Nissan NISMO 40th Anniversary

Nissan’s NISMO Celebrates 40 Years Of Track-Borne Street Cars

Of all the in-house JDM tuning shops, NISMO is probably right up there as my all-time personal favourite. From the legendary R32 GTR Group A touring car to the forbidden fruit that is the Nissan R390 GT1, some of the world’s most iconic 4-wheeled machines have come bearing the NISMO name. It’s a pretty special time to be a NISMO fan too, given that recently, on September 17th, this marks NISMO’s 40th birthday. Founded in 1984, it was the in-house tuning department for tweaking and sharpening Nissan’s road cars, as well as their motorsports division, cranking out race cars that took part globally in GT racing, touring car racing, endurance racing, and much more!

That’s not to mention the myriad of track-honed and motorsports-bred road cars that all wore the NISMO badge of honour. The JDM scene of the 80s and 90s, in particular, had no shortage of awesome performance cars, but those fettled by NISMO typically were among the best. My favourites included the NISMO 400R, a super-rare and highly-tuned version of the R33 GTR, as well as the NISMO 270R, another rare and oft-forgotten limited edition model of the S14 Silvia. Both of them represent what NISMO means to many car enthusiasts and Nissan fans – building the best high-performance cars made for tearing up the track and public mountain roads.

Nissan NISMO 40th Anniversary

From Motorsports And The Race Track To The Road

For those of you who might be new to NISMO, here is some backstory… They were established in Omori, Tokyo, where you can still find their factory to this day. Fun fact, if you’re visiting this part of Tokyo or are just passing by, I’d highly encourage you to visit the Omori Factory, where NISMO uses part-time – in addition to where they build specially-tuned NISMO variants of run-of-the-mill Nissan cars – for their heritage collection and museum. You can normally find some pretty legendary cars just sitting in their exhibit, like a NISMO R34 GTR JGTC car. And, NISMO uses a huge part of the Omori Factory to restore, maintain, and refresh NISMO-specific cars.

If you ever wanted to rebuild that old barn-find R32 GTR or S13 Silvia, or maybe upgrade them with some restomod treatment, this is where you’d send them. If they’re feeling up to it, the folks at the NISMO Omori Factory might even give you a tour of their shop! Speaking of, this is where you’ll also find a tiny shopfront inside the Omori Factory, where you could buy parts for your Nissan. Whether you’re looking for a sports exhaust, genuine NISMO wheel, or a vintage set of NISMO gauges, you’ll probably find them here. Be warned, though, with a proper certificate of authenticity from NISMO, there is a huge premium to pay, so get your wallets ready!

Nissan NISMO 40th Anniversary

A Celebration Of The Past, The Present, And The Future

Anyway, going back to NISMO’s well-deserved 40th birthday, they held a special event to show off their “Track to Road” ethos, where learnings from motorsports are applied to help improve road-going vehicles for petrolheads like you and me. To commemorate the anniversary, Nissan will showcase some of NISMO’s most iconic vehicles at the Nissan Global Headquarters Gallery in Yokohama… A short half-hour-ish drive from Omori. Here, you’ll find some of the cars that I mentioned before – including a few others – such as the Nissan R91CP, which won the 24 Hours of Daytona. Then, there’s the Calsonic Skyline GT-R that dominated touring car racing.

On display, you’ll also find some present-day NISMO cars, like the Japan-only Aura NISMO, not to mention the Ariya NISMO and the Fairlady Z NISMO. The former of which is something we’ll be seeing more of soon here in the UK. If you’re a hardcore NISMO fanboy or fangirl, you might also want to take note of the upcoming 2024 NISMO Festival, which is scheduled to take place on December 1st, 2024. You’ll need a plane ticket to Japan though, as this festival will be held at Fuji International Speedway, in Shizuoka Prefecture. For those of us who love NISMO’s long sports car history and celebrated motorsports heritage, it might even be worth the trip!

Nissan NISMO 40th Anniversary

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