As is traditional with Yamamoto-san's philosophy, very little work was performed on the engines of each car. Yamamoto took a page from the N1 book when it came to engine design. Though each engine is torn down completely, it's only balanced and blueprinted before it's put back together in an effort to decrease friction. The Former N1 car creator uses weight as his weapon, not high horsepower. This allows his cars to keep the same broad powerband as stock yet still accelerate ferociously.
The interior of each car remains mostly stock, short of a few expertly crafted pieces, including a full STACK instrument cluster in the RSX and the sickest street car rollcage we've ever seen in the Z.
The rollcage is braced and welded to the frame of the car in so many different places we weren't sure how many points it was - we lost count at 16, and there wasn't even a bar over the windshield or above the door windows. Yasu knows those bars can cause severe injury and even death when on the street without a helmet, so the stock frame was reinforced instead. Amazingly, with all of these reinforcements and bracing, the Opera Z weighs only 62 pounds more than stock. It's pretty easy to guess that the producer of GT4 and owner of Polyphony Digital Inc. isn't exactly going to be riding around in a rickshaw, but the attention to detail really must be seen in person to appreciate.
Unlike any of the other cars Yamamoto-san has created, the 350Z sports a subtle body kit penned by Yamauchi himself and put into production by Razo. You can actually buy one here in the States through Razo distributors. During high-speed testing, it was found that the wing alleviated a low-pressure area and allowed air to flow more directly over the rear of the car, resulting in a 10km/h increase in top speed while still making a marked improvement in downforce. Wonder if they found that out through testing on GT4?
A 300-page manual could be written on the build process of each of these cars, and an additional 300 pages could be spent documenting each build with photography. Think of this as a quick summary to remind you that whatever it is you've done to your street car ain't nothin'.
The Virtuoso
At 4 years old, an extroverted and inquisitive Yasuyoshi Yamamoto sat atop his father's lap, behind the wheel of not your typical driving school shitbox, but a Nissan 510 Bluebird. At 4, no ar is more intimidating than another, and the curious young boy quickly learned the shift pattern and how to work the steering wheel. By 5, he knew when each gear was to be selected, often prompting a proud father with a tug on the hand when a downshift was required or when to turn the wheel.
By twelve, Yasu found his way into karting, racing a 100cc kart to a 3rd place finish overall in the Japanese Kart GP series. By 14, he placed 1st overall in the All-Kyushu Kart series and 3rd in the nation.
When he wasn't racing, he spent much of his time in his grandfather's garage, where he learned many of the extreme chassis fabrication techniques utilized in the cars he's since produced. If that wasn't enough, his dad was a sheetmetal craftsman, and Yasu learned firsthand as dad expertly used rare techniques such as the English wheel to manipulate metal.
Like so many great automotive minds, Yasuyoshi Yamamoto was brought up in a garage full of flying sparks and on C16 race gas fumes at the track. So It's not surprising that a killer time attack car can come from the hands of Yamamoto, and it's even less shocking that it can be driven to a ridiculously fast time of 1 minute, 1 second around Tsukuba Circuit with a near-stock motor by the same man.
It's tough to get information out of the painfully modest Yamamoto, but we were able to uncover enough to make our heads spin:
SCC: You mentioned you built or helped to build a Civic that raced in N1. Which car was it?Yamamoto: Oh, that was the Spoon Civic. It was a well-balanced car.SCC: Wow - that's a famous machine. So that was the car you built for N1 then.Yamamoto: There were others, but yes.SCC: Which other Civics did you build?Yamamoto: Not too many - the Gathers Civic, the Take One Civic and the Razo Civic. There was a DC5 Integra for the Macau Cup, but that's not a Civic.SCC: Good lord man, you keep busy! That's quite the build resume!Yamamoto: Oh, my resume [assuming he misunderstood the original question]...You probably have not heard of the Group A series Skyline GTRs or the N1 GTRs...SCC: Try us.Yamamoto: There was an R32 race car in Group A and an R33 and R34 I did for N1... the Axia Skyline, the BP Skyline, and the Razo Skyline. I built the Opera S2000 and the ASM S2000 for Time Attack racing. I am perhaps most proud of my five years at Shift [a famous tuner in Japan known for its Falken Skyline, among other touring cars].
We were at a loss for words. The casual air with which the man speaks of such projects is unbelievable. It took almost a month to get our hands on his racing resume, which is as long as it is diverse. The cars range from GT300 cars to TQ-Midget machines here in the USA, and the resume is dotted with 1st and 2nd Place finishes. Our hats are off to a man who has truly found his calling.
Virtual Road Test:
Opera 350z vs Stock Nissan 350zIn GT4, the Opera 350Z boasts roughly 70 extra horsepower over stock. Unfortunately these additional ponies don't make much of a difference except on the straightaways. The stock 350Z pulls smoothly and continuously from the 4,500-rpm range all the way to redline. The Opera Z launches a bit quicker, as seen in the quarter-mile times, with the same signature VQ35 rumble but a slightly stronger hum as it accelerates.
My best times at the Tsukuba Circuit in the stock 350Z were beaten by the Opera version by almost 4 seconds - not as great a difference as in the S2000 battle, which tells me that Opera Performance's secret chassis and suspension formula can't compensate for the sheer weight of the factory Z33 (3,328 lbs.). In fact, the Opera's handling is very similar to the stock car, with a nearly identical feel in most cases, yet it produces a lower lap time.
The stock Z had a bit more understeer which made it more difficult to maintain that perfect line through Tsukuba's tight turns. With an improper entry at the hairpins, I often couldn't apply enough braking force and would be left understeering into the dirt shoulder.
I suspect the Opera set up is far more specific for a single driver (Yamauchi) who relies less on the brakes and more on perfectly timed downshifts to slow the car and keep the engine in the high-rpm range and at the proper speed just before the apex. It's a different style of driving from my own but fun to learn nonetheless. - Thomas Syto
(For the test, manual versions of both cars on soft compound tires were run on the Tsukuba Circuit in Japan. GT4's automatic gearbox was used at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway dragstrip. Driving aids were turned off and a standard PS2 controller was used.)
2004 Special Edition
Opera Performance 350Z
Horsepower: 350 bhp
Torque: Unknown
Best Tsukuba Lap Time: 1'06.45
Best Las Vegas Strip Quarter-mile: 13.3
2004 Nissan 350Z (USDM version)
Horsepower: 285 bhp
Torque: Unknown
Best Tsukuba Lap Time: 1'10.45
Best Las Vegas Strip Quarter-mile: 13.67