3rd down to 10th.

That promoted – pinch yourself – Win Percy to 3rd place, the first-ever podium finish for the Holden Racing Team. That early honour battle with Larry Perkins had gone quite the other way in the end, as Larry made a second stop for tyres with barely five minutes left on the clock – then returned to the pits only a lap later to correct a wheel that hadn't been fitted properly. Larry just sat there with his arm out the window, too resigned to be surly. He never expected much against all these turbo cars, but he'd expected more than this, and Percy getting to the podium was just extra salt in the wound.

But today the glory was all Bondy's. With the clock run out, cheery Colin slung his Caltex Sierra down the hill one last time and zoomed across the finish line to take one of the most stunning and unexpected victories Australia had seen in years. No-one, absolutely no-one, had seen this coming, and bookies across the country spat out their toothpicks and did the mental arithmetic to work out whether this result had just bankrupted them. Against all odds, Bond had done the entire race on a single set of Toyos – which, just for once, had been just the tools for the job. Mike Raymond even quipped that he might be the only man to finish Bathurst this year without a tyre change, while Grice had an amusing Murray Walker moment when he said: "It just goes to show, you've gotta keep banging in there, gotta keep hanging away at it."

Now just to be clear, this is sometimes cited as Bond's first win in over a decade, but that isn't quite accurate. He'd also won the first round of the AMSCAR series in 1988, just over two years and one month earlier. But if you only count points-paying ATCC rounds, then yes, it was Bond's first taste of the champagne since Adelaide, 5 June 1977. By my count, that means it had been 4,717 days since he'd last won a championship race – a long time between drinks, even for a driver in the "elder statesman" phase of his career. It was so long ago, the last time he'd mounted the top step of the podium his teammate had been Allan Moffat, and his ride (and hair style) had looked like this:

Moffat and Bond demonstrating proper victory lap technique, Oran Park, 1977.

So, with Bond 1st, Brock 2nd and Percy 3rd, the championship battle was momentarily put on hold. It isn't often brought up in discussions of this race, but the scores deserved some attention all the same. With Richards picking up 8 points for 5th place, and Johnson 4 for finishing 7th, the two titans of the series were now deadlocked on 64 points apiece. Bowe trailed on 58 points, with Bond jumping up to 42 and Brock to 40, followed by Seton on 32 and Longhurst on 30. We were past the halfway point of the season, opportunities to score were running out, and it literally couldn't have been closer. So of course, it was at this point that Gibson Motorsport finally got the cane out of the cupboard and deployed the car we'd been waiting to see since January. Mallala was next, and Fred Gibson was bringing a howitzer to a knife fight.