Beneath the back hatch lies a 2.0-liter inline-six engine. The engine used here was the same as in Skyline production models, although reworked to fabricate a gigantic 200 horsepower for race duty. The customized Skyline engine mated to a British Hewland five-speed manual transmission. Hewland is still in business, creating transmissions for race sequence these days.
The manufacturing of the R380 would be done between 1965 and 1968. Unluckily for Prince, the first year of production was only dissatisfaction — the Japanese Grand Prix was called off for 1965. As an alternative of racing, Prince used the R380’s downtime to test high-speed aerodynamics and break some speed records.
The Japanese Grand Prix came back in 1966, and Prince was prepared with four R380 examples. Those cars secured first and second place making their mark,besting even the newly designed trio of Porsche 906 models.
Prince was taken over by Nissan that same year, and for 1967 revised the car into the R380-II. But these revisions were not sufficient to conquer advances made by Porsche that year, and Nissan placed second, third, fourth, and sixth place. Porsche won by a margin of two full minutes.
Nissan sustained on to make quite a few racing successors through 1980, all tracked back to this novel Prince R380. Some Prince formation and influence stayed in place at Nissan for several years, as well. In the Japanese market, Nissan preserved a dealership line called the Nissan Prince Store. The line was ultimately combined into Nissan Blue Stage, though not until 1999.
Good bye, Prince.
