{"id":370147,"date":"2013-03-28T08:00:47","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T12:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportscardigest.com\/?p=45544"},"modified":"2024-12-02T21:10:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T21:10:39","slug":"1964-japan-gp-start-of-the-skyline-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.supercars.net\/blog\/1964-japan-gp-start-of-the-skyline-legend\/","title":{"rendered":"1964 Japan GP – Start of the Skyline Legend"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Skyline GT lined up for the GT-II race during the 1964 Japan Grand Prix<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For more than half a century, motor racing has drawn huge crowds in Japan, but for motorsports fans one race stands out \u2013 the 1964 Grand Prix meeting at Suzuka. That was the day the Skyline legend began.
\nThe participants in that year’s GT-II race lined up on the grid, and among them was a team of Prince Motor Company Skyline GTs. They may have looked like little more than lightly modified sedans, but they were about to do the unthinkable \u2013 challenge the established champions from abroad. The Skylines almost didn’t get to the race at all. To qualify, one hundred units of the production version had to have been made. Prince Motor Company, later to merge with Nissan, only just made the target with the Skyline GT, brainchild of chief engineer Shinichiro Sakurai.
\nThe new car had to have a lengthened nose to house the straight-six, triple-carbureted engine, and several other issues meant that it was far from sorted out.\u00a0Reunited with the number 39 he drove in the 1964 race, Yoshikazu Sunako remembers that at first the modified car seemed far from perfect.
\n“We had extended the car by 20 centimeters. The body balance was very bad and the tires were ‘out’, so that’s why we could only drift when we turned. We slipped and drifted because the tires were bad,” said Sunako. “But these issues actually turned out to be good for us.”
\nAfter a few practice runs, Sunako knew the car was something special.
\n“We finished a lap in 2 minutes 47 seconds, and at that point I was proud to say this was the fastest car at Suzuka,” claimed Sunako.
\nThe saloon model Skyline would have to be quick, as it was up against some serious competition.\u00a0Another late addition to the field was a relatively new Porsche 904 Carrera GTS, a German car that came with a fearsome reputation.\u00a0The Skyline would not defeat the Porsche, a more purposefully built racing with a top speed of over 250 kilometers per hour, but Sunako’s driver colleague, Tetsu Ikuzawa, would edge his way ahead for a lap that all Japan would applaud.
\n“Just before the hairpin curve, Ikuzawa overtook the Porsche, so I thought, ‘Wow, he’s the man!’” recalled Sunako.
\nAs the Skyline led the Porsche, fans at Suzuka \u2013 and around Japan \u2013 went wild.<\/p>\n

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Driver Tetsu Ikuzawa\u2019s No. 41 Skyline GT Overtakes the Porsche 904 GTSPorsche 9<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Skyline GTs make their debut at the Japan Grand Prix, 1964.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The title ultimately went to the German car, but the Skylines made their mark with a clean sweep from second place to sixth. Sunako was in the number two spot, and the plucky driving of Ikuzawa had captured a nation’s imagination.
\nToshiyuki Shiga, now Nissan’s Chief Operating Officer, says that day decided his path in life.
\n“I was just nine years old at that time but I still remember the big news,” said Shiga. “1964 was the moment Japanese motorization began. Nissan always led the initiative with motorsports. I was so happy. It was my dream, and I wanted to enter Nissan.”
\nVeteran race driver Kazuyoshi Hoshino, who himself would become a national hero at Daytona nearly 30 years later, said the Skyline also fired his imagination.
\n“This is the car that became a trigger for Japan motorsports and I was obsessed by it. The reason I got into motorsports was because of this 54B,” said Hoshino. “I chose this path in life because of this and if it didn’t exist, I would have chosen another path in life.”
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