Jaguar retired from racing in 1994 after several Le Mans successes in the 1980s and early 90s. All of this knowledge culminated in the XJR-15, a street car based on their Le Mans racer. This move came as a surprise to many, but Jaguar would soon focus its racing activities elsewhere, with its unfortunate Formula 1 team.
Jaguar had not worked alone to win consecutive 24-hour Le Man races. A company called Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR) helped Jaguar and therefore had a large knowledge base that could be used in later projects. Nissan entered the fray and turned to TWR to back up their Le Mans ambitions and the result was the Nissan R390.
The Nissan was developed for the GT1 class and should compete against the legendary McLaren F1 GT1 racing cars. The R390 was the successor to the R383, one of Nissan’s last racing cars until the 1980s, when the Skyline GT-R also raised its head for a third generation and dominated race tracks around the world. The Nissan R390 is part of Nissan’s golden era of racing.
Part of Nissan’s great racing history, the R390 deserves respect even though its time has been cut.
Shared knowledge for the Nissan R390
via wikimedia
The XJR-15 was once a pioneer with a carbon monocoque chassis, but unfortunately it never raced at Le Mans. It was just a framework series for the Formula 1 championship over three races.
But all signs point to the success of the car that the XJR-9 on which the car was based successfully drove. Before the R390 Nissan added the Skyline to the GT1 class, however, manufacturers had begun to bypass the rules and put cars on the track that shared very little with the cars on the road, the R390 was supposed to compete against them . As a compromise between weight and performance, TWR opted for a 3.5-liter twin-turbo V8 with 550 hp.
With the body designed by Ian Callum, the R390 joins highly regarded vehicles such as Aston Martin Vanquish and Jaguar XK. The car is a GT1 class racing driver taking aerodynamic cues from the Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR and the long tail of the McLaren F1. But with the Nissan badge proudly centered on the body of the car, it’s a special sight to see if the Nissan brand has recently been associated with cheap pick-up trucks and midsize SUVs.
Racing pedigree of the Nissan R390
Via: YouTube
As mentioned earlier, the Nissan Skylines earned the Godzilla name with their victories over the R32, R33 and R34 vehicles. The latest GTR would notoriously beat a Bugatti Veyron on a dragstrip for a tenth the price. The R390 may not be as memorable as this tuner’s cars, but that doesn’t mean it failed to achieve results by finishing second in its class in the 1997 Le Mans race but dropping to fifth with reliability issues.
The following year, the only car that could beat the R390 was the Porsche 911 GT1, which is impressive given its legendary status. As the team rose, the GT1 class got a makeover as manufacturers bent the rules in every imaginable way, with only eight copies made and one of which is a street-legal car that is still owned by Nissan.
Since homologated cars no longer allow as much flexibility, Nissan turned its attention to prototype racing. The title-winning cars at Le Mans. Its successor was the R391, with a much more powerful 5.0-liter V8 engine, which started in 1999, but only one car could start from 12th place after a crash. In the following year, Nissan withdrew from motorsport for cost reasons.
Repeat the same mistakes
Via: Sportscar365
In the past decade, Nissan has returned to racing. The current GTR is a competitor within the current GT1 class rules and has won in Bathurst and Suzuka, it is also homologated for GT3 racing and Super GT. The car was even a safety car. Nissan returned to high-profile Le Mans racing with the GTR LM Nismo, a prototype racing car that competed against the Porsche 919 Hybrid that demolished Nissan’s latest offering by hobbling the track twenty seconds slower than pole position.
With a driver roster of talents like Max Chilton and Harry Ticknell, the car fell short of the new hybridization curve. One motive now running through Nissan’s Le Mans filings of being a little behind the competition is a common occurrence for the manufacturer that is confusing when looking at the Godzilla’s performance over several decades. The R390 failed in its first year because a late modification caused the transmission to overheat.
Two gear changes brought the car to the bottom of the grid. That mistake might not have been made if Nissan had thrown all the power of its engineering team on the Le Mans cars, as they did on the GTR road cars. Instead, hiring a small UK business guarantees certain quality control issues. The GTR LM Nismo suffered the same underdevelopment fate where it failed crash tests and competed against hybridized cars, it was around the corner because it was underfunded.
Looking back almost thirty years later on the R390, it is clear that this was Nissan’s biggest problem when it came to taking long-distance titles from Porsche, which the competition team underfunded.
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About the author
Douglas Hamilton
(70 published articles)
Douglas Hamilton is a British driven man with a degree in literature. He grew up surrounded by F1, Need For Speed and classic cars. He has a worrying obsession with jaguars.
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