This prequel to the 1966 third Japanese Grandprix held at Fuji International Speedway is a great rendering of the era back then: no fear, real men with big engined cars, the Prince r380 and, of course, the big rival Porsche!
I also found it a bit weird that the Jaguar E-Type got so much attention compared to the Honda S800 and Toyota Sports 800. Then again: the Nissan Skyline C10 still had to arrive…
I found this great video about the Prince R380 on AUTOnGRAPHIC. It features an interview with the late Shinichiro Sakurai taken back in 2004 on the Prince company, Prince Skyline and the Prince R380!
I found an early 70s documentary about the development of the Nissan Skyline C110! It starts with the Prince R380 video I posted some time ago and continues with a C110 driving through Tokyo at 2:44:
The only touges we saw in the past were nicely paved mountain passes with screaming twin cams drifting in a downhill battle. Nice to see there were actually rough touges in the 70s!
The end of the first and second video continue on the design and testing of the C110:
The test track is, of course, the Oppama Grandrive. Funny to see they already covered the looks of the testcars/prototypes with black cloth as well back then!
The end of the second video and almost all of the third video concentrate on the Prince R380 and Skyline C10 racing history:
Some very famous races can be watched in these videos!
The end of the third video and the beginning of the fourth video show the crash testing of the C110:
The amount of vintage J-tin in that crash test wreck yard is heartbreaking!
I must say this is one of the nicest vintage videos I’ve seen in ages!
One of the people I’m following on Youtube, uncrowdedmonarch, posted this video of a typically 60s race at Fuji Speedway:
He thought it was from 1956, but Fuji Speedway was built in the early 60s and had its first race in 1963 so it can’t be from 1956!
The first race is Touring Class V where the Prince Skylines easily won from their competion (Hino Contessa 900, Nissan Bluebird 410) and took al first six places!
Looking at the results of the second race (skip to 4:45) this must have been the legendary second Japanese Grand Prix (held on 2nd and 3rd of May 1964) in which the new Prince Skyline S54 2000GTs lost to a single (privately entered) Porsche 904 in the GT-II class! Even though the Skylines took consecutively 2nd to 6th place blowing away the competition (MG-Bs and Isuzu Bellet) this loss was so humiliating that Dr. Sakuri of Prince Motors initiated a project to create the ultimate racecar to defeat the Porsche the next time. This grudge still lives on in the battle between Nissan and Porsche for the fastest lap times around the Nürburgring. This learned Nissan what the best place is to humiliate someone: its home turf!
The project resulted in the amazing legendary Prince R380. The next time Prince and Porsche met (1966 Japanese Grand Prix) the R380 proved to be worthy to its maker: Prince defeated the Porsche 906 by taking first and second place!