Nissan’s commitment to ME off-road motorsport remains unrivalled
‘Build it and they will come.’ At least that’s the theory, according to the movie, Field of Dreams. But when your “field” is thousands of square miles of inhospitable desert terrain and your potential competitors are scattered far and wide across the globe and there is a vanishingly small local fanbase, just how do you “build” a sport? And even if you could answer those questions there remains one last problem: who will do the building?
In terms of building a platform foroff-road motorsport within the Middle East, many independent observers agree that Nissan deserves the credit for undertaking the heavy lifting. Perhaps the most obvious manifestation of this commitment is Nissan’s longstanding sponsorship of the event now known as the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge Powered by Nissan. The company’s support for this iconic race goes all the way back to its early years as the UAE Desert Challenge. Nissan, however has been involved in motorsport in the Middle East region since before the inception of this gruelling test of man and machine and indeed the company’s global motorsport heritage can be traced back to the 1930s, the decade in which it was created.
IN THE BEGINNING
It was in 1936 that Japan’s first purpose built motor racing circuit was created, the short-lived Tamagawa Speedway. Nissan entered its first ever motorsport event in the first race meeting held there using a car built out-of-hours by employees and based on a production vehicle. In the race, they were beaten by a car built in a local machine shop, a situation that did not sit well with Nissan’s founding President YoshisukeAikawa who was in attendance. His disapproval of the defeat led to the creation of the Datsun Sorts NL75, fitted with a 750cc DOHC engine complete with supercharger. This car, which triumphed at the next race meeting held at Tamagawa, is now considered to have been Nissan’s first “works” competition vehicle.
AN INTERNATIONAL DEBUT
The advent of the second world war signalled the start of a two decades long hiatus for Nissan from competitive motorsport, but the company came back with a bang in 1958. In that year, two Datsun 210s named nicknamed ‘Fuji’ and ‘Sakura’ were entered into an event in Australia, which at the time was dubbed”the world’s cruellest rally.” The MobilgasTrial was a 16,000km event that took competitors around the circumference of Australia at a time before the continent’s surfaced road network had been completed. This fact, combined with unseasonal rains which turned the dirt roads into muddy tracks, effectively made it, in part, an off-road event. These factorsperhaps account for the 50% attrition rate among a field that included works entries from Volkswagen, Skoda and Toyota among others. BothDatsuns, however, completed the trial in 19 days and took a first and a fourth place in the up-to 1000cc class. You could say this was Nissan’s first desert rally, as the route took drivers across stretches of the unforgiving and unsurfaced Nulaboor desert. The fact that both cars completed the event, suggests that there really is something in the DNA of Nissan that has always produced rugged, durable cars capable of soaking up tremendous punishment.
BLUEBIRD TAKES FIRST OUTRIGHT WIN
Thepublicity and resulting sales benefits of motorsport were made clear to Nissan through its successful participation in the 1958 Mobilgas Trial and slowly but surely the carmaker began to ramp up its presence on the international motorsport scene. A first appearance in 1963 at the East AfricanSafari Rally - then one of the “Big Three” along with the British RAC and Monte Carlorallies - did not produce instant success. However, before the decade was finished Nissan would triumph in its classat the Safari Rally, which at the time was considered the ultimate off road test of a vehicle. In 1970, Nissan fully established its presence as a formidable force on the international rallying scene by winning the Safari Rally outright in the by-now fully developed Datsun Bluebird 1600 SSS.The following year Nissan consolidated that position, winning the event outright again, but this time with aDatsun 240Z. By the mid-1970s it was the Nissan Violet that carried the flag for the company in international rallies, achieving major successes, especially in the Safari Rally which it won outright five times.
NISMO CONSOLIDATES NISSAN’S MOTORSPORT DNA
Since that those first heady days of off-road success , Nissan has kept its foot firmly planted on the accelerator in terms of both circuit racing and rallying participation, helped in no small part by the creation of its NISMO division in 1984.
The genesis of NISMO was a small Japanese carmaker named Prince. In 1964, two years before it was acquired by Nissan, Prince like many of its competitors wanted to exploit the established connection between success in motorsport and success in retail sales. Consequently, its engineers were given the task of somehow fitting a 2.0 litre, in-line 6cylinder engine from its large Gloria sedan into its much smaller Skyline model. Somehow, they managed it, which immediately vastly increased the power-to-weight ratio of the little car. The engineers quickly realised they had created something with huge motorsport potential. They gave it the name Prince Skyline 2000GT (S54) but in order for it to be eligible to compete in the GT II race at the 1964 Japanese Grand Prix meeting at Suzuka, they needed to build 100 production examples in advance of the race. That meant burning the midnight oil to get all the cars ready in time, but they made it with only a day or so to spare.
On it first outing at that race, this apparently ordinary little 4 door family car earned itself a place in the hearts of all Japanese motorsport enthusiasts by pluckily taking on the might of a fully race-bred and already highly developed Porsche 904 Carrera GTS. It was a David and Goliath battle which the German contender ultimately won but not before a Skyline briefly held the lead, and with Skylines taking all the places from 2nd to 6th.
In 1966 Nissan acquired Prince and the Skyline model was absorbed into its line-up. Over the following two decades Nissan steadily developed its motorsport abilities in the fields of rallying, touring cars and endurance racing, with operations split into two departments, one handling the development and building of “works” or factory cars and the other building cars for private customers.
In 1984, the decision was taken to merge these two operations, which resulted in the creation of the wholly owned, but separate Nissan subsidiary, Nissan Motorsports International Co. Ltd, abbreviated to NISMO.
NISMO got involved at Le Mans soon after the company was created, and has at different times continued the pursuit of this most elusive of crowns, adopting novel technical approaches including different drivetrain configurations and radical aerodynamic solutions in the various GT and Prototype cars it has entered. This approach - creative, innovative, helping shape the very future of motorsport is fundamental to NISMO’s DNA.
MIDDLE EAST’S OFF-ROAD SCENE TAKES FLIGHT
Here in the Middle East, Nissan has been on the scene selling cars since the 1950s - a time when there simply was no motorsport to speak of in the Gulf region. Little by little, however, an embryonic off-road scene grew out of the fun drivers were having taking their four wheel drive vehiclesinto the desert and eventually an FIA sanctionedMiddle East Rally Championship was created in 1984. It was through this championship that Mohammed Ben Sulayem enjoyed the huge success which allowed him to found the UAE Desert Challenge in 1991. As chairman of the organising committee he has steered the event to the point where it has a global reputation in the motorsport world. Through its committed sponsorship of the event, Nissan has played a significant role in providing the long-term investment platform and behindthe-scenes support which has enabled the Desert Challenge to flourish.
“Nissan’s commitment to motorsports in the Middle East is intrinsically linked to our desire to create vehicles which serve the needs of our customers in what is one of the harshest motoring environments on the planet, but it is also born out of a broader wish to support the overall development of the region” said Fadi Ghosn, Nissan Middle East’s Chief Marketing Officer. “The desert is an unforgiving place, so our off-road vehicles must be rugged, durable and reliable. Rallying is an incredible test bed for components and our works prepared Patrols provide us with invaluable data which enables us to build better cars for our customers. But equally, by encouraging motorsport in the Middle East we feel that we are promoting the region in the eyes of the world. Over the years the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge has brought world-famous motorsport legends such as Carlos Sainz, Ari Vatenan and the late Colin McRae to the UAE. The presence of such figures here all helps to showcase the country as a wonderful place to visit. In this way, we feel we are playing a wider role in assisting in the development of the Middle East’s economy.”
In addition to the financial backing which helps guarantee the viability of the event, Nissan Patrols are the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge’s official vehicle, being used in the preparation phase by the organisers to map out the course to be followed by the participants, as well as during the race itself as support vehicles.