The Prince R380 is a

racing car Auto racing (also known as car racing, motor racing, or automobile racing) is a motorsport involving the racing of automobiles for competition. Auto racing has existed since the invention of the automobile. Races of various sorts were organise ...

built in 1965 by

Prince Motor Company The Prince Motor Company ( Japanese: ) was an automobile marque from Japan which eventually merged into Nissan in 1966. It began as the Tachikawa Aircraft Company, a manufacturer of various airplanes for the Japanese Army in World War II, e.g. ...

to compete in the Japanese Grand Prix. Following the merger of Prince Motor Company and

Nissan Motors , trading as Nissan Motor Corporation and often shortened to Nissan, is a Japanese multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Nishi-ku, Yokohama, Japan. The company sells its vehicles under the Nissan, Infiniti, and Datsun bran ...

in 1966, the R380 was modified into the Nissan R380-II (also known as R380 Mk.II).

Development

In 1964, Prince had entered their new S54 Skyline GTs in the second Japanese Grand Prix, hoping to prove the performance potential of the car's new G-7

straight-6 The straight-six engine (also referred to as an inline-six engine; abbreviated I6 or L6) is a piston engine with six cylinders arranged in a straight line along the crankshaft. A straight-six engine has perfect primary and secondary engine bala ...

. Although the cars performed well, they were defeated by a privately entered

Porsche 904 The Porsche 904 is an automobile which was produced by Porsche in Germany in 1964 and 1965. It was officially called Porsche Carrera GTS due to the same naming rights problem that required renaming the Porsche 901 to Porsche 911. History After ...

, leaving the Skylines to take second through sixth positions. Realizing the superiority of the

mid-engine design In automotive engineering, a mid-engine layout describes the placement of an automobile engine in front of the rear-wheel axles, but behind the front axle. History The mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive format can be considered the original layout of ...

used on the Porsche 904, Prince decided that a custom-built sports car would be needed to win the Japanese Grand Prix. A new aerodynamic body was built on a

Brabham BT8 Brabham () is the common name for Motor Racing Developments Ltd., a British racing car manufacturer and Formula One racing team. Founded in 1960 by Australian driver Jack Brabham and British-Australian designer Ron Tauranac, the team won four ...

chassis; alloy panels were fabricated with exposed buttresses over the rear engine cover and fitted to Brabham chassis number SC-9-64. For an engine, Prince would use the same G engine that the Skylines had used, but adapted it specifically for racing. The new unit, known as GR-8, would be a 1,996 cc straight-6 that produced . A Hewland 5-speed racing gearbox would be used in the transmission. When Nissan took over the project, the bodywork of the R380 was completely redesigned. The rear buttresses were replaced with a flowing cockpit and engine cover, while the vents and ductwork of the car was further refined. Nissan was able to increase power in the GR-8 engine to .

Racing history

Due to the cancellation of the Japanese Grand Prix in 1965, the R380 would be used by Prince to test high speed aerodynamics. This led to the car being used to break five E-class land speed records in late 1965. 380916

For the 1966 Japanese Grand Prix at

Fuji Speedway is a motorsport race track standing in the foothills of Mount Fuji, in Oyama, Suntō District, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. It was built in the early 1960s. In the 1980s, Fuji Speedway was used for the FIA World Sportscar Championship and na ...

, Prince would enter four R380s, while a trio of newer Porsche 906s would also be entered. In the end, the R380s would take the overall victory, with Yoshikazu Sunako's R380 ahead of Hideo Oishi's second place R380. Following the rebuilding of the R380s by Nissan, four cars were once again entered in the Japanese Grand Prix. However, the 906s would be able to overcome the previous year's loss, leaving the R380-IIs to settle for second, third, fourth, and sixth. The margin of victory was nearly two minutes. Nissan would later use an R380-II to set new land speed records, breaking seven records in October of that year. Following Nissan's development of the newer R381 in 1968, the R380s were sold to

privateers A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or deleg ...

. Three were once again entered in the Japanese Grand Prix, where they took third, fourth, and fifth places. Two factory-entered R380s went on to finish first and second in the

1969 Chevron Paradise 6 Hour The 1969 Chevron Paradise 6 Hour was an endurance race for Sports Cars and Touring Cars. The event was held at the Surfers Paradise circuit in Queensland, Australia on 2 November 1969.Surfers Six To Datsun, Australian Motor Manual, January 1970, ...

race at the

Surfers Paradise International Raceway Surfers Paradise International Raceway was a motor racing complex at Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. The long circuit was designed and built by Keith Williams, a motor racing enthusiast who also designed and built the Adelaide Internation ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

.Racing Car News, December 1969, pages 60-62 1969 saw one R380 taking second place in the

1000 km of Fuji 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length&nb ...

race, and yet another second place in 1970 at a event at Fuji. In 2005,

Nismo , abbreviated as Nismo, is a division of Nissan Motorsports & Customizing focused in motorsport and performance-oriented car models for Nissan. Nismo was initially a company, , formed in 1984 as a result of a merger of two motorsport departmen ...

would restore an R380-II and use it for exhibition events, running alongside other cars in the R380 series.

References

External links

* * * * {{Nissan Sportscar Racers R380 Nissan racing cars Group 6 (racing) cars