Greatest Ever Sports Cars - No. 9 - Nissan Skyline

" At number 9, a car so fast, so intimidating, it wasn't allowed on the streets of North America."

" Skyline, for me, is a dream car. It's like the heartbeat of Japan. And you know, it's the Ferrari of the Orient."

" Youth market today, you can look at it and go, "That's my dream car.""

" It's been described as a PlayStation on wheels. Normal cars tell their drivers about oil temperature and battery power. The Nissan Skyline has its own computer system that tracks and controls everything from g-force to turbo boost to the amount of torque to the front wheels."

" This car has the engine management system that controls all of the sensors, the injectors, everything."

" Banned from US roads, the Skyline has become a much better match for the racetrack in North America. The few that are imported usually end up in competitions like this one. It's called drifting."

" Drifting is basically all about car control. It's sliding the car sideways on a marked course."

" The Skyline is a good drift car because of its ability to channel enormous power to the rear wheels. The true secret behind the success and popularity of this car is that it can be hacked into or tuned."

" You can change it according to the rpm."

" First, the car's computer system is hooked up to a laptop. Next, the factory-installed power and emissions controls are removed."

" In a way, you could consider it hacking."

" Without any governors, tuners can then boost horsepower and speed through a simple entry in their computer. In theory, you could do it to your own car. The difference with a Skyline is that the engine has so much capacity it can tolerate increased horsepower without blowing up."

" You could get a thousand horsepower out of these engines without blowing them up. So it became the benchmark of all tuner cars."

" It looks very discreet. It's rather like a Japanese 9-to-5 businessman going home on the Metro in Tokyo. It's that sort of discreet and yet it punches its real pow. And that's a very powerful, very fast car."

" Besides all that power, the Skyline also has 4- wheel steering and all-wheel drive, huge assets for controlling a sliding car. If your front tires are spinning too much, the car's onboard computer transfers energy to the back."

" And then when the engine is the Touring Car series, it was just incre--, so successful, they had to put a weight handicap on it. It was just a very, very good car. And more than irritated the [unk] out of everybody was that it was Japanese and how they built something that just looks ordinary, is ordinary. It just goes better than anything else the Italians or the Brits can make. I love it. I think it's brilliant."

" It looked fairly benign from the outside. But it was as fast as a Ferrari and actually better behaved through the corners."

" Going into the first turn, this car is slow. It needs more power at the low end or low rpm to make the drift last. Hacking back into the car's computer system, Steve can effectively alter the characteristics of the engine."

" It doesn't have much knock, so it's way little. So I'm gonna change the timing on it."

" Rev it?"

" They gave it little bit more timing so it'd have little more power on the bottom end."

" Okay."

" At one stage, that would have required an engine rebuild. But these days, it can be done with a few keystrokes on a laptop."

" That was enough to give it little more power. It felt good to her, she noticed it. I could notice it from outside, so we're still in a safe zone in the adjustments. We'll see how the next run goes."

" I tell you what, I take my hat off these kids. They do it with their computers and things, and get these things running sometimes as good as a Formula One car runs."

" I have done a 20-second perfectly controlled drift in the Skyline and marveled at the technical prowess. But there's part of me that does not connect with that car."

" It's a big heavy lump. It's not particularly good looking."

" The drifting is fun to watch. You know, I'm sure it's fun to do, but some I beg."

" That was awesome. I'm like, "Wa!" I'm like, "Okay, last run.""

" This Nissan earned the nickname Godzilla for its power and its use of ultra-high technology is revolutionary for sports cars. But it filled a niche that appealed only to the true techno head."