Le Mans engine for next GT-R

The designer of Nissan’s radical front-wheel drive Le Mans racer has given the strongest hint yet its 3.0-litre V6 twin-turbo engine will form the basis of the next generation GT-R ‘Godzilla’ road car’s powerplant.

The next GT-R road car is expected in 2018. The development of the petrol-electric hybrid is being handled by Nismo. The current GT-R is a 3.8-litre twin-turbo V6, but does not have hybrid assistance.

Speaking to Top Gear magazine in the UK, GT-R LM Nismo designer Ben Bowlby said: "The 3.0-litre V6 is a sort of god-child of the true, road-going GT-R," Bowlby said.

"It's a direct injection engine, and the combustion technology, and integration of turbo and intake system within the head design, is all very interesting and highly applicable to the road.

"If it was a crazy engine — super light with a short life — the reality is that it wouldn't be applicable. But it revs to the same as the road-going car — 6500rpm — and is truly an early ancestor of what will be a future Nissan GT-R engine."

Bowlby also explained how racing has helped fast-track the development of this unit, which is proving to be one of the most reliable components on the LMP1 racer.

"I think it's very important development that we shortcut by going racing. We prove that you can do an incredibly efficient and very powerful engine -- we have roughly the same power as the road car [around or just over 400kW] but burn about a third of the fuel doing it.”

What other elements the race car might donate to the next GT-R road car remain unclear.

While the next GT-R road car will be a hybrid, no details of the system have been revealed. The race car uses a Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) harvesting energy under brakes that is then stored and discharged via a Tototrak ‘Flybrid’ dual flywheel system that may not be suitable for road use.

The race car can also be front or all-wheel drive (it will be FWD at Le Mans), the latter made by possible via complex system of gears and shafts that ensure the vital aerodynamic shaping of the car’s rear is maintained. The FWD orientation also means the Nissan runs larger front wheels than rear, opposite to the norm.

Again, a system like that may not be suitable for the road, but Bowlby did offer some hints in an interview with US magazine Road & Track that learnings from the race car other than the engine would be relevant for the road.

"There is relevance to where we're going with road cars,” he said.

"The concept of having highly efficient aerodynamics... The concept of some of the technology in the car from the energy recovery standpoint has benefit for future high performance, yet efficient road cars... [This] is why we're here.

“There are a lot of little pieces to this that are relevant and will change people's perceptions of the technology that Nissan brings to the road in the future. That is really what it is all about."

And if you’re wondering how the current road car and the race car get the same name when they are so different, it is because they share the same petrol V6 engine configuration and position it in front of the driver. All other LMP1 hybrid Le Mans racers from Audi, Porsche and Toyota have the engine situated behind the driver and power the rear wheels.

“A V6 twin turbo, four-wheel-drive [including the Flybrid system], and engine is in the front. It must be a GT-R then,” Nismo marketing and brand boss Darren Cox told Road & Track.

“Then it’s just a marketing job made easy. We’ve got one of them — we’ll just call it that.

"If it was a diesel engine in the back we couldn’t have called it a GTR, could we?”