BMW has its M-series, Mercedes has its AMG, Audi has its R. Now, Nissan has its NISMO. Like most in-house speed shops, NISMO has its roots in a factory racing department. “NISMO is the first true performance brand of Japan’s major makers,” as Nissan’s marketing chief Simon Sproule tells me at NISMO’s new headquarters in Tsurumi, near Yokohama, today. “The others are only playing around.”
Today, Jalopnik decried that “there were no photos or promises” at the opening of the NISMO HQ. Not true, as I should find out this morning (yesterday at Jalopnik.) There were lots of promises. More cars will be “given the NISMO treatment,” said Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn. And here are lots of photos.
For the new NISMO HQ, “we have come back where we should be,” as Nismo President, Shoichi Miyatani put it today. The Tsurumi plant is Nissan’s historic site. Built on an artificial island in Tokyo Bay (and strategically placed next to the Kirin Brewery), this is where Nissan took its first steps as a company in 1933. Iconic cars like the Nissan 510 Bluebird, and the Nissan S30, sold in Japan as the Fairlady Z and elsewhere as the Datsun 240Z, were built here.
Tsurumi also was “the heart of our engineering after World War 2 before it moved to our tech center in Atsugi,” Miyatani explained on his tour down memory lane. Today, Tsurumi is the home of Nissan’s powertrain engineering and prototype development, the perfect neighborhood for Nissan’s speed shop.
NISMO “began nearly half a century ago, when a group of Nissan engineers put a performance engine into a regular production car, and the Skyline GT2000 was born,” said Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn. For 20 years, the child was nameless.
In 1984, “Nissan Motorsports” was abbreviated into “NISMO,” typical for an optimization-obsessed Japan, where Family Mart is abbreviated to “Famima,” Starbucks turns into “Staba”, even the hamburger chain “First Kitchen” isn’t safe, and turns into, well, “Fakin.”
Like its abbreviated name, NISMO remained a Japanese cult thing, only to show up abroad on Nissan’s race cars and the odd video games. Now, NISMO wants to open “the next chapter, the true globalization on NISMO,” as Ghosn promised.
First to hit the global roads is the NISMO Juke, already on sale in Japan and Europe and coming to the U.S. in March after a launch in Chicago.
Next in line, Ghosn promised, is a NISMO Fairlady, which thankfully is called a more manly 370Z elsewhere.
And of course, “in the next 12 months, you will see the Nissan GT-R NISMO,” Ghosn promised. See? Lots of promises.
Two raised eyebrows. The secret pre-arranged signal: “Bertel, why don’t you sneak past the guards and in the back while I finish that boring speech, tu comprends? This will also keep you from shooting more embarrassing pictures.”
Go it. In the back, they were already building the NISMO GT3.
Well, they were fitting big Brembos to something.
Here is where they test the GT-R engines on a dyno that doubles as a GrantuNISMO game.
Engines can be tested on a simulated race course.
Data for the dyno come from racecourses like these. Fed back into the car, the work helps win serious races – even if it’s only by a very thin hair. The guys at the dyno even help Dan Slloan’s team to hone the high art of the horrible pun: Reignmaker, a classic.
This gentleman builds the super-secret NISMO GT-R throttle linkage, or whatever that may be.
This is a super-secret GT-R. Its super-secret paint-job confuses any camera. My hands (see table) did not shake. It just looks that way.
Oh, and NISMO will enter an all-electric car into the 2014 Le Mans race, filling the “Garage 56” slot that was taken by the Nissan’s DeltaWing last year. This year, it will be a GreenGT hydrogen car.
As I sneak past the guards again, Carlos Ghosn finishes his speech, promising that at the 2014 Le Mans, Nissan’s Garage 56 entry will be battery-operated. All I can find out today from an unusually chatty Nissan executive is that it will be based on the Nissan Leaf Nismo RC.
As Carlos Ghosn departs stage left, I remember that I had sat in a Nissan Leaf Nismo RC two years ago already, and if you jump to that story, you will see its specs on a PowerPoint.
Dear Jalopnik: More pictures can be provided on request. Tsurumi is only 360 yen ($4, a bargain in Japan) and 30 minutes away from me. Literally wall-to-wall pictures can be had, as long as one gets one’s derriere over there.
On the way out, Carlos Ghosn even gave me his autograph. Good salesman he is, he put it on the race car on the wall. “Want the autograph, buy the car! Ou revoir!”
Any questions? All are answered by a far more attractive and certainly better qualified reporter.
Thank you very much for this article and the amusing Ghosn snapshots; I especially enjoy the pre- and post-signature shots of the rear wing.
. . .or were those marks wiped off in the overhead shot? It’s hard to tell with the varying light effects, but it almost looks like there were marks on the wing in the 3rd photograph.
Ah, that looks like it was wall mounted. Never mind!
Pictures of Ghosn is a thing, you know.
Hope this lights a fire under Honda’s … seat. Unlikely.
Also didn’t know Famima here was actually FamilyMart. I’ve seen each in their own respective markets but didn’t make the connection. Thanks.
Seriously. But I also doubt it. 10 years ago, I thought that they were really on to something with the Type-S Acura models and figured we’d soon see Type-R Honda models.
Alas, they let the NSX and S2000 die slow, painful and unrewarding deaths, popped out their last genuinely hooning car in 2007 (TL Type-S), and now are stubbornly fixated on jet engines and hybrids.
I give up on them. At least Nissan has balls and is doing interesting things. Now hurry up and make a Nissan Z car that pays homage to the original lightweight and high revving 240Z, not the luxury yacht 280ZX!!
In Kyushu, I remember they still had Family Mart signage, but they were a distant third behind 7-11 and Lawson’s anyway.
Bertel, thank you for the excellent photos, did anyone tell you why they had a 7-8 year-old GT500 R34 GT-R sitting around? I’m assuming it wasn’t for decoration since they mounted the R390 on the wall…
Fairlady- I feel perfectly manly about wanting one. I like the name. Bluebird too.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who would prefer the script on the ass to read fairlady and not a vague description of displacement (which in liters is 3.7 but not inches or CC).
I prefer it that way too. It just sounds better to me, I guess…. and I’d kill for that Bayside Blue R34 GT-R…..
Agree.
So did this mean we are getting a 370Z Nismo with a bigger power boost? Something over 400? Something I would want? Or is this just a racing team?
While this is a good article, I think the jabs against Jalopnik are passé. Have you seen some of the crap they pass as articles these days? (“Poor kid gets his bicycle shoved up his ass” was today’s “nugget”) Give it up, TTAC has “won,” it’s time to find a better opponent.
Stop picking on Jalopnik, it belittles TTAC
Cool, definitely a creditable performance brand, hopefully they don’t turn it into the dress-up jobs that the M brand is crunching out now. M45 NISMO, hells yeah.
>>>Two raised eyebrows. The secret pre-arranged signal: “Bertel, why don’t you sneak past the guards and in the back while I finish that boring speech, tu comprends? This will also keep you from shooting more embarrassing pictures.”
That gave me my best laugh of the day. Great photo!
Bertel, forget about Jalopnik. As my late father would say, “they went Methodist”. Call my sister and she’ll tell you what that means.
She pretty?
LOL
Damnit, I’m at work. It’s not appropriate for me to laugh that hard right now.
How many beers have you had?
“NISMO is the first true performance brand of Japan’s major makers,” as Nissan’s marketing chief Simon Sproule tells me at NISMO’s new headquarters in Tsurumi, near Yokohama, today. “The others are only playing around.”
I was always a little foggy on the connection here, but were Comp-Tech and Stillen ever actually part of Honda and Nissan, respectively? I worked for both Acura and Nissan in the early 00′s, and at that time it felt like both companies were sort-of distancing themselves from those go-fast brands, but in the years previous it didn’t feel like they were “playing around”. Dealers carried Comp-Tech and Stillen parts and would install them on brand new vehicles if the right boxes were checked, warranty intact!
Carlos Ghosn? OMG, I thought it was Mr. Bean!
Any details on the rumored NISMO Juke with even more power than the one they displayed in Chicago?
It wasn’t mentioned. I hear there might be a few hand-built ones.
NISMO Juke? I didn’t think it was possible to ladle more ugly onto that thing, but NISMO has done it.
As I recall, the last NISMO body kit I saw on a 370Z was one of the worst ones I ever saw.
Mechanically, they are very impressive, but really…hire some European stylists.
The Nismo Juke was designed by European designers ….
Sshhhshsshhhsshhh!
Don’t tell it’s a Renault or Nissan sales will drop like a rock in NA!
Look for Renault Captur concept car (not the production car being launched soon). There, you’ll clearly see from whence the Juke came.
No, you’ve got it around the wrong way there, the Juke evolved from the Qazana concept car released at Geneva in ’09….. much earlier than the Captur.
Seems you’re correct sir. Sorry! Seems, according to the link following that the qazana did antidate the Captur by two years. Yet Bertel is correct. According to same link the Qazana was drawn in Nissan’s London design office.
http://bestcars.uol.com.br/un13/297-nissan-qazana.htm
Correct, but it’s still not a Renault, Nissan design office is Nissan only, to the best of my knowledge.
Sure. Thanks for the heads up.
If Toyota ever wants to seriously join this club, they should get a new name and acronym. TRD is pronounced turd by everybody except the people who paid extra for the TRD decals.
This is true unfortunately.
TMD would work better.
Leaf NISMO made me laugh.
But the picture which had the back of the Leaf in white made me stare a little. It’s good looking from that angle, in that color.
Well, there was some Yuki Morimoto in the video.
Did you get any questions in for her?