The Skyline's the limit

Dateline Calder Park and luckily for us it’s not raining. When motoring.com.au arrives we hear a distinctive exhaust note, a sweet high-revving sound we’d not heard for years, 24 years, in fact.

Six-times Bathurst winner Jim Richards is shaking down a former Gibson Motor 1988 vintage Sport Nissan Skyline HR31 GTS-R, that has been restored by retired ad guru and part-time racer John Smallman, an old mate of Fred Gibson’s.

After a final safety check at the new Gibson Motor Sport facility run by ex-GMS team manager Alan Heaphy, it’s the first time the Skyline has turned a wheel in anger since Smallman’s comprehensive rebuild. Amazingly, the angular Nissan still looks modern as Richards blasts down pit straight.

Apart from a small hiccup with a fuel pump and bad pedal positions (Richards had to heel-toe in reverse, with his heel on the brake!) the car runs faultlessly and Jim is beaming. He’s having a massive of dose of deja vu and reckons the HR-31 is one of the best race cars he’s ever driven.

“The Skyline was like a bigger, more powerful BMW M3,” Richards says. “It was two-wheel drive, it had another 130 horsepower, a five-speed gearbox, independent suspension and it was fantastic to drive. You could drive the wheels off it all day.

“John’s car felt the same, it sounded the same, it went terrific, and handled nicely; it was a good experience. It’s got a terrific gearbox, absolutely beautiful. I wasn’t using the clutch for second, third, fourth, just lifting off the throttle.

“The brake pedal stays solid as a rock – they always had good brakes. You could take this car to any track and it would be terrific. It puts the power down fine and rides the bumps.”

Richards’ soft spot for the HR31 is no doubt influenced by the fact that he won the 1990 Australian Touring Car Championship – his third – racing one.

Two wins and two thirds in an HR31 set up the title for Richards, which he sealed with victory in the final event in the R32 ‘Godzilla’, after he had switched to it for the last two rounds. It was a giant-killing performance, the HR31 gave away around 200hp to the mighty Dick Johnson Racing Ford Sierra RS500s.

This HR31 was crashed in the 1989 Wellington 500 (New Zealand) street race by British driver Win Percy (who would later run the fledgling Holden Racing Team) when had a 30-second lead and was due to pit.

Team owner Gibson, a former factory Nissan driver who had bought the Nissan team just as it switched from Bluebirds to the DR30 Skyline in 1985, was not impressed. “Win said the throttle stuck,” grins Gibson. “But I said that was bullshit, our throttles don’t stick, and eventually he said he stuffed up.”

Richards actually owned this car. He bought the unassembled car sight unseen from Gibson circa 1994 and planned to restore it. The shell and almost-complete running gear went straight from GMS to another race shop where it languished for years until Richards decided to sell it. Fred Gibson knew just the right bloke.

Smallman had designed the look of the Gibson Motor Sport Winfield-branded cars and had built race and rally cars. “I saw the shell and told Richo I’d buy it but then I changed my mind; there was too much work to be done,” Smallman says. “When I told Fred, he told me I did want it!”

“When I picked it up there was no engine but someone had heard of a motor in Thomastown. I took $3500 and met this guy at his storage shed that was full of motors. Sure enough, it was one of the original motors and I bought it.” The engine was examined by former GMS guru Eric Schlifelner and found to be in as-new condition.

Smallman continued to relentlessly hunt down parts and what he couldn’t find he had made. New brakes were cast, turbochargers were made in Japan (they were fabricated from two different turbos), a Holinger five-speed gearbox was located and rebuilt, the rear windscreen was bought from a drag racer, and new fibreglass airdams were made after the original mould was traced to Sydney.

Eventually, he had everything needed to rebuild the Skyline. And what an impressive restoration it is. By today’s standards it’s a bare-bones racecar but its comparative simplicity and sparseness belies its competitiveness. In its day, only one car could out-pace it and in Richards’ hands it was devastatingly quick.

Gisbon Motor Sport built the quickest HR31s in the world as Alan Heaphy will attest. In the late ’80s, Heaphy was running Nissan’s European motorsport program and towards the end of the HR31 era, juggled time in the UK with trips to work with Gibson Motor Sport on Skyline development. Eventually he joined GMS full-time.

Heaphy reckons the GMS HR31s were better than Nissan’s European versions. “Fred’s team had a better ability to ‘massage’ bits than what we did in Europe,” Heaphy recalls.

“They (GMS) finished up with about 465hp – they had better fuel than we did in Europe – we got about 430hp. They homologated the (Australian) five-speed Holinger gearbox; we had a Nissan box, which was dreadful.”

Heaphy reckons the only thing wrong with the HR31 was the turbocharger on its 2.0-litre six, which restricted top-end horsepower and meant the Skyline wasn’t a match for the Sierras on long circuits like Phillip Island.

“It had a big Garrett turbocharger, which was one of its biggest Achilles heels; it had a big compressor housing but a small exhaust which limited the engine.

“You can stuff as much [fuel and air] in as you like on the intake side, but if you can’t feed it out the back it doesn’t go anywhere. And if you can’t get it out you can’t get [more fuel and air] in, simple as that. Fred tried to get it changed but by that stage the GTR was on the drawing board.”

Inefficient turbo or not, the HR31 was a winner and helped establish Gibson Motor Sport as a touring car powerhouse. And with the quality of work done on this restoration, you’d reckon Smallman had worked for the team.

So, will Smallman race the Skyline in historic touring car races? “No, I’m too old to race it, I want someone to buy it,” he laughs. They’d be buying a pearl of a racecar, just ask Jim.

Jim Buys A Skyline!
Jim Richards came close to buying this Skyline back from Smallman but soon after he tested it at Calder, he found the HR31 he raced to the 1990 Australian Touring Car Championship for sale and bought it. When he takes delivery he will own the three cars he won touring car titles in: a BMW M3, BMW 635 and the Nissan.

Sydney collector and racer Terry Ashwood bought Fred Gibson’s complete collection of racecars some years back and raced the HR31 four or five times before deciding to concentrate on his R32 Godzilla Skyline instead. He sold the HR31 but it was not raced by its new owner.

“I’d been thinking about it for a while and when I drove John Smallman’s car it reminded me just how good these cars were,” Richards says. “I’ll probably do the odd race in it. With the Nissan I’ve now got the three cars that won touring car championships in.”