Nismo Festival photo galleries ahoy! The first thing I have to say about Nismo Festival is that it’s a huge event staged over an even larger geographical area. My job there was to experience it and photograph it so I could give a report to my readers. I will be writing this but for now I have time to make these photo galleries available right now.

This first one from Sunday’s festival is a wrap up of as many GT-Rs as we could find at the festival that were standing still at the time. There were more I know of but did not capture every single one.

This unfortunately does not include the car park which contained many many more that we didn’t get time to photograph. I saw a amazingly clean Midnight Purple R33 400R GT-R in the car park and kicked myself for not having my camera on me at that time, such is life. If you’re out there 400R owner, send me your photos!

Anything that was moving or on the racetrack makes it into another photo gallery to be posted in the coming few posts.

Click through the pages below to read more, see the rest of the many images in this gallery and get some background on the cars you will see in the posts to come…

Photos: Those watermarked with GTRBlog.com logo are copyright GTRBlog.com
Photos: Those without GTRBlog.com watermark are owned by GTR-World.net and are reproduced here with permission

Hakosuka KPGC10 Skyline GT-Rs

Introduced in 1972 the coupe version of the outstandingly successful PGC10 four door Skyline 2000 GT-R. Together they’d won 1000 racing victories from 1969 until it was discontinued in 1974 to be replaced with the KPGC110.

Nismo Street Cars: Z-Tune and 400R

Some of the toughest street cars to ever make their way out of Nismo’s Omori Factory onto the streets of Japan.

Interesting trivia, the chief engineer of the Nismo 400R was Takeuchi-san. The very same man who took the above Hakosuka GT-R photos.

1995 Nissan R33 Skyline GT-R LM

Built for the 24hrs of LeMans and raced in 1995 and 1996 finishing 15th outright and 10th in class in 1996. This GT-R was eventually retired to be replaced by the Nissan R390. A completely different animal and also found at Nismo Festival. Didn’t see this beast on the track though, would have been good to see how it did against the R390 and GT500 cars.

Photos: GTRBlog and GTR-World.net.

Group-A Nissan Skyline R32 GT-Rs

The very reason the R32 and the legacy of AWD Nissan Skyline GT-R exists at all is these very cars. Nissan wanted to retire the rear wheel drive R31 GTS-R Group A Skylines and had chosen the HCR32 chassis to build on. Per the rules it was required to build and homologate the road going R32 Nissan Skyline GT-R to do it.

These guys were amazing in their day, winning at home and abroad in Group-A competitions such as the Bathurst 1000 in Australia.

These car also joined the GT-R Super Lap battle against racing GT-Rs from more modern eras on Sunday, we’ll have the report on how that did a bit later. Was really awesome to see them racing against the R35 GT500 cars.

1998 Nissan Skyline R33 GT-R GT500 Race Car

This Pennzoil Nismo Nissan Skyline GT-R GT500 car was driven by �rik Comas and Masami Kageyama to victory in the 1998 JGTC Championship. It was retired that year and replaced with the 1999 R34 GT500 car.

Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R GT500 Race Cars

R34 GT-R GT500 had a long career racing in the SuperGT series from 1999 to 2003. The R34 GT-R managed wins in it’s first (1999) and final (2003) series championships and both of these championship winning cars were there on Sunday.

The Pennzoil R34 GT-R GT500 car was driven by �rik Comas in his back to back championship victory in 1999 after winning in 1998 driving an R33 also.

The XANAVI Nismo R34 GT-R GT500 car was driven by, current 2008 SuperGT champion, Satoshi Motoyama in 2003 to victory with Michael Krumm co-driving. Michael now drives the #22 SuperGT car for MOTUL Autech Nismo team.

Official Fuji Speedway Pace Car

Like Sendai Highland Raceway, Fuji Speedway also uses an R35 GT-R as it’s official pace car. This was often seen out on the track over the course of the day.

SuperGT 2008 Nissan R35 GT-R GT500 Cars

In 2008 the Nissan GT-R makes a comeback to SuperGT GT500 class racing again with the R35 GT-R GT500 cars. Making a historic pole to win plus second place victory in the first race for both the Nismo team cars the comeback was truly great for the Japanese motorsport fans. R35 GT500 GT-R’s went on to win the majority of the season’s races despite heavy weight penalties being applied.

Of course the GT-R of the 2008 season champions, the #23 Xanavi Nismo GT-R driven by Satoshi Motoyama was there on Sunday proudly displaying their victory trophies. As well the other 2008 SuperGT GT500 cars were also in attendance.