Spawned from years of video game exposure, swapped underground videos and a handful of imported specimens, the legacy of the Nissan Skyline GT-R is stronger than ever. With the last whispers of the R34 barely passing from our lips and the 2008 GT-R looming on the horizon, this is the age of the Skyline. This is especially interesting when you consider that the car has never been mass-produced in the United States and has ceased production overseas. To put it simply, an entire legion of American youth bows down to a car that they have never touched, driven, sat in, spat on, keyed or raced against. This begs the question to be asked--is the Nissan Skyline GT-R stronger as a car, or stronger as a legend?
Spurred by an immense catalog of aftermarket turbocharger upgrades, suspension parts, exhausts, body kits, brake upgrades, intercoolers and engine hard parts, the tunability of a GT-R means you could build yourself a supercar limited only by your imagination. Want a 1,000hp drag car, a torque-laden road racer or one of the most aggressive street cars ever? The Skyline GT-R can deliver. It's this penchant for upgrades that makes the Skyline so appealing to today's customized youth market.
When Wen Lai began searching for a fun car to build a few years ago, he kind of already knew that a GT-R would live in his garage. As the former Sales Manager for A'PEXi, Lai knew the potent capability of the GT-R and it's RB26DETT twin-turbo engine. During the late 1990s, A'PEXi built and campaigned a 1,100hp drag car known as the V-MAX GTR, which was a rear-wheel-drive, tire smoking, fire-breathing beast. Driven by the now-ubiquitous Eiji "Tarzan" Yamada, the V-MAX would go on to break numerous records in the quarter mile at Palmdale, Calif., circa 1999. Fitted with a flurry of A'PEXi parts, designed and fabricated in-house, the V-MAX was a lesson for all A'PEXi employees in the brutal nature of Nissan's "R" badge.
Just around the same time, the-now-defunct MotoRex Inc. began the long, arduous process of Skyline certification for importation purposes. In swaying the NHTSA and DOT's favor and approval, MotoRex had to crash a few GT-R's as well as sift through a mountainside of paperwork. Believe us, if you think it sounds bad, you'd be crying if you saw the aftermath photos of a couple crash-tested Skylines. But the end result was sweeter than some could imagine--fully street-legal Skyline GT-R's. Once the Skylines began pouring off the U.S. docks, everything began to fall into place for Lai. The skies parted, the heavens aligned, and Lai found himself the owner of a U.S.-legal R33 Nissan Skyline GT-R.
Produced from 1995-1998, the R33 chassis-coded Nissan Skyline GT-R was a technological marvel. Packed with a twin-turbocharged inline-six engine capable of pushing quad-digit horsepower numbers, the R33 also brought the ATTESA-ETS all-wheel-drive system and Super HICAS four-wheel steering. Unfortunately, for serious performance drivers, those options meant extra weight. A beefy cast-iron engine block, all-wheel drivetrain, and snaking turbocharger actuator system means that the R33 GT-R weighs more than the short bus to fat kid camp. Nothing that a little bit of 21st century technology can't fix though.
When you sling parts at A'PEXi, you end up learning a thing or two about which parts make Skylines go fast. Lai took a lesson out of the V-MAX handbook and squeezed out an amazing 709 wheel hp using 20psi of boost, 100-octane fuel and an XS Engineering-tuned HKS F-Con V Pro. The recipe started out with a Nissan N1 racing engine block machined by world famous Cosworth Engineering. Using a custom XS Engineering forged crankshaft, the RB26 engine was assembled with Carillo connecting rods, forged HKS pistons, HKS rings, and ARP rod bolts. Now with a longer stroke and a bigger bore size, the inline-six displaces 2.8L instead of the stock 2.6L. Up top, the cylinder head was reworked by R-Section with a few trade secrets before adding in A'PEXi camshafts. With a longer 270-degree duration at 11.5mm of lift, the hotter A'PEXi camshafts were set in place using A'PEXi cam sprockets and A'PEXi dual valve springs.