The Nissan Skyline and the blue and white livery of automotive supplier Calsonic Kansei are an iconic Japanese racing car pairing. For nearly 30 years, the parts supplier has been putting its name and blue and white on the Nismo racing legend, including cars racing at Le Mans, countless versions of the Skyline and GT-R. The pairing goes back even further than that, with the Calsonic predecessor Nihon Radiator sponsoring Nissans earlier.
Nissan
Nissan Motor Corporation is a Japanese automaker founded in 1933 and the parent automaker of Infiniti and formerly Datsun. Nissan produces a wide variety of mass-market vehicles, including popular SUVs like the Rogue, sedans like the Sentra, and trucks like the Nissan Frontier, but is also responsible for iconic sports cars like the Nissan Z and GT-R. Since 1999, Nissan has been part of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance (the name changed when Mitsubishi joined in 2016).
This 1987 Nissan Skyline racecar was the very first car to wear the Calsonic blue and white. Not just the first model, it’s the very first car painted and raced with the livery. It’s also the only one of its kind left, and it’s going up for sale at Bonham’s Scottsdale auction later this month.
Touring Car Has Full ’80s Aesthetic
It’s not one of the three Skyline generations that get all the attention. It’s not even a GT-R. This 1987 Skyline comes from the HR31 generation, and it’s a GTS-R spec car.
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1987 was the first year that Nismo began racing the HR31 Skyline. It needed to make the car faster for Group A homologation rules, and that meant it needed to build some road cars. There were 823 copies of the special GTS-R. This long predates the monstrous GT-R Nismo of today.
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It’s estimated to sell for as much as $340,000.
Stock GTS-Rs came with the RB20DET-R, a version of the now-iconic RB engine designed just for this application. It’s only two-liters, but it is an inline-six. With dual overhead cams and fuel injection. The road version made 207 horsepower, but the race car version made 400 hp at 7,200 rpm.
Race-Winning Car Got Well-Deserved Retirement
The seller says that this car, chassis 128388, was prepared to Group A touring car specs by Kazuyushi Hoshino’s Impul/Nismo racing team. Hoshino, also known as the fastest man in Japan, was the first Japanese driver in F1. He has countless race wins and multiple championships in series around the world. This car, the first in that blue and white paint, got a pair of top-five finishes in 1988. The next year, it took four poles and one win in touring car racing.
Like most race cars, it then disappeared. But instead of being scrapped, it spent 30 years in a single collection. In 2024, it was completely restored, including restoring the body shell to its original form. The engine was rebuilt in 2023 by a Nismo engineer, and the car was brought back to race-ready spec.
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In July of 2024, it was taken to Fuji Speedway where Hoshino was interviewed with the car. It was also taken for some rainy laps around the track to help get it dialed in for racing. Now you can buy it. The car is blue all the way down to the seat, but you don’t have to be. Not if you’ve got enough to be the high bid, at least.
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- First Ever Calsonic Blue Nissan Racer Up For Auction
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