Almost Great: Nissan Skyline GT-R R33

But as Gavin correctly reminded us, the Skyline is not a mere engine car. It also has that wonderfully over-engineered driveline. Let’s not forget that these cars were designed in the mid-1980s, at the height of the Japanese bubble economy. Times were good, Japanese confidence in their technology was at its zenith, and 8-bit microcontrollers like the Intel 8048 series were becoming cheap and reliable enough to be built into automotive ECUs.

For the Nissan engineers, these were the party years. Keep it simple? Nah! Make it as complex as we can possibly imagine. And let’s dream up equally complicated acronyms to match. As a result, Skylines groan under the weight of technology and letters – the ATTESA (Advanced Total Traction Engineering System for All-Terrain) AWD system, and HICAS (High Capacity Actively Controlled Steering, natch) four-wheel steer system. This, the archetypal PlayStation car, was the first of the digital warriors…

Re-read road tests of the day, and their authors come across as almost stunned by the sheer speed and grip of the various Skyline GT-Rs. Awed journalists talked about computer-controlled cars ‘that almost drive themselves’, cars that could just go around corners as fast as the driver dared, the marvellous new digital sorcery just sorting it all out and keeping the car pointing the right way, regardless of speed. Gavin’s account of his first encounter with an R32 GT-R on the ’Ring, embarrassing professional drivers at the wheels of the then-cream of the German sports cars crop, conveys a lot of that wonder.

But normal mortals need to beware. Make no mistake, these are tricky cars to drive. This was brought home to me on the second lap of my first visit to the Nürburgring with my own R33. I’d made a weekend trip there with a few buddies, and set off with a mate on board to burn through my five-lap ticket book. We were exiting Adenauer Forst (cemetery of many driving dreams), with rain starting to spot the windscreen, and I suppose I was getting too confident. Maybe I was unconsciously showing off to my passenger, or was just too carried away by the whole Nordschleife/Skyline combination – after all, I was driving an example of the first production car to ever lap the place under eight minutes: I could not just trundle around, could I?

Before I could say ‘HICAS!’, the rear had stepped out savagely, I had done something stupid to overcorrect and it had tennis-racketed back with all the ferocious snap of a Federer serve. My windscreen was now full of those dark, oh-so-solid-looking pine trees rather than the reassuring grey strip of asphalt that had been there until very recently. Looking down the track now involved turning one’s head, most inconveniently, a full 90 degrees to look out the side window. We were travelling at quite a lick, fully sideways, and the Toyo T1-Rs were screaming in excitement in anticipation of the massive crash we were about to have.

As panicky squeaks emitted from various apertures in my body, I desperately flailed my arms and stamped on pedals like a demented church organist. Somehow, miraculously the blessed R33 righted itself. My passenger breathed out a gasp of relief, muttered ‘Well caught!’ (knowing full well that I had had no idea what I was doing) and we then tooled around the remaining lap being overtaken by 2CVs and tourist buses as the near-crash adrenalin kicked in and my hands shook on the steering wheel. As close a shave as I’d ever wish to have.

And it was not the only one I would have in that car. The R33 was a spiky monster. Forget the supposed electronic guardian angels; it’s a big (1530kg), powerful thing (mine had about 400bhp) with quite a high polar moment of inertia. When it steps out, there is no flirting or foreplay – it’s straight into hardcore oversteer with little warning. Idiots like me, beware. But if you are not an idiot, and you know what you are doing (like our correspondent Mr Green), these cars can indeed do miracles.

When the rear starts to move, the thing to do is to keep on the gas. Really on it. If you have the courage and the reflexes to do so, then that ATTESA business will indeed do its job. The system will detect the slip on the normally driven rear wheels, and will start to feed up to 50 per cent of the available torque forward. The front axle will start to spin up, and will genuinely ’pull the car straight’. But here’s the thing. Those electronics – as we’ve mentioned – are based on 1980s-spec 8-bit microcontrollers. They are a far cry from today’s almost-instantaneous driver safety nets.

The usual phase lag between a Skyline GT-R going sideways and the front axle starting to pull you straight is between two days and three weeks – or it seems that way to cowards like me. Real GT-R experts just keep the RB26 screaming, let it get loose mid-corner, and trust those clunky Terminator 1 electronics to find the traction to blast out of the apex faster than anything else could. But this ‘driving itself’ stuff? Don’t believe the hype: you need to know what you are doing.

Other things that make these cars great? Gavin already hit the marks. They are superbly practical – room for five adults, big boot, excellent climate control and some of the best seats I’ve ever plunked my bum into. They have that ultra-cool JDM Godzilla reputation – big pipes, iconic paint schemes, myriad crazy V-spec, Nür-spec and NISMO special versions, and that impressive motorsport palmarés. They are all very cool cars.

But here’s the thing about the R33. Its big sister and little sister were just too cool. The origami-simple R32 was, to continue to abuse Japanese stereotypes, a Ninja assassin, lithe and subtle. The brick-outhouse R34 was a samurai warrior in full armour – all brute force and aggression. But the more organic R33, with its neither here-nor-there curves, was a polite salaryman in a sensible suit, going about its business in a quiet, polite way. Worse – the suit was a touch too tight around the midriff. The R33 was 130mm longer, and a full 100kg heavier than the R32 – just a bit, dare it say it, portly. Somehow the end-of-the-line R34 rocked this extra bulk – maybe because it also had a little more power to disguise it.

A last word – R33s may only be ‘almost’ great (in my book, anyway) but they look like bargains these days compared to the R34. The latter are deep into six figures now – but you can still pick up a nice R33 (or, surprisingly, an R32 – but beware corrosion on these earlier cars) for half that sum. Please fire up your favourite car-buying platform and have a browse. Just watch the exit from Adenauer Forst if you end up being tempted…

Photography by Mike D’Ambrosio