Without a doubt this is one of my favourite cars of all time, it looks ace, it goes fast, it breathes fire... What more do you want?

I'll be honest here, I've written this piece 4 times already, and nothing I say can express much more than the picture above and the three videos below.  That being said, I'll give a bit more info, the car is running a Nissan LZ20B Turbo engine, an evolution of the engine it used in the Sunny 120Y racing cars of the 70's, based on a 4 cylinder L series block, as used in the Nissan 510.  What makes the LZ special is the Dual Overhead Cam cylinder head sat on top of it.  In the Silvia this, along with the T05B turbo, four valves per cylinder and electronic fuel injection gave rise to a 562hp beast, which dominated competition in the Super Silhouette Car Championship (SSCC) for the entire time it ran, in fact it also beat it's eventual successor the DR30 Skyline.

The Silvia competed against BMW M1s and the rotary powered Mazda RX-7, its biggest rivals though were the previously mentioned Skyline RS Turbo and the Nissan Bluebird Turbo.  The closeness of the racing can be seen in the video below.

Specifications are handily on this video :

Here is a nice overview if you can speak Japanese, or just a really good chance to see the details of the car :

Speedhunters did a good piece on the main Nissan competitors in the Super Silhouette series, including the Silvia.

What has really piqued my interest now though is the cars that weren't campaigned by Nissan, the Mazda and Toyota entries into the series, so I'll be donning my finest Google translation boots and heading out in the wilds of SSCC history, I shall report back when I have news.