Nissan chose the Super Bowl broadcast as the perfect venue to introduce its revolutionary front-engined, front-wheel-drive Le Mans race car, the GT-R LM.
The unorthodox car appeared in as pair of commercials broadcast during the big game, where they would be seen by more than 100 million Americans. This public introduction will be followed up with a week at the Chicago Auto Show, Feb. 14–22, where it will be displayed with other Nissan racing vehicles.
Nissan also released photos from testing and some mechanical specifications of the car, and it is definitely the product of “outside-the-box” thinking.
While every other bespoke racing prototype in every major series follows the common architecture of having the engine behind the driver and ahead of the rear wheels, the new Nissan has its 3-liter twin-turbo V6 ahead of the driver.
While all its competitors deliver most of the power through the rear wheels (using electric-powered all-wheel-drive for brief bursts) the GT-R LM funnels all the power of the V6 and the electric motors through the front wheels. These electric motors are powered by batteries which are recharged every lap from frictional energy scavenged from the braking system—free electricity and free speed.
The GT-R will race in the LMP1-Hybrid class in the FIA World Endurance Championship, facing competition from Porsche, Audi and Toyota. LMP1-H is the fastest class of sports car in the world, where high-tech machinery generates up to 1000 horsepower and top 200 mph while using one-third less fuel than their predecessors from two years before.
