DEATH MARCH 3.0
A LOOK AT THE REAR-ENGINE FOUR-WHEEL-DRIVE MARCH
GLENN HODGES CONTINUES TO PROVE THAT HE'S A MAN OF HIS WORD WITH THE LATEST INCARNATION OF THE V6 TWIN-TURBO NISSAN MARCH - NOW PACKING ALL-WHEEL DRIVE!
Imagine standing around kicking stones and shooting the shit at a track day only to have someone tell you that they were going to take a Nissan VQ35DE, strap a turbo to either side, and chuck it into the back of a Nissan March. Yeah, like many, you’d dismiss it as a pipe dream and laugh it off. However, as Glenn Hodges, owner of that exact creation featured back in NZ Performance Car Issue No. 253, has shown us, he isn’t here to f**k spiders when it comes to building mind-bending concepts. Back in 2016, Glenn put aside his then-300ZX track car in favour of a build fit for a madman. The base for this project became a Nissan March. It wasn’t his first choice of chassis but eventuated as the result of years of back and forth between Glenn and a friend overseas, who enjoyed discussing the intricacies of rear-engined all-wheel-drive cars from the Group B era.
At the time, the idea was to “not overcomplicate it”, so, naturally, Glenn just stuck with shoehorning a bloody twin-turbo V6 into the boot of a March and converted it to rear-wheel drive with a six-speed Sentra gear-swapper instead of pursuing an all-wheel set-up. While that package worked well — really well, in fact, producing 400kW and 700Nm of torque to the rears running just 13psi, and going on to campaign a giant-slaying season in NZ Superlap — the weak link was always in the driveline.
The gearbox decided that it had had enough of third-gear abuse at the GTR Festival New Zealand in 2018, which led to Glenn rigging up a set of Mitsubishi Evolution six-speed gears inside the Sentra box. Fifth gear followed suit at Chrome the same year, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, with Glenn admitting that it would be an ongoing issue unless he lowered the power levels to be less harsh on the driveline: “which was not an option!”
Glenn recollected those conversations with his friend about rearengined all-wheel-drive cars from the Group B era, then a quick yarn with Paul Radisich, who suggested something similar being a good attack for the Leadfoot Festival, sealed the deal for the March’s future.
The previously east-west–mounted Maxima VQ35DE block has been switched out in favour of a Skyline 350GT unit — with all the good bits swapped over — that now points back toward the cabin to to form a reverse north-south configuration. Drive sent is to the front-mounted 350Z (Z33) manual viscous LSD with Nissan Fuga axles via a modified D22 Navara two-wheel-drive gearbox. The key to this all-wheel-drive system is the bespoke reversing transfer case of Glenn’s own design. It’s a trick bit of CNC-machined kit that Glenn keeps the intricacies of pretty close
Paul Radisich was behind the wheel at Leadfoot — a man who would be brutally honest about any imperfections — yet he only requested minor adjustments to tyre pressure, ride height, and damper settings. With the help of Adam from Link ECU and a loaned laptop from Jamie at Llama Engineering in Wellington, the E-throttle was adjusted for better drivability.
Glenn explains: “The car was a bit savage initially, and, although Paul was laughing when he returned from the first run, it was clear we needed to tone it down a little to actually go faster — not a terrible problem to have!”
So, if you thought the ‘Death March’ couldn’t get any more lethal, you were wrong, and, with Glenn planning to enter it into the next season of NZ Superlap in the 4WD category, we expect to see a few bruised egos. We dare not even joke about the next step from here, as Glenn’ll probably go and do that too — just another day at The Lab Limited, eh Glenn?