Seeing as we are still gripped with a bit of Can Am fever we thought we'd have a look around and see what championships were running at the same time. During our trawling of information we found a picture of a car that intrigued us greatly. On went our detective shoes and investigating we went.
Cars don't come much rarer than the Nissan R381. It is effectively a transition model from the beautiful Nissan R380 to the Nissan R382, Built to Group 7 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can-Am) specifications that Can Am ran in, the idea was to replace the R380 with a Prince engined car, however the engine wasn't finished in time. Dr Sakurai of Prince Engineering headed to the USA to find a suitable engine at short notice, the engine was found in the form of a five and a half litre Chevy V8 built by Dean Moon, or Mooneyes fame.
Our eye was first caught by this car with a picture of the rear wing halves working separately. Building on the work Chaparral were doing in Can Am, Nissan created a wing that could be independently raised through hydraulics, either left or right side, in order to increase cornering grip.
The car was successful in competition for the year that it ran before being replaced by the Nissan R382, now complete with Prince V12 engine, the following year.
Nissan still bring out the R381 for various events, it is always great to see car manufacturers celebrating their heritage.
Posted on: January 20, 2009 23:55