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Credit to UK Skyline Club V8 SKYLINE IS ON THE HORIZON
The next Nissan Skyline will be wilder than ever when it hits the streets in 2003. The all-new R35 Skyline GT-R will use a 3.5-litre V8 engine that will produce around 400ps. This engine will be a variant of the unit used in the Nissan R390 GT 1 Le Mans car.
With a 0-60mph of under 4.5 seconds and a top speed of 170mph, the R35 will rival Porche's new 966 Turbo, The new BMW M5 and the forthcoming V8-powered Honda NSX. These shots were taken from Japanese magazines and are just computer generated models. But it looks very purposeful!
Insiders at Nissan say the new, more powerful, V8 unit is needed to allow the R35 to compete with European supercars and to put more distance between the Skyline and rival Japanese cars, such as Mitsubishi's Evo VII, which already produces more than 280bhp.
The R35 will inherit features from the existing R34's drivetrain and computerised wizardry, which should mean the R35 will have SUPER HICAS four-wheel steering and hopefully the four-wheel drive ATTESA E-TS PRO and V-TCS (viscous helical LSD traction control system). The brakes will be uprated, the suspension tuned to give greater flexibility on demanding European roads and it will use a six-speed gearbox. As with its predecessors, the new GT-R will only be available as a two door coupé. Some people have pointed out that the Skyline is a range of cars, not just the GT-R, and that all sorts of changes would be required to make a 4 door version. I don't belive this to be true as all the current R34 range (2 door, 4 door, 2WD & 4WD) have a wheelbase of 2,665 mm i.e. the same floorplan. The front tracks vary a little; 1,480mm for 2WD and 1,460mm for 4WD and the rear track is 1,470mm for all the non-GT-R Skylines. The GT-R is 1,480mm front and 1,490mm rear to squish in it's fat tyres. The 4 door cars are 4,705mm long Vs 4,580mm for the 2 door and 4,600mm for the GT-R, but that's a maximum difference of just 125mm or 5" and it's made up of all bodywork, not the underlying frame. The number imported to the UK limited to 150 and the price will increase. It is expected that the R35 GT-R will cost a wallet withering £60,000.
As the engine will be a variant of the R390 engine, let's take a look at that. The road going version of the R390 has a magnesium-block 3,495cc twin-turbocharged V8 mounted amidships delivering a whopping 558 ps at 6800 rpm and 65 Kgm of torque at 4400 rpm to the rear wheels. The 32-valve dohc powerplant is mated to a transversely mounted 6-speed sequential gearbox and the car has a Curb weight of 1,098kg.
This gives the R390 a 0-60 mph of 3.9 seconds and 11.9 seconds to cover the standing 1/4 mile. So if the new car is around the 1,500Kg mark, the claimed figures look about right.
This is a well worn path for Nissan, as they took the straight-six from the R380 sports car, shown to the left, and created a production engine based on it; the S20, a dohc, aluminium cross flow head with hemispherical combustion chambers and 4 valves per cylinder. The S20 was used in the 1969 Fairlady Z 432 & Skyline GT-R.
So the Racing Engine of 1965/66, lead to the Production engine S20, which in turn lead to the RB (Race Breed?) series of Performance/Production Engines which are in today's R34
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