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.
So serious for power was his engine build, that on our tech sheet, under engine dress-up, Lai merely listed "N/A." In fact, contrary to his own beliefs, there exists one piece of show-stopping power under the hood of Lai's GT-R. That would be the monstrous HKS T51R SPL turbocharger. Rated for 1,000PS of total output, the T51R turbo is the ticket that Lai punched to enter the world of 709 wheel hp. Fed by an HKS tubular exhaust manifold, the T51R explodes out of a Naoto SPL custom 4-inch downpipe and A'PEXi R95 titanium exhaust. Huge amounts of horsepower generating air molecules are sucked in through a Blitz intake and cooled through an A'PEXi front-mount intercooler before being shot into a Veilside intake manifold, that is, unless the Tial blow-off valve has its way.
A'PEXi spark plugs and an XS Engineering Power Pack ignition amplifier remain the only changes to a relatively untouched and stout ignition system. Fueling, on the other hand, was not skimped on in the slightest way. To ensure that the thirsty RB26 would never run out of gas, an A'PEXi N1 fuel pump was dropped in along with two external Bosch fuel pumps. Three fuel pumps may seem like overkill to the average person, but then again, they don't have six 1,000cc/min fuel injectors to feed. There's a lot of air flowing through this engine, and a lot of fuel has to match it, rising gas prices be damned. Lai tells us that his R33 let loose a 12.1 quarter-mile run at 117mph when it was completely bone stock. With 709 wheel hp now on tap, expect the car to be dipping into the 9's shortly.
Power and speed obviously go hand in hand, but you can't just slap an oversized turbo on a car and expect to drive it around safely. Transmissions could explode, clutches could fry, brake pads could overheat, and the last thing you want is to build a supercar and then be unable to drive around in it whenever you wanted to. Lai fit his transmission with a revised ratio OS Giken five-speed gearset, Ogura triple-plate clutch and Ogura lightweight flywheel. The all-wheel-drive system has been augmented with an ATS two-way front LSD, R-Section center differential and a V-Spec rear LSD, but the Moore Performance axles still have a tendency to spin the 275-width Hankook tires with ease. Big power will do that to ya.
Dropped neatly with a set of A'PEXi coilovers, the GT-R sits nicely atop 18x10.5 Volk Racing CE28 wheels. Sitting pretty behind those forged chunks of aluminum are the binders deemed up to the task of hauling down this heavy, powerful beast. Brembo fixed-caliper brakes rest at all four corners, with the front four-piston kit measuring 14 inches in rotor size, and the rear matching up with 13 inches of heat-absorbing metal.