A while ago we teased you with a few detail pictures of a certain car on our instagram account. People say “never meet your heroes.” This sometimes is also applicable for cars. Lamborghini Countach fans probably know what I am talking about. But with every rule, there must be an exception. The HKS Nissan Skyline R32 GTR IS this rare exception.
Back in the early nineties *eurobeat intensifies* the R32 GTRs were the dominant force of the Japanese Group A Touring Car Championship. The Skylines took 29 wins from 29 entered races during 1990 – 1993. This particular car took 2 pole positions in 1993 and an overall win at SUGO circuit at round 3 of the 1993 championship.
All those Group A Nissan Skyline R32 GTR were extraordinary impressive. The RB26 based Engine in one of its first NISMO iterations, the HICAS rear wheel steering system (High Capacity Actively Controlled Steering)and the ATTESA intelligent torque split system (Advanced Total Traction Engineering System for All-Terrain).
But the HKS Nissan Skyline R32 GTR was special. Even among them. While other teams did use the NISMO supplied engines, HKS decided to put a lot of development into producing their own engine. Remember, HKS was a comparatively small privateer team in Group A at that time.
The HKS R32 GTRs horsepower output was just stated as “over 600ps”. The straight sixes thirst was quenched by 4 Bosch fuel pumps and a 120l fuel tank. Everything under the watchful eye of the HKS Fcon Vpro ECU. The HKS GD triple plate clutch, paired with a Holinger 6 speed dog transmission and Nismo mechanical front and rear limited slip differentials did everything they could to keep traction.
Although this car has some serious history, not all parts of it stayed the same since those days. Keeping your former race cars in pristine condition wasn’t exactly “en vogue” back in the day, especially for privateer teams. For example the Alcon callipers have been replaced with AP ones, paired with 355mm discs and the KYB Group A Spec coilovers were replaced with a much more recent in-house-development, the HKS Hipermax suspension.
While shooting the car, I was told that the engine got an overhaul too. But was specifically rebuild to emulate the performance and characteristics of the former race engine. Unfortunately I could not convince them to let me verify this myself via test drive. Still, the car has a wet weight of 1260-1300kg, which combined with engine, suspension and transmission specs promises a fun ride in this HKS Nissan Skyline R32 GTR.
