I’ve seen a lot of things in my years, but I’ve never seen a drag racing R32 GT-R turned into a winning hillclimb beast. That is, until now. It’s instantly obvious that when a car has 1200 horsepower on tap it’s going to be fast—it is—but the level of speed is truly mind-bending. The degree to which the driver has to moderate the power through the slower corners is truly astonishing.
Dump on the throttle, power down into the corner, hop off the throttle and carry as much momentum through the corner as possible, but don’t even fucking think about pressing down on the loud pedal again until you get the sumbitch pointed straight as an arrow. What a great way to drive. This has to be a scary machine to pilot.
This recent upload from Hillclimb Monsters on YouTube is pretty obviously an older recording, evidenced by the fact that it was filmed on a series of potato cams. Apparently this car has continued development and now makes over 1400 horsepower, making this a more mild state of tune from around 2014. The car is raced by Desmond ‘Dezzi’ Gutzeit in South Africa, where it has won the Knysna Simola Hillclimb outright in 2014, 2015, and 2016 before losing the overall honors to a 1500 horsepower Nissan R35.
I’ve seen my share of incredibly fast RB-engine machines, and cars with this level of power are generally built for drag racing or standing mile events. That this thing has a proper handling chassis with a good bit of development done in the car’s aerodynamic downforce is something of an anomaly. I sure would like to see more of these kinds of absolutely no-holds-barred builds.
As we get psyched up for the biggest hillclimb event of them all—The 98th Pikes Peak International Hillclimb—this weekend, I’ve been watching hillclimb videos from all over the world. Here’s hoping that at least some of the runs this weekend are as exciting as this crazy Nissan running in South Africa.
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