R30

I read the news yesterday and Japanese Nostalgic Car blogged about this as well: Paul Newman passed away.

Apart from many good movies he made he was also quite close to Nissan: he raced several Datsuns during the 60s and 70s and in the early 80s he even got a special edition Nissan Skyline R30 with his name on it (rebadged GT-EX) and featured the ads for them:

Another small detail: the last Skyline R30 in the ads features the Plasma FJ engine which I blogged about in May this year:
http://www.banpei.net/content/nissan-silvia-bs110-rs240-rally
Therefore it should be a Skyline RS in the ad.

I think there was no greater tribute in his life than this. ;)

I can't say anything else than this: Skylines are ugly!
There: I finally said it! They are f*#$ing ugly!

No seriously: I don't think they are all ugly, but I was looking at Bryan's Nissan Skyline page. He's an Aussie and in Australia the Skyline was available through Nissan, in contrary of Europe which banished the Skyline from the R30 onwards. I understood some models were manufactured in Australia as well!

Anyway, I've always been a big fan of the R30 and R31 Skylines, but these R31 examples taken from Bryan's page are hidious:


They don't even feature the round taillights!

Apparently there was also a R31 wagon/station:

And look at this R33 4 door sedan:

I mean: it's nowhere near the beauty of the R33 coupé or even the R33 GT-R!

But then again: the Skyline used to be a normal midclass car, in my opinion comparable to the BMW 5 series. And the M5 does look much better than the normal 5 series!

Source:
Bryan's Nissan Skyline page