You Can Order Your Own 1000bhp Nissan GT-R-Engined Navara-R Pickup

Drift champion Steve Biagioni, along with his company SB Motorsport, have big news about their extremely powerful Nissan Navara-R pickup truck. It’s the culmination of two years of development and you’ll soon be able to order your own.

The team took a regular Navara, threw away the standard pickup’s four-cylinder diesel engine and set to work squeezing in a heavily modified version of the drivetrain from an R35 Nissan GT-R. The result is a 1,000bhp juggernaut with room for five passengers and a whole lot of IKEA furniture in the back.

The R35 GT-R’s standard twin-turbocharged V6 VR38DETT engine was bored out to 4.1-litres, fitted with two Garrett turbos and custom exhaust manifolds to achieve its four-figure power output. The rest of the mechanicals were also strengthened to cope – Dodson Motorsport, based in New Zealand, rebuilt the standard dual-clutch transmission from the ground up.

SB Motorsport also modified the Navara’s suspension turrets to accommodate the subframes from an R35 GT-R, and fitted bespoke KW coilovers and a whole lot of reinforcement to the chassis. It’s also fitted with Alcon RC6 and RC4 brakes to provide some much needed stopping power.

It looks fast, too. The Navara’s Styling was reworked by Sterling Automotive, who supplied it with flared wheel-arches to accommodate its wider stance and custom bodywork including a duck-tail spoiler that ensures it looks the part. The pickup rolls on 20-inch BBS wheels.

The best part is that the punchy pick-up is road legal – SB Motorsport will be taking orders for the Navara-R from “serious enthusiasts who are eager to have their own custom-built, road-legal monster” in 2023. If you’ve got a £250,000 lying around and are stuck between buying a serious performance supercar and something you can do a dump-run in, you might be that serious enthusiast.

It’s not the first time a R35 GT-R has supplied its mechanicals to a serious performance machine – it also lent its brakes to this extreme 500bhp Toyota GR Yaris built by Severn Valley Motorsport. SB Motorsport’s Navara-R will be appearing at the 2022 Goodwood Festival of Speed if you want to see it in the metal.