SHORT STORY

History of Nissan Group C cars


In the mid-eighties, Group C cars (prototypes) started contending for the title of World Champion, and in Japan these championships became a popular replacement for the Super Silhouette (Group 5) races.
As a way of providing technical support to leading teams, Nissan started participating in this category. It began to develop C cars using the technological expertise it had built up while working on the high-capacity, turbocharged machines of the Super Silhouette events.
The first C cars were based on the domestic Le Mans LM03C chassis, with the Skyline (Hasemi), Silvia (Hoshino) and Fairlady (Yanagida) entering races. Later, there was a switch to the UK-made March Engineering chassis, and the Silvia won its first victory in the 1985 WEC in JAPAN. In 1986, it also won for the first time at Le Mans. From 1989, when a Lola Cars International chassis was adopted, the Silvia started racing in the World Championships, where its best result was 2nd place. In 1990, Nissan took responsibility for the entire design, including the chassis, achieving 3 victories in a row (1990-92) in the championship races in Japan.




Nissan Fairlady Z Turbo C: at first (1983), an LZ20B turbo engine was mounted in a Japanese Le Mans LM03C chassis.
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