A FRESH R35 Nissan GT-R GT3 has hit Australian shores, with Jordan Roddy piloting his freshly acquired car last weekend at Sandown Raceway as part of the Victorian Trophy Tour.
A cult hero in world motorsport, the model hit the forefront in Australia largely with thanks to Katsumasa Chiyo’s gutsy drive to victory in the 2015 Bathurst 12 Hour.
The latest addition to the local fleet, however, has taken a road less travelled to land on these shores.
Chassis 3A04 was originally raced in its native Japan by Team Iwasaki in GT300 and the Super Taikyu Series for GT3-specification machinery, led by drivers Yuki Iwasaki and Masami Kageyama.
By the end of 2016, the car emerged in New Zealand with Clark Proctor and Andrew Porter, racing in events such as the Hampton Downs and Highlands 101s.
Lance Hughes and Chris van der Drift later campaigned it in a range of Kiwi meets, with the car gaining its current red livery base at the time.
After landing in Australia last year and being tested at Winton Raceway, it is the latest in a long line of GT3 machinery to be run by the Bespoke Motor Cars stable.
“It’s definitely quite a different animal,” said Roddy after his Sandown outing.
“You can feel its weight and heft a little more, so you sort of need to pre-plan your movements, like, for example, the (Lamborghini) Gallardo GT3 is a really chuckable car.
“Whereas with this thing, you can’t really do that – you can feel the mass a lot more.
“It just feels like this big couch of a race car, but it’s beautiful – the power delivery from the VR38 is really linear; I was actually quite surprised – it’s super smooth.
“It’s quite cool; it feels so civilised, it’s so easy to live with.
“You don’t even have to prime the oil system before you start it, which with most GT3 cars, they strongly recommend that you crank for oil pressure before you start them, whereas this thing, you just literally hit the button.
“It’s a really nice change of pace for us, because I’ve mainly only ever dealt with European race cars before, and it’s cool to see the different approach and the different philosophy, even though they kind of are a European race car – JRM in England did a lot of the engineering on behalf of NISMO for the cars.
“You can definitely see that; they’ve come at it from a different angle.
“It’s engineered a little bit differently to a few of the other cars that we play with on a regular basis.”
With the car typically transported on an open trailer, its cult status becomes quickly apparent.
“I think people in Australia have a real affinity for those things; it’s amazing,” Roddy said.
“I’ve had some like really amazingly special cars, like the SLSs and the 458s, really cool cars, and no one reacts to them in the way that they do with the Nissan.
“I had one guy trying to pull me over, like trying to force me off the road recently just because he wanted to stop and have a chat about the Nissan!
“People from all walks of life, you don’t have to be a toffee-nosed person – it’s universally loved, which I think I’ve never really seen before with a racing car.
“It was another bucket list thing for me to tick off.”
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