Event – GTR Festival Sydney – Pt. 1

My alarm was set for 4.30am but it didn’t matter I was awake at 3.45am anyway. It was time to get a red eye to Sydney for the Motive DVD GTR Festival. Our destination was Eastern Creek Raceway, with some 300 or so GTRs in attendance along with a range of cars my travel buddy 2PJZ and I were excited to say the least!

*There are some good sides to having a red eye flight!*

Fortunately the flight was rather uneventful!

We were greeted with blue skies as we arrived at the track, the fog from earlier in the morning was clearing away. Even from the car park we started seeing GTRs, it was quite surreal to see cars you have followed on social media for years just casually drive past!

We headed through the gate and first thing we did – got some breakfast! Fuelled up we headed into the action.

I am going split my coverage into multiple parts as there was just so much to see and do. This first post is going to be an overall look at the day, the posts after that, who knows – there was that much to see!

Walking into the event and there were cars everywhere still arriving!

We first started making our way through some of the exhibitors set up at the start of the display. Within the first few cars I had seen some of the highest quality engine bays I have ever seen.

Big singles were a common theme throughout the day! The same with increased displacement, in this case a 2.8L going by the displacement on the timing belt covers. This 34 also appears to have the optional gold badges fitted.

The Croydon Racing Developments full carbon 34 is a beast of a thing and a car we came upon very early in the day – I didn’t even get that much of a chance to have an in-depth look at it!

It is going to impressive to see this car out on the track.

We made our way through the exhibitors, it was great to meet workshop owners and the owners of the cars they brought out.

B2R Motorsports were looking after a lot of cars on the day, including this Mines built 34. Speaking with the owner it was assembled here in Australia locally but that was after an engine was sent to Mines in Japan, fully built and sent back to Australia!

The B2R Motorsports 34, an 8 second street car – look at the size of that turbo!

As nice as all these cars were B2R Mechanical were here looking after perhaps the greatest GTR of them all – an R34 GTR Z Tune. I was beyond excited to see a Z Tune for the first time in real life, #001 resides in Australia and was on show for the faithful to see.

I had to stand there and soak up all the details of this car.

After taking in the Z tune we moved onto to some of the other cars on display. There were numerous models from 32-35 and various other Nissans to keep looking at.

This was one of my favourite cars on the day: an M-Spec Nur, a great blend of speed and comfort, the ultimate grand tourer?!

Again seeing some cars from social media in real life was slightly surreal.

ON2U – The Lightening Yellow was shimmering in the harsh Aussie sun.

The mumber plate on this bayside blue 34 hints at some serious hardware under the bonnet.

When your car matches the safety barriers!

It wasn’t just GTRs, various Nissans were on display at the ‘Nismo Festival’ which was being held in parrallel at the GTR Festival.

We made our way down to the gymkhana being held at the far end of the event – it was good to see cars being driven hard, plenty of owners weren’t scared to push them around the course.

Cars were heading off at regular intervals.

Owners were then giving their cars time to cool down between runs.

This GTR looked stunning in the sunshine.

The owner wasn’t scared to drive it hard either.

The number plate WAN 64N a tip to the famous highway in Tokyo.

After the gymkhana we made our way down back through the exhibitors, there was one exhibitor we were keen to see: V Spec Performance. They brought along some of the most desirable cars in the GTR world. In no particular order; a Mines R34 N1, a 400R and a Z Tune (the second one at this event!).

The MInes N1 is a famous car – if you have watched many of the old Option DVDs you would know this cars speed.

A mindnight purple 400R, one fo my favourite cars and the first time I have seen one in real life. Very impressive!

Z Tune #015 – this car has recently returned from Omori Factory in Japan having gone a full refurbishment including a colour change! Whether you would change the volour of such an iconic car is up to you but the midnight purple III paint is favourite for many.

The heart of the beast, it was interesting to know that despite allowing them to change the colour of the car (& to fit the carbon fibre intake piping) they wouldn’t allow the fitment of the carbon fibre air box…

That wasn’t it for epic displays, right next to V Spec Performance and their special cars were three N1s, one of each model, on show thanks to Terry the owner.

Imagine having an R32, R33 and R34 GTR N1 in your garage… for one loucky gentleman it is a reality!

As I write this article I realise I haven’t edited any images of Terry’s N1 34 GTR. It had these lovely Nismo LM GT4 rims on it so that is close!

After our first lap we just kept walking around, we would see something we missed the first time around. There were some truly impressive cars there it was all a bit de-sensitizing!

Most of the Nissans present were from the late 80s onwards but there were a few exceptions!

I realised I haven’t included a single pic of an R35 – I have nothing against them but didn’t take that many pics of them! They were on the strip and consistently fast. I will include some more in part 2!

The final part of the day saw us sit down and watch some of the fastest drag GTRs (& a few other models there for competition) tear down the strip. It was quite insane watching just how fast these cars go!

These two were running down the strip in close to 7 seconds!

I will leave it there for the moment as I could continue with this post for a long time! However I plan to do some subsequent posts showing some more of my favourite cars and plenty more images – I just have to edit them first! This includes some cars that I had initially intended to include in this post but ran out of time – keep checking back as I do some follow up posts.

GTR Festival was great and if you are in Australia and have the chance I would recommend going!

Ps I plan to keep sharing content on my Instagram @kurosorablog if you are on there I would appreciate a follow! Thanks.