The History Of " S K Y L I N E "

[GTR-N1]

The Origin of "SKYLINE"

by Ben Hsu of CarTech Inc 2013

Much attention has been given to the "Z", "510" and "Sylvia", but there's one car that rises above them all in the eyes of the Japanese; the Nissan Skyline. For many, it is Japan, evoking feelings of teary-eyed nostalgia when they catch a glimpse of a vintage example driving by. Old Skylines have also been a popular custom car for the 'bosozoku', Japanese car motorcycle gang members who turn them into 'zokusha', Japan's counterpart to the lowrider.

The Skyline had a performance GT-R version so over-the-top that every journalist in the west has, at some point in their career, referred to it as "Godzilla". The GT-R has dominated every form of motorsports it has entered, and has come to represent, much like Japan itself, the pinnacle of technology and futurism. Impressively, it has become a world-renowned legend in its own time, (virtually) despite having never officially been sold outside Japan.

Since Americans didn't get the Skyline in any form until it came to the United States rebadges as the Infiniti G35, "Skyline" is often used to describe the king-of-the-hill GT-R. That would be wrong, as the Skyline has been in continuous production since 1957, long out-living its original marque, the Prince Motor Company.

Prince began as a car company completely separate from Nissan. It emerged from the former Tachikawa Aircraft Corporation after World War II and used its aeronautical engineering skills to produce the first Skyline car. A young engineer by the name of Shinichiro Sakurai came up with the "Skyline" name when he gazed upon a row of silver mountains against the sky whilst skiing in Gunma Prefecture.

Unlike Nissan, Prince was firmly established as a premium automaker, and the Skyline was its flagship car. A typical Nissan product in 1957 was the 25-horsepower 860cc Datsun 113. In contrast, the 1957 Skyline ALSI had a 60-horsepower 1.5 litre OHV four cylinder, capable of 78 mph over the Datsun's 53. The Prince Skyline had an independent front suspension (something that wasn't seen on Datsuns until the 310 Bluebird) and a sophisticated de Dion axle in the rear. It also cost about three times the price of the Datsun.

During its six-year lifespan, the first generation Skyline underwent several changes on the same basic chassis, including an upgrade to a 91-horsepower, 1.9 litre four and numerous bodies with varying amounts of grille acreage, tailfin size and headlight count. There was even a wagon called the Skyway, but the most unique variation was probably the Prince Skyline Sport. Styled by Giovanni Michelotti, it was shown at the 1960 Turin Motor Show. Available in either two-door coupe or convertible, only 500 examples were built, each one by hand.

The second-generation S50 Skyline debut was in November 1963, along with a brand new 1.5 litre inline-four good for about 70-horsepower. By then, Japan's roads had improved tremendously, and the rock-solid first generation gave way to a clean-cut design that weighed about 700lb less. Prince had so much faith in the car that it offered a 40,000Km, two year warranty, and advertisements promoting its maintenance-free "sealed engine" generated much interest.

The Skyline's true claim to fame came at the 1964 Japan Grand Prix, an event that forever changed the course of the country's automotive history. The previous year, a pair of Prince Skyline Sports suffered a bitter defeat at the hands of a privately entered Datsun Fairlady 1500. Vowing not to repeat that mistake, Sakurai came up with the idea of dropping the Prince Gloria's 2.0 litre straight-six into the new Skyline's engine bay. To do so, Sakurai's team elongated the Skyline's nose 6 inches between the cowl and the front fender, creating the S54 Skyline 2000GT. The team worked around the clock to build 100 examples per homologation rules, barely finishing two days before race day.

At Suzuka, a late-entry Porsche 904 GTS crowned by a privateer nearly destroyed Sakurai's dream of winning. Sakurai knew his car, essentially a big engine shoehorned into a passenger sedan, would have no chance against the purpose-built race car. But in the heat of battle, the number 41 Skyline GT driven by Tetsu Ikuzawa did the impossible and passed the Porsche. It's said that the entire crowd rose to their feet to watch a domestic car wrest the lead from the established foreign marque, even if it was short-lived. In the end, the 904 still won, with the Prince's Skylines sweeping 2nd through to 6th.

It hardly mattered that Prince didn't win, because at that moment, the Skyline legend was born. That race had cemented its reputation as a real sports sedan, and orders began pouring in. The 125-horsepower Skyline GT-B, patterned after the race car, went on sale the following year, and the Skyline name was forever entwined with motorsport.

Still, by 1965, Prince was in such dire financial trouble that the government arranged a merger between Prince and its old rival, Nissan. It wasn't an easy transition for most but the Skyline's reputation was so strong that Sakurai and his team were given full freedom to continue the next generation as planned.

Development of the C10 Skyline was aimed toward the youth market who, unlike previous Japanese, had grown up comfortably around cars and were interested in motoring as a form of enjoyment rather than just transportation. Sakurai's team developed an all-new four-wheel independent suspension with rear trailing arms giving the car responsive handling and stability at speed. Elegant styling lent the body an airy feel with just a hint of nefariousness. Designers added a character line cutting across the rear wheel well, which became a Skyline traditon known as the "surf line". Its crisp-edged styling soon earned it a nickname, the 'Hakosuka', with 'Hako' being the Japanes word for "box" and 'suka' the Japanese pronunciation of "sky".

It was initially offered with a 1.5 litre inline-four, in sedan and wagon body styles. It was followed quickly by the new 2.0 litre L-series straight-six in an extended-nose version that was only available in a sedan. A gorgeous two-door hardtop joined the line-up in October 1970, upping the desirability factor even more.

The 'Hakosuka' however, is really remembered for introducing the world to the GT-R, a bare-bones sports sedan with a race car engine released in 1969. Costing nearly twice as much as a regular Skyline, the GT-R was powered by the now-legendary S20 engine, a high-revving, 160-horsepower, DOHC 24-valve inline-six derived from the Prince R380 race car. It was an amazing piece of engineering, as four-valve heads were still rare outside of pure race cars at the time. Offered exclusively with a 5-speed transmission, the street car weighed 2,425lb. Tuned for competition, the 2.0 litre S20 could put out well over 250 horsepower.

Competition, it turns out, was exactly what Nissan had in mind. Turning the Skyline 2000GT-R loose on every touring car series in Japan, Nissan racked up an epic 49 victories in the following two years. As the magical fiftieth race approached, Nissan marketers broadcast the event in newspapers, where it was closely followed by the Japanese public. That bout turned out to be one of the most talked-about races in Japanese motorsports history, as a fleet of GT-Rs faced off against a trio of Mazdas and their newfangled rotary engine (the Mazda Savanna RX-3). Despite Nissan's loss that day, the Hakosuka GT-R went on to claim its fiftieth victory soon after. Through sheer dominance of Japan's golden age of motorsports, the GT-R ensured its status as Japan's top racing legend.

Nissan fully intended to continue this streak with the next generation C110 Skyline and displayed a stunning new hardtop at the 1972 Tokyo Motor Show in full racing livery. The number "73" was emblazoned on its side, representing the year the new GT-R went racing. Fate had other plans though, ushering in the 1973 oil crisis and forcing Nissan to abandon many of its motorsports ventures. Withe abrupt cancellation of the Skyline racing programme, only 197 KPGC110 GT-Rs were built before the line was killed off, making them some of the rarest and most sought-after Nissans.

Nevertheless, the fourth-generation Skyline lived out its time as the most successful Skyline to date. Spurring sales were a series of TV commercials starring a young couple driving across the countryside in their Skyline coupe. The ads struck such a chord with the japanes public that Nissan gave the couple names, "Ken" and "Mary", and an entire back story. Ken and Mary stickers and T-Shirts sold like hotcakes and so did the Skyline, with 640,000 sold, doubling the previous generation's numbers. Even today, the ads are remembered fondly, and just a few notes of the theme song, "Ken and Mary Ai to Kaze no Youni", evokes a daze of sepia-toned nostalgia in Japanese of a certain age. It's no wonder the C110 bacame known as the 'kenmeri' Skyline.

The C210 Skyline appeared in 1977 with more formal styling. Without a corresponding GT-R to ech racing glory, the fifth Skyline relied on national pride. Previous Skylines had become an integral part of the national culture, so new commercials proclaimed the new Skyline as the finest automobile produced by Japanese culture. It worked, and the C210 came to ba called Skyline Japan.

A dizzying variety of engine combinations existed, including a diesel, but new pollution requirements made GT-R level performance an impossibility. Nissan compensated by turbocharging the six-cylinder L20E to create the 145-horsepower Skyline 2000GT-EX, one of the first turbocharged cars in Japan. It never quite matched the raw soul of the triple-carburetor GT-Rs, but market forces were pushing auto-makers to prize comfort and technology over sportiness anyway. As a result, the C210 featured instrumentation across the dash and a console so packed with buttons and dials, that they continued onto the overhead panel.

Epitomising this trend was the Skyline Japan's starring role in "Seibu Keisatsu", Japan's wildly popular police drama. The C210 was featured as the police department's pursuit vehicle, packed to the gills with computers, scanners, and all manner of gadgets. It was all pert of a genius marketing deal for Nissan, which became the programme's sole vehicle supplier. Known for its frequent car chases, "Seibu Keisatsu" destroyed around 4,680 cars in its 236-episode run, and the Skyline Japan was the star of the show.

But not even the C210's stardom could prevent a drastic sales drop in its final two years of production. So, for the sixth generation's debut in 1981, Nissan returned to its roots with a DOHC multi-valve engine that had been the calling card of the GT-R. Although a wide range of engines, including the carryover turbo six, were available for the R30, the Nissan FJ20 in-line four was its top-shelf choice. It may have had two fewer pistons, but it more than made up for it with an aluminium head, chain-driven dual overhead cams and 16 valves per cylinder.

The 150-horsepower engine gave the Skyline 2000RS the title of fastest road car in Japan. Magazines of the day hailed it as a return to GT-R days. Starring in the ad campaign was American actor Paul Newman, whose US racing career had been progressing quite nicely behind the wheel of Datsun Z cars. The R30 became know as the Newman Skyline and there was even a limited-edition model, featuring his signature.

As memories of the oil crisis bagan to fade, Nissan returned to motorsports with a vengeance. After a ten-year absence, Group 5 Silhouete racing became Nissan's headline series, in which cars only nominally resembled road-going versions. Each had massive wide-body kits, jutting air dams, and enormous spoilers that shocked audiences with their visual impact. One of the biggest stars to emerge from these races was Masahiro Hasemi's monstrous 570PS red-on-black KDR30 Skyline Super Silhouette. After winning several races in the early 1980s, Hasemi's machine became a Japanese icon.

Surfing a wave of goodwill, Nissan continued improving the R30. Each release - the FJ20ET-powered 2000RS Turbo RS, the intercooled RS-X Turbo C - further secured the R30's place as the fastest road car in Japan. Between the releases, it received a facelift that, against popular design at the time, eliminated the grille altogether and moved the air intake opening below the bumper line. Skyline fans nicknamed this the 'tekamen' or "iron mask".

By the mid 1980s, Group S racing had fallen out of favour for Group A, where cars more closely resembled their production counterparts, In 1985, Nissan introduced the seventh-generation Skyline in sedan form. The sporty two-door hardtop wasn't quite ready yet, so it fell to the R30 to take home the 1986 Group A championships.

Road cars were reaching almost absurd levels of techno-wizardry thanks to Japan's rapidly growing economy. Nissan finally released the top-of-the-line R31 Skyline GTS hardtop in May 1986, just as Japanese automakers were locked in a race for 'Blade-Runner-esque' technological dominance. The most outlandish expression of this was probably the R31's HICAS (high-capacity actively controlled suspension) four-wheel steering system, which used a maze of hydraulics and speed sensors to subtly turn the rear wheels during high-speed cornering. Honda, Mazda and Toyota were each developing their own versions, but the R31 had the honour of being the world's first. Other gadgets included Japan's first use of projector-beam headlights, electrically adjustable dampers and a retractable front spoiler.

The most significant piece of hardware, however, was Nissan's new RB engine family of aluminium-head straight-sixes. The 180-horsepower RB20DET in the R31 Skyline GTS was the first step toward one of the most fearsome engines in the automotive world. The twin-cam, 24-valve, aluminium-head monster achieved legendary status in later iterations and powered Skylines for 15 years.

Although the road-going R31 suffered under the weight of its trick equipment, racing versions didn't disappoint. The R31 continued the Skyline's reputation by taking the 1989 Group A championships with a 250-horsepower racing version. Homologation rules compelled Nissan to sell 800 street-legal versions called the GTS-R with engines detuned to 210 horsepower. Overall though, the R31 lacked standout characteristics, which is reflected in its nickname; simply the 'Seventh Skyline'.

However, all the gadgetry borne by the R31 wasn't for nought because the technology that worked, found its way into the next Skyline, the R32. The eighth generation needs no introduction - it is the Skyline that English-language magazines christened "Godzilla" commencing from Wheels Magazine in Australia. To the Japanese, it was the long-awaited return, after a 16-year absence, of the GT-R. To the rest of the world, it was a new beast hailing from a modest lineage few outside Japan had paid atention to. Either way, it was suddenly one of the best cars in the world.

The basic R32 platform was ucerpinned by an all-new suspension with double-wishbones and Brembo brakes at all four corners. The active four-wheel steering was back, as was the RB, increased to 2.6 litres and slinging not one but two massive turbos. Most importantly, all of this fed power to an advanced AWD system biased toward the rear.

Nissan immediately entered the GT-R into the All-Japan Touring Car Group A Championships, a touring car league that traced its lineage to 1966 and the races in which the original Hakosuka GT-R competed. From its debut race in March 1990 to the final race of the series in 1993, the R32 GT-R dominated, winning every single race.

It was practically 1971 all over again, with the GT-R fueling a boom among Japanese tuners. On paper, the RB26DETT generated 276 horsepower, but tuning houses soon began extracting triple that amount. Nissan entered the GT-R in many other racing series as well, creating a slew of different homologated versions. Soon, word of this sleeper supercar began spreading beyond Japanese borders, and the rest is history.

The R33 Skyline had the perception of being a bit bloated when it launched in 1993. This reputation followed it when the GT-R version surfaced in 1995. In reality, subtle tweaks to its AWD system and various engine management computers made it even faster. The proof was in the 'pudding', or in this case Nurburgring, Germany's legendary racetrack-come-proving ground. The R33 GT-R was the first production car to break the eight-minute mark around the 'Green Hell'.

The 1999 R34 GT-R wasn't a huge leap over the previous Godzilla , as Nissan had been incrementally tweaking improvements into its computers. It did get a 6-speed manual and a RB26DETT that was clearly breaking the 276-horsepower gentleman's agreement among Japanese automakers, though Nissan never admitted it.

Unfortunately, by this time, Nissan was in pretty bad financial straits thanks to the mid-1990s Asian stock market crash. In 1999, Nissan merged with Renault and underwent a massive reorganisation. As part of it, the Skyline family tree took a sharp detour, beginning with an all-new platform called the V35. Americans call it the Infiniti G35, and it parted with Skyline tradition by offering a V6 shared with the 350Z. Presumably, the cost-cutting partnership was taking a more global outlook, so no longer was massive amounts of R&D spent on a domestic-only sports coupe uncertifiable for sale in other countries, even if its reputation was invaluable to the Nissan marque.

Of course, the GT-R did return for the 2008 model year, but had litle in common with the V36 Skyline (Infiniti G37) except for the badge. Perhaps we'll jast have to accept that the GT-R has grown up and parted ways with the Skyline.

Even without a performance version to stir the soul, the Skyline name will always be part of Japan's identity. In January 2011, Shinichiro Sakurai, the man who put the straight-six in the elongated nose of a Skyline in 1964, passed away at the age of 81. Every major newspaper in Japan ran a story about his life. Gruff, old car enthusiasts wept openly. The outpouring of sorrow proved that Sakurai had not only been the "Father of the Skyline", but the father of an entire legacy of Japanese motoring.

Reporting from the book "Classic Japanese Performance Cars".

[PranK]

What is the book like in general, Terry?

[GTR-N1]

It's quite comprehensive over Honda, Toyota, Mazda, Subaru as well as Nissan Christian.

I'm not sure if it deserves to be a coffee table book. But it deserves a hardcover instead of softcover treatment.

[SkudR33]

Wow that was an interesting read!

[Aussie_Delivered_R32_GTR]

Just bought it........

Cheers,

Bob.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/261744882981?_trksid=p2060778.m2749.l2648&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

[baicai]

That was a good read.

[Robzilla32]

Just bought it........

Cheers,

Bob.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/261744882981?_trksid=p2060778.m2749.l2648&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Yep bought one too

[GTR-N1]

9 more pages have been dedicated to the Fairlady Z too.

[PranK]

Might ask for it for Chrissy.