WSC60 Nissan R380 II

3d Model Conversion by: Lucas Macedo

The R380 was a racing car built in 1965 by the Prince Motor Company which, after the merger with Nissan, became Nissan R380-II (also known as R380 Mk.II) to compete in the Japanese Grand Prix racing.

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 172 Nm of torque. Transmitting that power to the rear wheels was a Hewland 5 speed manual gearbox.

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.

The R380 set new speed records in 1965 and 1967. First, on October 6/14, 1965, the R380-I established 5 world records. Then, on October 8,1967, the successor, – Type II (modified type II) – set no fewer than 7 international records (50km, 50 miles, 100km, 100 miles, 200km, 200 miles, 1 hour) on a course in Yatabe, Ibaraki. 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 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.

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. Here 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.

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.