Last tango in the fast lane

In the mid ’80s, I locked into a serious Nissan/Datsun performance obsession. It could have kicked off with my ’82 Datsun Sunny, though this would have been a bit of stretch of the imagination given its normally aspirated 1.2-litre motor — not the sort of thing to unleash radical road warrior dreams. But it did plant a seed and it was a sweet little machine and surprisingly quick, in contrast to all the diabolical English offerings I had endured.

I was living in South Auckland at the time and was an unrepentant petrolhead. Motor racing was my drug of choice and I followed the scene slavishly. Saloon car racing, with the arrival of international Group A formula, was having a serious renaissance here and in Australia and Europe. There was suddenly an exotic air in local racing that had been absent for 15 years.

I was transfixed by this new frontier of motor racing that had hit our tracks in 1985–87 and the new array of machinery on display. In 1986 the Nissan Skyline RS DR30 made a blinding impression