IN THIS FEATURE Waiting patiently Flatters the average driver A road-legal race car Devastatingly capable There's always a catch isn't there?

Thank the boys from NISMO - Nissan Motorsports International Co Ltd. Formed back in 1984, NISMO is the company's motorsport arm with a long record of competition in GT series, rallying and one-make race series.

But, you ask, how is it that Nissan are producing a Skyline some three years after production of the last GT-R R34 ended? Well, just 20 of these NISMO Skyline GT-R Z-tune cars will be built. Actually, that should be rebuilt, as these are used Skylines - NISMO went in search of twenty GT-R R34s with less than 20,000 miles on their clocks and no body damage. Which is harder than it sounds…

The NISMO-modified engine

Now it gets interesting. The NISMO crew took the original R's 2.6-litre straight-six and bored it out to 2.8-litres, swelling power to a colossal 500bhp. Then it applied everything it has learned from successfully contesting the Japanese GT Championships for over a decade to create, effectively, a road-legal race car.

And this car really is oh-my-god quick. For the record, over the quarter mile sprint, the Skyline Z-Tune will leave a Porsche 911 GT3, BMW M3 CSL and even a Ferrari F50 for dead - and by a large margin, too.