Nissan's Prince: 1965-1967 Prince and Nissan R380

01 Oct 2018

Pre-1965 Prince racing

Prince Motor Company had entered their new S54 Skyline GTs into the Japanese Grand Prix, wanting to show off what their new G-7 straight six could do. Both the S54 Skyline and G-7 six cylinder were good, but didn’t have the success that Prince was looking for in a world beating Grand Prix car.

Prince’s S54s took second through sixth position at that years Japanese Grand Prix, coming second only to a privately entered Porsche 904.

Development

Seeing that a custom built sports car was needed to win, Prince set about developing such a car. Taking a Brabham BT8 chassis and adding buttresses over the rear engine cover.

For a powertrain, Prince would use the same G series engine, but modified it specifically for the R380 racing project.

A twin cam straight six displacing 1,996CC (121.7 CID), using 4 valves per cylinder, and being equipped with triple Weber DCOE carburetors, the new GR-8 made 194 BHP and 127 ft/lbs of torque.

Transmitting that power to the rear wheels was a Hewland 5 speed manual gearbox.

The R380 under the Prince Motor Company

Prince finished the R380 just in time for a race that never happened. The Japanese Grand Prix was cancelled in 1965. Prince decided to use the cars for land speed record breaking and testing high speed aerodynamics.

R380s set new speed records for distances covering 31-124 miles (50-200kms). However, since the cars were not FIA approved, the 6 new records could not be categorized as international records, only as Japanese records.

The 1966 JGP (Japanese Grand Prix) took place at Fuji Speedway. Prince entered in four R380s, whilst rivaling Porsche entered a trio of their best race cars at the time, the 906.

Prince was able to pull in the win that year, beating Porsche’s 906s with an overall win, Yoshikazu Sunako would take first ahead of Hideo Oishi’s second place.

The underdog had one, for now.

Enter Nissan and the R380-II

Following the merger of the Prince Motor Company and Nissan in 1966, Nissan decided the 194 HP wasn’t enough. They took the GR-8 and upped the ante by adding mechanical fuel injection, getting a claimed 220 HP out of it.

With a now more powerful 220 HP GR-8, Nissan dubbed this iteration the R380-II, and entered four of them in the 1967 Japanese GP.

This time however, Porsche wasn’t playing around and was ready to give a savage blow to Nissan.

At the 1967 Japanese GP, Porsche got it’s revenge for the loss the year prior, the 906s won over the four R380-IIs entered that year, the Nissans settling for second, third, fourth, and sixth places. The margin of victory was almost two minutes.

All was not lost however, Nissan went about setting 7 new speed records in the same 31-124 miles (50-200kms) in 1967 under T. Yokoyama and the Nissan Racing Team. Now that the cars were FIA approved, the 7 new records could now be considered world records.

Aftermath of the R380 project

After the defeat at the 1967 Japanese GP, Nissan went on to develop the R381, a continuation of the 380 series with modified bodywork, but had a monstrous 5.5 liter Chevy V8 with 450 HP, over twice the horsepower of the GR-8.

The R381s were much faster than the 380s and proved successful at the 1968 Japanese GP, ironically running alongside R380s. The 381s took five of the top six spots, a Porsche 910 took second.

In 1969, two R380-IIs were entered in the Chevron Paradise 6 Hour Race in Australia, taking first and second.

As one of Nissan’s earliest purpose built racers, the R380s proved only moderately successful, winning overall for one year and losing the next, ultimately being replaced by the 381 and left in the dust by its successors.

The GR-8 engine would eventually evolve into the S20, which powered the ubiquitous C10 Skyline GT-R.

Epilogue

Prince had started something great, started a legendary racing history that Nissan picked up and added it’s own power too.

The R380 series was the passing of the torch to Nissan, sure it only had modest initial success, but it represented the great racing legacy that Nissan has.

Nissan’s Prince, the R380.

Thanks for reading

-Nick

Sources

https://www.nissan-global.com/EN/HERITAGE/prince_r380_i.html

https://www.nissan-global.com/EN/HERITAGE/Nissan_R380-2.html

https://www.nissan-global.com/EN/HERITAGE/short_story/en_p59-01.html