Red Park Prince & Skyline Museum>> A History Lesson

Rather than heading out to Daikoku once again tonight and risk not finding any GT-Rs, I decided to do some digging instead. I pulled out one of the first external HDs I ever got and started looking through pictures I took ten or so years ago. Back in the day, for a short period of one or two years, there used to be a cool little privately owned car museum located in the most bizarre of places. Not too far from Tsukuba Circuit, in the rural town of Mitsukaido in Ibaraki-ken, someone decided to take over an old department store and fill the emptied out space with the most awesome collection of Skylines and other historical Nissan and Prince models.

It was called Red Park Prince and Skyline museum and I went there a couple of times, usually either before or after a day at Tsukuba Circuit. This is the place where my appreciation for old Japanese classics really began; it was here that I could, for the first time, drool over rare cars like this KPGC110 2000GT-R, a car that up until then I had only seen in magazines or fenced off at events.

Red Park collaborated with many private collectors, and thanks to that had a nice continuously rotating selection of cars. Nissan helped out too, allowing them to display rare cars like this ALSID-1 Prince Skyline, the flagship of the Prince range back in 1957. This big sedan was powered by a 1,5L 4-cylinder GA30 motor, which delivered 59 HP.

There were always plenty of cool race cars on display too…

…I even came across this JGTC GT500 ARTA R33 GT-R!

The Reebok R31 is a regular at the Nismo Festival and it was even on display at Red Park for a while.

Red Park was also a good place for local vintage car restorers to show what they could do, by leaving their demo cars at the Museum for a month or two as you can see from this PGC10 4-door GT-R race replica from Kikakushitsu Kaori.

Nothing like a KPGC10 on Watanabes!

The very rare and glorious sounding S20!

Here is another GT-R by Kikakushitsu.

You could always expect to find rare and special cars at Red Park, and you can’t get rarer than a car which was never actually put into production like this Nissan MID 4. This was one of only two prototypes that were created in 1985, one shown at the Frankfort Motor Show. Nissan wanted to show the world that if it wanted it could go up against Porsche and Ferrari, fitting a 230HP VG30DE centrally, giving the “MID” or midship name to the car.  The “4” of course stands for the all-wheel-drive system, the first ever ATESSA 4WD system that would later, in a more refined evolution, be used in the 1989 BNR32 as well as other more mainstream models like the Cefiro and Bluebird.

HICAS, or Nissan’s four-wheel-steering system was also born on the MID 4, so you can see why it fit right into the display at the Red Park museum. HICAS of course was later used on all Skyline GT-Rs as well as the Z32 and many other Nissan production cars.

Two years later at the 1987 Tokyo Motor Show Nissan showed up with a refined and more powerful version of the MID 4, the MID 4-II. It packed a 330HP VG30DETT that would later power the Z32 in 1990. The ATESSA and HICAS were very much still there and the car redesigned to look like a proper supercar to go up against cars like the Porsche 959 and Ferrari Testarossa. It weighed in at 1,400 kg, heavy for those times, and did great in performance testing, but in the end Nissan decided it would have been too expensive to build.

So the following year, in 1988, it dumped all that technology into a new 2-door coupe that Nissan was developing, a car that from its birth was to be entered into a variety of race series to uphold the Nissan name. From its introduction in 1989 the BNR32 quickly became an icon in Japan, killing it in Gr.A racing and doing very well at the Bathhurst 1000 race in Australia where it won both in 1991 and 1992. It got banned after its second victory as it was untouchable by the Sierras and Commodores who struggled with RWD. By then, the GT-R had already been nick-named Godzilla!

Here is a very rare one indeed. This 4-door E-HNR32 was built by Autech and featured an NA version of the RB26DETT good for 220 HP at 6,800 rpm. The “de-turboed” RB was mated to a 4-speed auto and the exterior sported a kind of GT-R look with the same grille but a redesigned front bumper.

And so it’s on to the R33 with this, the very first Nismo 400R ever made, Nismo’s very own car. This was the first complete GT-R that Nismo created and with help from Reimax built the RB-X, a 2.8L version of the RB26DETT good for 400HP.

But it was always this particular car that had me drooling at Red Park, the one and only BCNR33 GT-R LM, built in order to meet homologation rules for the 1995 Le Mans.

There were no performance upgrades except the fact that the 4WD system had been dropped, again in order to satisfy homologation for the Le Mans GT1 class.

The LM was massively widened front and rear, but they didn’t really fill out those wheel arches did they!

I did a spotlight on the car a few yeas back so click here to find out more about this very rare, Nismo built GT-R.

And then there was the BNR34, built from 1999 to 2002 with only 12,175 examples having been made. This particular car, fitted with a Nismo bumper, was one of only 300 offered in Midnight Purple II.

And to finish off a few race cars from history, the 1965 Prince R380…

…a car built from the ground up in the mid-sixties in order to beat the Porsche 906s at the Japanese Grand Prix in Fuji Speedway.

Nissan took over the project the following year creating the R380-II, with a redesigned body and a more powerful 220 HP GR-8 straight six, but it was unable to beat the Porsche 906s managing a second place finish.

This was probably the wildest race car that Red Park ever had on display, a Nissan R90CP Group-C racer which was entered in the 1990 All Japan Sports Prototype Championship (JSPC). Power came from a VRH35Z twin turbo 3.5L V8 good for 800 HP.

So that pretty much warps up our celebration of the Skyline Week 2012. We hope you’ve enjoyed these last few days taking a look at what makes these cars so special!

Skyline Week ’12

-Dino Dalle Carbonare

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1

forgot how cool the Nissan MID 4 is.

2

Dino - Fantastic as always. Please post more like this re museums?

3

MID 4 front end seems pretty similar to Lotus Esprit :)

4

I never heard of the MID4 but the II shares many styling cues with the NSX (hood line, wrapped indicators on the bumper, popup lamps etc)



Cool gallery

5

Oh wow I want a MID 4! BTW what happened to the museum?

6

Dino I had heard that Red Park had closed up permenantly, any truth to this?

7

Wow. It is amazing how much the MID 4-II looks like a NA1 NSX from that front angle....

8

liking the first Nismo 400R & the BCNR33 GT-R LM.. both of these would be very welcome in my garage.. what an interesting museum, my Honorable mention goes out to the wonderfully liveried JGTC GT500 ARTA R33 GT-R - Thanks

9

Absolutely incredible. It's sad that this showcase no longer exists.

10

yeah, Nissan MID 4 is a dream car. Would pick that over a lamborghini or ferrari anyday.

11

Feature request on the Silver R32 GTB-4 shown in this article. It's rare and would love to learn more about it.

12

What a great collection of photo's to walk you through some of Nisan's treasures. I have never seen a better series of photos, I just wish i was the person that took the photo's as i could have seen these in the "flesh". Love the old Skylines!!

13

I can confidently say that i have never seen a 4 door r32 GTR like the silver one here before, was it an autech special or something?

The one above the autech e-hnr32

14

There's one of those R33 GTR LM's for sale in NZ,only NZ$30k



http://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/nissan/r33/auction-451818349.htm

15

Dino, You're wrong/. please get your facts right.



There were no Sierra's.. it was Falcons and Commodores.

Sierra's are weaopons.

16

I think many of those cars are now displayed at the Prince & Skyline Museum in Nagano.

http://www.prince-skyline.com/



It's by Suwa Lake, and they are closed for the winter months.

17

amazing.

18

I see a 330 Ced/Glo behind the Midnight Purple R34 Beast.

Thank for posting this Dino.

19

Yea MID II reminds me of NSX front. Nice article Dino!

20

Nismo LM <3

21

Where is the museum?

Is it still available?

22

lol...i remember using that gtr lm in gran turismo and mod it to 1000hp..the car was flying

23

Dino, yhe R90CP developed 800 bhp in race trim. For Le Mans qualy that year they wound the boost up and as a result the engine made something in the region of 1100 bhp. Mark Blundell's pole lap from that year is on You Tube. Slightly mental.

24

Thanks Dino for the great museum photos and commentary. Regarding dan's comment above, Dino you're correct about the R32 GT-R defeating Sierras and Commodores at Bathurst in 1991 and 1992. The Sierra Cosworth RS500s were indeed weapons, however the EB Falcon didn't come to Bathurst until 1993, by which time Godzilla had been banned and Group A was on the way out. I still remember Jim Richards being booed on the podium in 1992 by unhappy Australian race fans after being declared the race winner following a huge rainstorm that took out half the field. His retort was "You're a pack of arseholes"....

25

Incredible Nissan Mid4-II, wow, too bad it was never produced.

26

I love the colour on the Autech HNR32. The 4-door BNR32 is pretty cool too!

27

Dont forget the Nissan R390 GT-1 longtail that competed at Lemans in 1998- scored a 3rd place win too- VERY important car as well as being awesome! :-)

28

Can't seem to find any info on that silver GTB-4 nowadays.

29

Awesome article, Dino.

30

Heaven!!!

31

@ DAN your wrong please get ur facts right,

wen nissan skyline was ripping up bathurst they were infact up against seirras,

even the legend mark skaife who is holden all the way drove a seirra

32

lol @ DAN y take a shot at dino like that he is 100% rite sayn the godzilla defeated the sierra an commodores, befor u try take the piss outa sumeone maybe u should make sure u no what u r talking about,

Rich i 2 remember jimmy geting booed for winning in a skyline,

33

@Dan - The Sierra was raced at Bathurst. Please get your facts correct.

34

Love the GTB-4 as well. Dino you need to find one!



Found this on SAU:

"Not strictly a GT-R but a standard 1993 HNR32 (four door) that was built as a complete car by S&S Engineering - independent of Autech Japan - the project was led by Shinichiro Sakurai and based on a four door GTS-4. The engine and drivetrain are directly transplanted from a BNR32 GT-R, along with front fenders, front bumper, headlights, taillights, interior, and some beautiful 'one-off' rear guards. The whole car is a one off exibit but Skyline fans often confuse the GTB-4 as a car produced by Autech, which it is not."

35

That MID4 looks a lot more like an MR2 than an NSX.

36

The GT-R was not banned from group A racing. It did not meet the criteria for the 1993 season.

37

The GT-R was boo'd after its 1992 win but not entirely because it was a GT-R or because it beat the local offerings but because race fans weren't happy that it had been awarded the win. People don't like to mention this BUT the GT-R did not finish the 1992 race, it crashed out. The race was red flagged and they counted back to the previous lap when the GT-R was in front. The 1993 season moved in a different direction, a decision that has been very prosperous for V8 supercars.

38

Nice place !
It's amazing to see the first MID4 right handling and the second one left handling. A shame they didn't go to production.

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