When Nissan ruled Australia with its 'Godzilla' Group A special

It became known simply as ‘Godzilla’. The Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R is the very definition of a monster of motorsport, destroying all that came before it during a short but dominant period in the early 1990s.

Australian motorsport journalists coined the nickname because the car would “smash and eat everything alive in its path” during an all-conquering run of victories in domestic touring car championships in Japan (1990-93) and Australia (1990-92). The Skyline R32 GT-R proved the ultimate touring car from the Group A breed of homologation specials, including the Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth and the BMW M3.

“By the time we got to the end of Group A, the GT-R was far and away the best of that species,” says Mark Skaife, who drove the GT-R to two Bathurst 1000 wins and the 1992 Australian Touring Car Championship. “Arguably in those days it was the most technologically advanced touring car in the world.”

Skaife’s words are backed up by a stunning results tally. In Japan it won all 29 races it contested from 1990-93, resulting in its rivals leaving the top class in the Japanese Touring Car Championship, while in Australia it claimed not only its two Bathurst 1000 wins, but also the 1991-92 Australian Touring Car Championship (ATCC) titles. It also conquered Europe’s biggest touring car enduro, winning the 1991 Spa 24 Hours.

Before the emergence of the GT-R, the Sierra RS500 was the car to drive if you wanted to be successful in Group A touring cars. But the game changed with the birth of the R32 GT-R in 1990. Nissan had already tasted success in Group A in Japan, with Aguri Suzuki claiming the 1986 JTCC title with the Skyline DR30 Turbo. With the same model, Fred Gibson’s factory Nissan operation ended up runner-up in the Australian title race in 1986 (when George Fury was beaten by Volvo’s Robbie Francevic) and 1987 (Glenn Seton was edged by Jim Richards’ BMW M3).

Then the new, dominant Sierra raised the bar in 1988. In 1990, the Japanese manufacturer broke through the ATCC Ford/Holden battleground to win the title – Richards, now driving for Gibson Motorsport, piloted an HR31 Skyline, before switching to the new GT-R for the last three rounds of the season to seal the crown.

Mark Skaife, Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R

Photo by: AN1 Media

The 600bhp-plus, twin-turbo R32 GT-R was designed with Group A racing in mind, with Nissan electing to mimic the four-wheel-drive system that Porsche had developed for its 959. With an electro-hydraulic clutch to split torque between the front and rear, the GT-R would remain in rear-wheel-drive mode until those wheels lost traction, resulting in power being sent to the front.

Although it won four consecutive titles during its Japanese domination, it’s widely acknowledged that the best iterations of ‘Godzilla’ were found in Australia. It wasn’t an all-conquering beast from the start of its life down under, but it was obvious from the first test at a wet Winton in Victoria that the GT-R would become a force to be reckoned with.

"The way it delivered power was pretty average but the ability to have four-wheel drive was just extraordinary. We knew this thing was a weapon but we needed to make it into a proper race car" Mark Skaife

“When we first got it, it was very much a Japanese-spec test car essentially,” says Skaife. “In the wet it was just amazing, the four-wheel drive coming out of slow corners with that level of acceleration. But again the engine wasn’t tuned that well at the time, the electronic control unit programming mechanism was very agricultural.

“The way it delivered power was pretty average but the ability to have four-wheel drive was just extraordinary. My first impressions were like, ‘Wow, this is just incredible’. We knew this thing was a weapon but we needed to make it into a proper race car.”

The GT-R underwent a complete overhaul by Gibson and his team, with almost every component changed to unlock its potential.

“I don’t want to sound like we are being too Australian about our own accolades, but Fred Gibson’s team at the time was number one in Australia by a long way,” continues Skaife. “We had a very, very close knit group of engineers and technicians. The GTR programme was far and away the most technical, and I found the most enjoyable because the car was so hi-tech, but it needed to be made race-proof.

“Fred always had a saying, ‘You tell us what’s wrong with the car and we’ll fix it’, and he also said, ‘You drive the wheels off it and drive it as hard as you can and we’ll make it durable’, and that for the GTR was the biggest challenge.

Mark Skaife, Jim Richards, Nissan GT-R

Photo by: Nissan

“From the original car we changed everything. Front and rear uprights, gearbox, clutch pack, in terms of how the four-wheel-drive system worked. We didn’t have the Japanese system for any ECU control units – we used an Electramotive system from America and we did our own turbos.

“We had a Yokohama tyre programme in Australia, so we didn’t use the tyres they were using in Japan. We made our own wheels; basically, everything was Australianised. And again in the first year we lost some races and we did some things that you learn from, but by the time we got to 1991 and 1992, the cars were just incredible.”

The car made its ATCC race debut in 1990 in the hands of Skaife, rather than his more experienced championship-contending team-mate Richards. Skaife led that race at the Mallala circuit near Adelaide before a hub failure ended his victory hopes. Richards scored a fourth place on his first run in the GT-R at Barbagallo, before completing a dominant victory at Sydney’s Oran Park to seal the title from the Ford Sierras of Peter Brock and Dick Johnson.

It had contested only three races in Australia, but the GT-R had thrown down a gauntlet, and in 1991 it would enjoy a season of crushing its opposition. It soon caught the attention of the officials, with Australian governing body CAMS instructing that the cars had to carry an extra 15kg, ensuring that the GT-R was the heaviest machine on the grid at 1360kg. Despite the ballast, Richards and Skaife won seven of the nine championship rounds, including six 1-2 finishes, and Richards edged Skaife to the title by five points.

To add the icing to the cake, the pair combined to win the Bathurst 1000 from pole by a lap from 1990 winners Win Percy and Allan Grice driving a factory Holden VN Commodore. Such was the speed of the GT-R that Richards and Skaife broke the race record set in 1984, completing the 1000km in six hours 19 minutes and 14.8 seconds, a record that would stand until 2010. But according to Skaife, the GT-R was far from easy to drive.

“I argue today that our Supercars have way too much downforce and that effectively makes them too easy to drive”, he points out. “So you think about the GTR – it had similar power of a current Supercar and one inch smaller tyre width and weighed about the same, but it had no aero, actually it probably had lift. You’d arrive at The Chase at 300km/h [186mph], the same speeds as now, but because we didn’t have any drag or hardly any aero, you could not get through there flat, so it was a dead-set big boys’ corner.”

The success that led to the car being dubbed ‘Godzilla’ pleased Nissan executives and helped boost sales in Australia, but was met with negativity from the nation’s army of ardent fans supporting the locally produced Ford and Holden race cars.

It wasn't until 2010 that Skaife and Craig Lowndes broke the race record set by the GT-R

Photo by: Dirk Klynsmith / Motorsport Images

“The Australian journos made up the nickname,” recalls Skaife. “Again it was controversial as it wasn’t a Ford or a Holden, so it went against the whole red-versus-blue tribal rivalry and social fabric of Australia.

“But at the same time, here was a new car company that was spending a lot of money. There is no doubt in that era and with that level of performance and success you get the ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ effect. We had a big correlation with Nissan’s local success in the market. I love that Henry Ford quote of ‘auto racing began when the second car was built’. Car racing is about that. What we did for Nissan was unbelievable and it put Nissan on the map here.”

The GT-R has left an indelible mark on Australian motorsport. It managed to not only upset the nation’s Ford-versus-Holden tribal rivalry, but was so dominant that it was effectively banned and brought an end to Group A racing

The GT-R enjoyed one more year of dominance amid controversy in 1992, before the curtain eventually fell on Group A in favour of the popular Super Touring regulations that swept the world, plus the introduction of Australia’s V8 formula, which formed the backbone of today’s Supercars Championship. Skaife won the 1992 ATCC title from team-mate Richards, the pair driving newly liveried red, white and yellow Winfield-backed entries. Skaife won four of the nine rounds, comprising two heats per meeting, and teamed up with Richards for a second successive Bathurst 1000 crown.

The success came amid CAMS imposing further weight penalties to bring the cars closer to the field – the GT-Rs ended the year 140kg heavier than the previous season, weighing in at 1500kg. CAMS also instructed Gibson Motorsport to run Formula 1-style pop-off valves on the turbos to cut power from 640bhp to approximately 450bhp, although it has been reported that the team managed to circumvent this issue through acquired knowledge of how the valves operated. Gibson Motorsport even took the matter to court, citing that the sanctions rendered them uncompetitive. But their attempt for a reprieve was unsuccessful, and the history books will forever state that the car completed an ATCC and Bathurst double that season.

The GT-R has left an indelible mark on Australian motorsport. It managed to not only upset the nation’s Ford-versus-Holden tribal rivalry, but was so dominant that it was effectively banned and brought an end to Group A racing. ‘Godzilla’ remains an Australian motorsport icon, and in 2016 the factory Nissan Supercars team paid homage to the car by adorning one of its Altimas in the red, white and blue of the 1991 GT-R for that year’s Bathurst 1000. The GT-R rightfully earned its nickname and, in terms of game-changing touring cars, it deserves its place alongside the all-time greats.

Mark Skaife, Jim Richards, Nissan GT-R

Photo by: AN1 Media

Richards argues with the mob

Perhaps the most infamous moment in the GT-R’s short but devastating racing life down under was the climax of the 1992 Bathurst 1000, a moment etched in Australian motorsport folklore.

Jim Richards and Mark Skaife combined in an attempt to repeat their 1991 Great Race crown, and were declared winners after Richards crashed the GT-R when a deluge hit the Mount Panorama circuit, resulting in a red flag. Richards, stuck on slicks, had already found the wall at the Cutting, leaving his left-front hanging, before sliding into a bunch of cars that had come to grief at Forrest Elbow, triggering the red flag.

Skaife admits that driving the Skyline in the rain that day was the only time the car had frightened him: “If you weren’t scared on that day there was something wrong with you. I actually ran into the safety car at one point as I couldn’t see it when it came out. It was one of the wildest days.”

As per the regulations, when a race was red-flagged, the results were taken from a lap earlier, sparking an angry reaction from the partisan crowd. Not only had a Nissan beaten the favoured local Ford and Holden marques, but it had denied a Dick Johnson/John Bowe Ford victory. Johnson, who was classified second, then revved up the angry crowd by declaring that he should have won.

Cue the mob hurling beer cans towards the podium, before Richards and Skaife were presented with the trophy. These emotionally charged scenes came after a race that had claimed the life of Richards’ close friend, 1967 Formula 1 world champion Denny Hulme, who had suffered a heart attack while behind the wheel.

Mark Skaife, Jim Richards, Nissan GT-R

Photo by: AN1 Media

Skaife and Richards were announced onto the podium to a chorus of boos, resulting in one of the Great Race’s most memorable moments as Richards uttered: “I’m just really stunned for words, I can’t believe the reception. I thought Australian race fans had a lot more to go than this. This is bloody disgraceful. I’ll keep racing but I tell you what: this is going to remain with me for a long time. You’re a pack of arseholes.”

Skaife recalls the incident vividly: “Jim is one of the most balanced human beings I have been around, and for him to say that I think captured the level of emotion and drama. The finish was pretty stressful, combined with what was a pretty stressful day and the knowledge that one of his best friends had passed away, and if you put all that together it was a pretty traumatic experience.

“Fortunately for Jim we ended up driving together 10 years later and we won the race in 2002 [driving for the Holden Racing Team], and he was able to call them [the crowd] a ‘pack of wonderful people’.”

Skaife and Richards got to address the crowds again as winners in 2002

Photo by: Dirk Klynsmith / Motorsport Images