I was a fan of this particular car before I had even bought the Skyline in Japan, and I’m an even bigger fan now that Yuusuke Kitaoka has the BN Sports Type III bodykit.
After last weekend’s false start, this was a lot of fun, even if the battery ran out almost immediately and I couldn’t film any more. This video was from Thursday morning when I was still messing around with toe and tyre pressure settings.
Even though the car feels a lot more familar now after two whole days of driving it, I still haven’t had the chance to practice on Minami Course for this weekend’s D1 Street Legal East. I might have to sit down with some Option DVDs with in-car video from D1 and do some image training on the couch…
A “missile” car has a couple of definitions in Japan, depending in which context you’re talking. Usually it refers to a drift car that has been left close to standard externally, while still being heavily modified under the skin. Imagine the sort of thing a D1 driver would take up to the mountains for a bit of practice on weekends.
In the case of these cars however, it means that cost of tyres petrol, and entry fee for a track day combined should cost about as much as the car itself.
At this particular event at Nikko Circuit, four drivers showed up in missiles, and three of them were current D1 drivers, which meant the driving was sphincter-tigheningly close. The first two drivers here are Shinji Minowa in an R32 GTS-t, and this year’s D1GP Champion Daigo Saito in what is just barely recognisable as a JZX90 Mark II, running a very large turbo and 19-inch wheels and tyres left over from some of his slightly better looking JZX projects.