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My Nissan GT-R


Richards' Nissan GT-R had just crashed heavily on the circuit after aquaplaning into the barriers after an incredible deluge washed over the track.  He had been leading at the team and while the fans expected the race to continue with his car out of the race, the officials thought otherwise and ended the race as of one lap earlier declaring Richards and teammate Mark Skaife the victors.

All perfectly acceptable under the rules but the crowd at the victory dais, particularly Ford fans who realised that their folk hero Dick Johnson would be leading if the race was re-started, booed the victorious Nissan team.

To which Richards wrote himself into Bathurst folklore with his famous utterance to the fans: "You're a pack of arseholes."  It's fair to say that not a lot of people at the track or watching the telecast from the drier surrounds of their lounge room wanted the then all-conquering Nissans to beat the Fords and Commodores of the day.

But then-teenager Bobby Atanasovski and a few others were greatly impressed by what they saw from the Nissan GT-R supercar of the day.
"I've been a fan of them since I was very young," Atanasovski says.

He says he was only about 13 or 14 when he watched the famous 1992 race on TV, and the Nissan win the year before, and was seriously impressed by the car's performance.  He's owned a few Nissans since but three years ago he came across a special version.  "This one was the dream one," he says.  "I found it at a dealership here. They had no idea what they had."

The car dealer in Sydney thought it was a clean example of an early GT-R R32 but in actual fact it is one of only 228 special edition models built in Japan in 1989 to go production endurance racing.

While it had the regular in-line six-cylinder 2.6-litre twin turbo engine the car had been specially tweaked, tuned and enhanced to extract more power, reliability and strength to handle the rigours of racing.  Atanasovski says he has no idea whether his model actually did any racing as there are none of the normal tell-tale signs, such as rollcage mountings, on the vehicle.

"I don't have too much history of the car from Japan. Getting information out of the Nissan factory in Japan on it is like they are giving up their first born."

His model is not the same as the cars raced here, they were developed from standard GT-Rs into race cars by Fred Gibson's motorsport team here in Australia.  Instead this model is the high-performance version of the first of the new breed of  GT-Rs, the R32.

Atanasovski says that on the dyno the car has produced 280kW of power at the wheels but otherwise has had to rely on performance figures on the standard version of the car. Even then, they show a car capable of going from 0-100km/h in the mid-four seconds mark.

He says he doesn't drive the car a lot as he wants to preserve it.  "It's just for special events. I'm struggling to put a thousands kays on it a year."

However, one special event it will come out for is this Sunday's 21st birthday celebrations.  Atanasovski says about 100 cars will take part in a cruise up the Blue Mountains from Penrith via the Bells Line of Road to the Edge Cinema in Katoomba to watch a screening of the highlights of the 1992 Great Race.

About 200 people have booked tickets but more are available.  Part of the proceeds of the ticket sales will go to the Westmead Children's Hospital.

Tickets cost $15. For more information go to www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums and head to the events section within the NSW section.

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