The turbos arouse from their slumber at around 2000rpm; there’s little indication of anything before then. By 3000rpm you’re well on your way, and by the time 4000rpm arrives you’d better intend to shift, because from there towards the redline you squirt forth with such alacrity that you won’t have time to get the job done when you wait any more. You can’t, although you want to watch the tach, to see where the boost starts, to see that needle swing for the bleachers: the scenery blurs by so quickly it’s impossible to take your eyesight off the road. You’re hurled forward, a mild, unseen hand reaches through the presses and windshield you ever more firmly into the chair. Shift into second, and the acceleration gets stronger; both turbos are on full boil, you’ve got momentum and the sheer breathtaking speed of it squeezes a laugh out of you. You can’t help it; the sheer joy of leaping from 4000 to 7500 rpm in less time than it takes to tell is invigorating.
You expect that kind of speed in something small and boosted: a Lancer Evo, an STI. But unlike the junior rally stars, the Skyline never gets wound up as it gets going. It’s never hysterical, even though the power is there: the speed comes, but you’re always feeling safe and in control in the cabin. The strength borders around thecan be a twin-cam, four-valve-per-cylinder inline-six with two intercooled ceramic-impeller Garrett turbos buried low around the passenger’s side of the seven-main-bearing block. The large bore and short stroke means that it yearns to work: -60 times around five seconds in a stock GT-R aren’t out of the question. Officially, it was (under)rated at 276 horsepower; this number was the foundation for an unofficial “gentleman’s agreement” advertised horsepower cap between auto manufacturers. Moderate tuning can raise horsepower levels to 450-plus; indeed, subsequent generations of RB26DETT saw improvements in torque, and the redline inch ever northward, but with no official improvement in power. Right.
Most performance cars have a hotted-up street engine, with re-profiled cams, a trick exhaust and some computer fettling; the GT-R was more of a racing homologation special, by using a detuned race engine dropped between the fender wells to warrant a racing program that rewrote the guidelines worldwide (and got it banned from competition on at least one continent).
If there’s any one issue with an R32/R33/R34-generation Skyline GT-R, beyond an overall lack of availability in this country, it’s weight. While hardly fat, a GT-R’s comfortable-to-sit-in coupe body comes with a plump downside: an R34‘s weight is officially clocked at 1,540 kilograms (nearly 3,400 pounds), but that seems light to get a car of the size: our guess is that there’s a minimum of another 200 pounds of fluids and such in there, making for 3,600 pounds. (Can an R32 really weigh as much as a fresh STI? Really? ) An R33 is another hundred pounds or maybe more on top of that. And suddenly the GT-R’s abilities come into focus: it makes a gigantic coupe the size of your granny’s Buick act like a Lancer Evo in the corners. It’s mind-bending.
Now, strip away half a huge amount of weight. That’s right, one thousand pounds. (Picture your last eight girlfriends, combined-or picture the past three and add with their emotional baggage.) That all-aluminum straight-six isn’t working nearly as hard now; untweaked, it should fling you forth in something closer to four seconds flat. But what’s the fun because? Man, go for the stars, if you’re gonna tweak. Bump the compression half a point, to 9: 1. Stir in a number of HKS turbos. Since it’s understood how the stock 276 horse numbers were low to start with, compression and intercooled boost, with no computer fettling, will give you well north of 400hp, possibly nearer to 450.
1970 datsun 240Z SSR formula mesh wheels
1970 datsun 240Z motorsports bumpers
1970 datsun 240Z JDM fairlady flares
It’s a jaw-dropping formula, made all the more tantalizing once you understand the baseline of the items a stock GT-R are capable of doing. Take away a third of a GT-R’s weight, and stir in a additional third more power? Distant points ahead of you blur by inside the peripheral vision before you have time to register what that was back there, you’re piloting the Millenium Falcon through hyperspace. Exhilarating. Monstrous. Fantastic. And not a little bit sexy.
This is what Marco Vargas is doing. An early Datsun 240Z, he keeps the former Fairlady’s straight-six geneology intact, keeps everything Nissan, and shaves an excellent half a ton of metal off the proceedings, by dropping an RB26DETT into that most classic of old-school Japanese cars. Or, put another way, he’s taken the strength of a stock early ‘70s 240Z…a dainty Z-car, sold in the home in Japan as the Fairlady, fer cryin’ out loud…and tripled it.
Now, Marco is owner, proprietor, head muckety-muck and chief potentate of SR20Store.com, a Southern California-based shop that does Nissan twin-cam four-cylinder conversions like most of us change underwear. (Assuming you wear underwear, obviously.) But the full line of Nissan performance history is in his memory, his blood along with his garage: ignoring the notion that he sold the cleanest, factory-stock, RHD “Supersonic” Bluebird SSS we’ve seen this decade, he’s currently got his name in the title of an SR20-powered 510, an RB26DETT-swapped S13 240SX, a Hakosuka Skyline GT and a MotoRex-imported R32 Skyline. All of them built in his shop, with his own hands (with a bit of help, needless to say). Even so, Marco knows a couple of things about engine swaps, and approximatelyInside The Beast
Conspicuously missing from that murderer’s row of Nissan insanity, until now, was a Z-car given that special touch of reliable Frankensteinian overkill that Marco excels at. What’s more, he insists which it wasn’t everything tough: “Everything fit in pretty neatly. All we needed was a custom oil pan to clear things. The shifter for the transmission came up through the stock location in the console. We had to go with a custom driveshaft, but really, so many Nissan parts are compatible.” Witness that rear axle, which has guts from two different-generation Skylines and brakes from an ‘80s front-drive Maxima.
With Marco doing the tough stuff-like figuring out how you can harness 450hp to a couple of 225-section rear tires without going up in smoke at each and every brush from the accelerator-he ticked off the restoration-parts boxes at Motorsport Auto of nearbyOrange and California, which carries everything from bumpers to fenders to a complete OE-style interior. That interior, despite the low roofline, is large enough to suit most American-sized frames. The tall and girthy need not forsake Z ownership; the commodious cockpit will accommodate most levels of physical largesse. The Z’s popularity when new, increasing each year in the ‘80s as well as the ZX generations, speaks to the availability of parts today.
The simplicity of your cockpit-black vinyl everywhere, a speedo, a tach and three ancillary gauges inside the dash-harken straight back to an earlier time, although granted, it doesn’t have the high-tech gee-whiz factor of any R32 Skyline. It also demonstrates supreme confidence in Marco’s abilities that he or she doesn’t require a brace of gauges monitoring the immense amount of activity happening under that long, contoured hood.
The resulting roar can be a noise that will have slash-fic writers in a lather for a long time, even though godzilla has crammed himself deep inside a Fair Lady; it’s not some weirdo ‘60s Hollywood porn movie mash-up.