Skaife hails Nissan back in Supercar field

MARK Skaife sees the return of Nissan to the V8 Supercar grid from next year as "evolutionary, rather than revolutionary".

The Nissan supercar

SUPERCAR legend Mark Skaife sees the return of Nissan to the V8 Supercar grid from next year as "evolutionary, rather than revolutionary".

Skaife, the architect of Nissan's Car of the Future project, was in Melbourne yesterday as the covers came off the prototype Nissan Altima to be driven by former Holden drivers Todd and Rick Kelly.

"Today is an emotional one for me because of the history and the lineage is quite nostalgic for me, watching the old Nissans up on the screen racing at Bathurst all those years ago," Skaife said.

Skaife was behind the wheel of a Nissan Skyline to win the final two races of the 1992 Australian Touring Car season to clinch the championship, before co-driving with Jim Richards to win Bathurst the same year.

"This is also a fantastic endorsement of Australian motorsport -- for a car company to have been outlawed out of the sport at the end of 1992 to the day the regulations are opened up that they come back 20 years on is not just fantastic, it is also very, very powerful," he said.

"To see the level of energy, enthusiasm, the technology that has been applied, to the look and the feel as part of this participation makes it a very exciting period for V8 Supercars."

The fifth generation of the Altima sedan goes on sale in Australia for the first time next year in a 2.5-litre four-cylinder version and a 3.5-litre V6. It will replace the Maxima.

The Altima has sold in the US since 1993. It evolved from the Nissan Stanza, which was a rebadged Bluebird in the US.

Rick Kelly, the team's commercial director, said the shift to Nissan after seven years of campaigning in Holden Commodores was a dream come true. "I see this as the most exciting time in our sport in two decades," he said.

Older brother Todd said: "The statistics just to get the Nissan prototype to this stage beggars belief.

"It has taken 70 staff at the team's workshop in southeast Melbourne some 23,000 hours to design and build the car at a cost of about $1.5 million.

Technically, the Nissan Altima V8 Supercar has been designed and built to the category's new Car of the Future regulations, which include 18-inch wheels, an all-in-one rear suspension with the gearbox at the back of the car.

The 2013 V8 Supercars season opens with the Clipsal 500 street race in Adelaide from February 28 to March 3.