Question to the Demographic! - What is one thing you wish your shop did, or could do

[racepar1]

Nissan DID push motorsports, just in different places. While honda was pushing grassroots production classes from the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties nissan had bigger fish to fry. Nissan was knee deep in the IMSA series and most of their racing support went to the GT (both grassroots and professional) or IMSA GTP. In SCCA GT classes the nissan ka24e is THE engine and has been for YEARS. Unfortuanetly though that means that they weren't very concerned with developing the suspension on their production cars too much because none of their race cars were in fact production cars. In the mid-nineties the drift scene started to pop-up and the s-13 was relegated to the status of probably the single best drifting platform ever. That image however drove those that were truly capable of developing the nissan suspension further from the cars.

[drift freaq]

Originally Posted by racepar1

Nissan DID push motorsports, just in different places. While honda was pushing grassroots production classes from the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties nissan had bigger fish to fry. Nissan was knee deep in the IMSA series and most of their racing support went to the GT (both grassroots and professional) or IMSA GTP. In SCCA GT classes the nissan ka24e is THE engine and has been for YEARS. Unfortuanetly though that means that they weren't very concerned with developing the suspension on their production cars too much because none of their race cars were in fact production cars. In the mid-nineties the drift scene started to pop-up and the s-13 was relegated to the status of probably the single best drifting platform ever. That image however drove those that were truly capable of developing the nissan suspension further from the cars.

Yes you are correct about this Aron, but like I pointed out. Nissan dropped its major IMSA support right about the time the 240sx hit the market.

Trust me I was a big fan of Nissans legendary SCCA and IMSA efforts. At one point the one more races than any other Japanese brand. Its kinda of sad that they managed to lose that to Mazda.

Nissan completely dumped efforts to support racing in the 90's and the proof in that was dropping out of the IMSA GTP series after winning it so successfully and letting Toyota take it. Later Toyota would give it up to Mazda.

It was crazy back in the late 70's and 80's when damn near every damn dealership had some kind of racing effort going. Performance Nissan was known even back then for winning Z cars.

You had Electramotive in El Segundo, Bob Leitzinger, BoB Sharp, Paul Newman, BRE, etc... the list was huge. Nissan abandon all this in the 90's and its my belief it affected their sales as well. They sold a lot of cars in the 70's and 80's based on the Datsun and then Nissan Motorsports successes.

Lets just say the bad management in the 90's that drove the company to near bankruptcy was the same management that took them away from corporate backing of road racing. About the only thing they did stick with was championship offroad truck racing.

Once again and will reiterate , like I had said and Sam (Jspec) has said as well. There is no money in selling suspension tuning services for 240sx's. Now other cars and Newer Nissans sure.

Like Sam said don't focus on one car or model.