Nissan’s GT-R

Takes One to Know One: Nissan’s GT-R :-

Hiroshi Tamura is Japan’s Car-Guy-in-Chief. At 52, he’s the chief product specialist at Nissan for the current R35-generation GT-R and for the NISMO performance division. When he’s not at work building faster Nissans, he’s at home doing the same: tweaking his classic 1989 R32 Skyline GT-R.

C/D: So you have an R32?
HT: Actually, I had an R32 and an R34 [1999–2002 edition], but I sold the R34. The R32 was always my dream car. I worked on the R34, but when the R32 was produced I was only a kid. So it was only a dream to me.

C/D: The Skyline GT-Rs have a reputation as Japan’s greatest hot rods. How important is it with the R35 to maintain that heritage as a car to tune and modify?
HT: A car should be perfect, but a car can never achieve perfection. Because humans aren’t perfect, we cannot achieve perfection. My ideal is for the current customer not to have to touch anything. Not now. But in the near future—five years later or 10 years later—the customer will say that it can be better. Then he can do something like what I’ve done with my R32.