Not long after the R32 GTR was banned from ATCC...Coincidence?

@Merv Stent Didn't HSV use the old Nissan factory after Nissan closed?

@@IpoopThere4IAM The factory closed before the GTR was banned

Oooh spooky. I was about to make the same comment and I am a Chris H too. We are two separate people, I promise.

the wagons were assembled here but the chassis were made in japan as they shared chassis with the japanese wagons, the aus spec 4 doors were made here 100%, japanese 4 door versions are much different then what we got, barely the same car at all!

The saloon had live axle as well. Very nice with manual transmission. And Hubnut > Regular Cars. ;)

It is funny how we went from wallowing, understeering Holdens and Fords (though Falcons were better than Kingswoods until RTS came along, but Commmodores got softer and softer up to the VN in standard kit), has 20 years or so of reasonable Falcons and Commodoes then everyone went 4WD mad. While it might be true that a modern crossover handles at least as well, likely better, than a stock Commodore/Falcon/Camry of 20 years ago, a standard car now handles getter than most "SUV"'s unless you are talking high-end models. We like to laugh at Ameticans and their love of soft, wallowy suspension, but traditional Aussie cars were not so great outside of the Skyline and higher spec models.

Yeh, from the ninetees to now, the favorite color for car manufactories are black and black and off course black.

@@gerardandrew4820 Yeah they think they're getting adventurous if they put some silver or accent colours around the dials etc......its pathetic.

They did drive better than Ford/Holden rivals at the time.

That triggers my memory. Wheels praised the IRS of the previous (Japanese-built) version in a comparison test, only to encounter the live axle in the new (locally-built) model.

@Tone. Even worse was the 200B,which many in Australia considered was a 180B with 20 more mistakes/faults. I had a friend who had a Nissan 200B,which was a dreadful car in the wet, would easily lose grip at the slightest provocation

@Tone. At least the Australian 180B still has IRS, which was removed shortly after the 200B came, with a few rare examples having the IRS fitted as in overseas markets.

"onward with mediocre (at a premium price" Why should that matter if that's what us Aussies wanted?

Eghh .. the semi trailing arm suspension in the datsuns was rubbish (as it is on commodores from vp onward) .. just a bad idea for daily driver .. adds virtually nothing in handling or performance over a live axle . Just increases tyre wear .. a tyre scrubbing mess due to constant toe and camber angle changes . Been there bought the hype with my first car a datsun 1600 .. was always wasting money on tyres that wore the inside edge off in a 1/2 the time of other "simpler" designs .. ford with their falcon didnt even bother trying to use a crappy semi trailing arm design and kept live axle till the Ba (2002) and thank god ..

You really have to try the Skyline in a manual. They are a great driving car.

The VL Commodore had a turbo version.

I know someone who until recently had a Pintara version of this wagon i.e. the little CA20 SOHC four...allegedly when according to the badgework, but in actual fact had a fully engineered for street use 650 odd horsepower RB25 with full billet internals and a manic appetite for revs and tyres. I got taken on a ride in a local industrial area on a weekend...very torquey and placid at normal street driving speeds, felt better and smoother at low speed than the 5 speed VL Commodore with RB30E I had....but, dial up about 3 odd thousand and sidestep the clutch and I repeatedly decided I was going to die, and very quickly. Runaway out of control high speed crash total destruction sort of feeling....but the driver kindly kept it all together despite worn spindly 205/65 14 tyres and I didn't die even once that day. Glad to say I'm still alive even now

VALLY the wagon was unique to Australia. Nissan Australia wanted to fully compete with GM and Ford in the fleet and family markets, so built their own wagon. R31s were also sold here with a twin-spark, SOHC CA20, but badged as Pintara

@@bafg182 Interesting bit of info there, thanks.

Over 14 years I owned a 87 GX Sedan and a 88 GX Station Wagon. Both were 5 speed manual with power steering and air conditioning. I owned the sedan for 8 years until it was stolen, recovered, and written off by the insurance company. The wagon actually belonged to my parents who didn't need the car and sold it to me for $1800 at the time. I owned that car for 6 years and sold it when my then wife and I sold our old cars to buy one good new one. The outside colour of both cars was exactly the same as the one in the video. I can confirm the sedan had the same live rear axel as the wagon (Borg Warner BTR 78). Even the range topping Silhouette Ti model had the same engine and transmission as the base GX. The only change was adjustments to the suspension. The interior of both cars I had was the grey interior. The GX dash lacked the oil pressure and battery charge meters. The dash boards failing was a common issue but my mechanic knew someone who could fix them. A hundred dollars well spent. What were they like to drive? The torque of the 3.0 six was such that the car, even in manual form, was VERY easy to drive. You could put the car in 5th gear at 40-50 kph and it would cruise along quite happily. Fuel consumption was actually better than equivalent 4 cylinder Mitsubishi Magna and Toyota Camry. On extended country driving (and not economy driving) 8l/100km was easily done. Hills such as Mount Victoria were not beaten but flattened. The seats were very comfortable. On the open road it would cruise at 140 kph without a problem. Handling was excellent. Sports Commodores could beat me in the straight but couldn't follow me through corners (even the wagon). The power steering had good feel and feedback and you could feel the car on the road. Gear shifting was very easy. Even my then wife said the car was so easy to drive you did everything by instinct and reflex. If you thought about it you were doing it wrong. The six was always silky smooth. Way smoother than V6s. The sedan also had fold down seats but the gap wasn't very big. The wagon could swallow surprisingly large loads with the slope of the rear window being the only issue. The intermittent wipe was a fixed ratio. But other that than the car had everything it needed and nothing it didn't. Elegant simplicity. I still miss the cars. They were an intermediate size between the medium and full sized cars. They were big enough to be comfortably roomy without being awkwardly large. They were easy to park with the power steering. The station wagon was a "sports wagon" before BMW, Holden, and other companies started the fad in the mid 2000s.

See my post above. While the power was adequate, the Skylines were light. 1290kg for the sedan and 1320 kg for the wagon. A VN Commodore was in the high 16s and the Falcon was a porky 1800+. And later models were heavier. Not much safety tech but the brakes (4 wheel discs) were very good stoppers, even being pre-ABS.

Had a 1982 Mitsubishi Sigma with a wholly green velour interior. It was hard on the eyes!

Looks like you could get a double mattress in the back, and a couple of surfboards on the top.

These actually were common as rep's cars back in the day, especially the 4 cylinder Pintara version, which was targeted towards the fleet buyers.

or disconnected to stop miles going on reading

Odometers on these were made out of crap. None of them are still working.

Iv had both lernt to drive in a bluebird an boagt a saloon version of this car 13years ago was the 3.0 auto man was that a powerful car about 3 foot longer than the bluebird an about six inches wider too never had a car that was able to munch that much fuel in such a short period good fun drifting it around the east coast doing donuts under Sydney harbour bridge 😋

I also used to work with the Vic Govt at the time, but as we did a lot of rural driving and we has occasion to have Judges in the passenger seat, we got the Skyline. Four up (and sometime 5) and a boot full of files, you could cover 3 or 4 hours quite comfortably

@Tone. If I recall, all Skylines had the same lights. The early models with the square front hid the rear globes under a horizontal bar, giving the effect of two horizontal bars of stop and brake goodness. The update gained the slopier nose and and the cook-top tail lights. The wagon missed out because wagon, and the Pintara presumably missed out because undeserving of upgrades. It stuck with the boxy front (and no additional driving lights) until the end of that generation.

@@steved3702 The series 2 was often preferred because of the driving lights. They literally turned night into day when driving outside urban areas.

@@andrewthorpe3219 Nice. I've got an SY Territory which I think got the best ever performance out of a standard halogen bulb.

for such a large car they have a good turning circle

I had my 86 Cressida for 27 years. Such an amazing car

You would be correct mate. Another bonus of sharing the Borg Warner diff (and other parts)with Commodore, Falcon and Mitsubishi Sigma, is that the cost per unit of the diffs were driven down due to even larger scale of production. Might be interesting to note that Holden also removed the IRS from the German designed Commodore as part of local development. It was a very similar design to the Nissan IRS, so maybe both car makers encountered durability problems in testing? Was a winner for Borg Warner though!

Not that mention the semi trailing design is pretty rubbish .. adds weight .. messes up the tyre wear ..

@@slimshady2777 Tyre wear was a major issue when Holden gradually introduced the original Opel IRS into the Commodore because they did that on the cheap, leaving out the toe-control links that prevented the splay at the rear, which caused the inner edges of the tyres to wear quickly. It was possible to buy a kit to rectify this as all the motnting points were there. Not sure if it was the VY or VZ that finally saw the toe-control links as standard...25 years after the Commodore first hit the road, and just shy of 40 years after the Opel R-platform was introduced with the full IRS.

Karl Adams . My sister had a 1986 Pintara sedan (which was just a 4cyl version of the Skyline, first of the unleaded cars) - 2.0L four (twin plugs per cylinder) but "NONE of the power" as Ian would say. It wasn't a terrible car, but it made my 2.2L Honda Accord feel sprightly in comparison.

I hired one in Sth Aust. It was terrifying...

Pintara... now that triggered a memory. I had an ex-girlfriend in the mid 2000s that had a 2nd gen one. I remember driving it... pleasant drive. Soaked up the road well if I recall. And I also recall being accosted at the driver's window by an older Asian lady who got out of her car while we were stopped at the lights - and to this day, I still have no idea what that lady was ticked off about. Maybe she didn't like the Pintara.

Never drove a Pintara myself, though I do recall driving an N12 Pulsar 1.5 auto - and the lack of performance was pretty breathtaking. You could put the boot in and it didn't even have the courtesy to make louder noises while not going any faster, it just ignored you entirely...

@@MattExzy Drove the Ford Corsair badge engineered twin of the 2nd Gen Pintara in sedan form. Very dull red blancmange of a car, though it was ok for just driving around the suburbs. Different nose, and actually a pretty nice looking car in a boringly bland conventional way. But dull as ditch water to drive. 2.0 litre four with a four speed auto. The bigger 2.4 litre engine made a fair bit more power and torque and allegedly way more exciting, in the TRX Nissan. But not sure if the Ford Corsair came fitted with the 2.4 donk. Lovechild of the Button car plan - late 1980s/early 90s, which also gave us such curios as 'The Ute - By Nissan'. An XF Ford Falcon ute with aforementioned Nissan badges. Or the Holden Nova - actually the then current Toyota Corolla, same thing with the Holden Apollo vs the Camry, Conversely the Toyota Lexcen was a VN onwards Holden Commodore. The idea was that too many companies were building cars in the very small market that was Australia. Labor Party Senator John Button devised the plan to model share between what turned out to be a Holden-Toyota alliance, and Nissan pairing up with Ford. Hence the somewhat tackily renamed Falcon ute. I believe also it was designed to toughen up the Australian car industry to cope with what were going to be lower and lower protection tariffs as time went on. Somehow Mitsubishi got sort of left out in the cold in all this and had no one to pair up with.