While just about everything on an R34 is exotic by dint of being on an R34, the Brembo brakes on Walker's car take exotic to a whole other level. Measuring 15 inches in diameter up front, each rotor is made from titanium and squeezed by eight-piston calipers operating on Brembo's monoblock pads. The rear brakes are also Brembo titanium rotors, but they're 14 inches in diameter clamped by four-piston calipers and monoblock pads. With brakes this spectacular, you expect the car to accordion into a 6-inch thick disc when you hit the binders. Just outboard of the brakes are 265/35ZR-18 93W Dunlop SP Sport FM901 tires on Prodrive Racing wheels.
Because the car was built for track work, ASC fabricated an eight-point roll cage for the Skyline that could be in the Guggenheim. The interior also carries Nismo seats with four-point harnesses, a Nismo steering wheel, gauge cluster and shift knob and a brace of HKS Chrono Meter gauges monitoring boost, engine temperature, oil pressure and exhaust gas temperature. One oddity is that the speedometer is marked in kph, but actually reads in mph. This blew our minds the first time we merged the monster onto the freeway. We quickly ripped through a couple of gears and put the speedometer on 120 thinking that was about 80 mph. Nope. It was 120 mph. We slowed down, but not before relishing in the car's perfect high-speed manners.
Outside, there's a Nismo front bumper and side skirts, and Modern Image upped for the graphics. It looks nasty, but not too nasty. You know, Carmen Electra nasty, but not Courtney Love skanky.
We had a full day planned with Walker's Skyline and started with a trip to the all-wheel-drive Dynojet at K&N in Riverside, Calif. There it spun the rollers to the tune of a peak 414 hp at 7050 rpm and a chunky 323 lb-ft of torque at 5550 rpm. The most impressive element of the test wasn't peak, but the enormously friendly size and shape of the power curve. From 5000 to 9000 rpm, this car is an animal. That's a big, fat rpm range of sweet horsepower. Enrico, who baby-sat the car throughout the day, however, was disappointed, claiming boost controller problems and 450 hp at the wheels on AEBS's chassis dyno the week before.
Unfortunately, for straight-line testing we dragged the car out to California Speedway in Fontana, where the fart that is L.A. air quality originates. On the sort of July day where the sky is the color of burnt toast and you could broil a pork chop on top of the strip's Port-O-Potty, Walker's Skyline did run impressively. With Enrico satisfied that the boost controller problems were solved, he took the wheel and began to make runs down the track. Enrico drives the car all the time. In fact, he drove it up from San Diego that morning, so instead of beating on the car while one of us got used to the right-hand drive, we just figured he should make the runs. We also figured if the car broke, we'd rather he be driving.
The car breaking never seemed to enter Enrico's mind. He began to click off runs, one after another, launching the car at 6000 rpm and tearing through the gearbox at 9000 rpm. The kid could drive, and the car was fast. He made seven passes down the track, recording a best e.t. of 12.5 seconds at a very impressive 117 mph. Considering the car isn't set up for drag racing and the day's oppressive heat, that performance isn't just not bad, it's damn fine. Then, on the eighth run, the car broke. Or as one observer noted, "It done blowed up good." We're just glad Enrico was driving when things went bad.
"Basically the turbos were surging," Mr. Del Mar explains a few weeks after the test, further reminding us there were only 386 miles showing on the odometer at the time and they were still chasing down bugs. He says because of the surging, the computer decided to save the engine by going into a limp-home mode. He didn't offer any explanation about the oil coming out of the blow-off valve.
Due to the car refusing to rev over 3500 rpm, we weren't able to run our skidpad and handling tests, but earlier in the day we did do some braking tests, and the results are impressive. If we ever decide to slow the Earth's rotation, these brakes might do the trick. The car managed to stop from 60 mph in a brief 119 feet. Considering the Skyline is no lightweight, that's about as good as street brakes get. Plus the ABS made hard stops a no-brainer and heat was simply not an issue.
In our brief drive of the car, its benign manners were obvious. The seating position is perfect, the steering is quick without being vicious and the ride is better than any project car we have here. And before it took a dump, the engine was as sweet as any we've ever experienced, reving to 9000 rpm like it was nothing. Even the noise is subdued with plenty of turbo sounds, but no hard-core whistling, pops and crackles.