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What do you do if you want your very own yellow Lamborghini Diablo VT Roadster, but you can’t afford it? No problem, said a man in China, I just build my own.
After a year of welding, painting and thoroughly riveting work, the car was done. It is powered by a Nissan V6 Twin Cam 32, the engine of the old Nissan Skyline.
A complete documentation of the build process can be found at Carnewschina.
Didn’t the old skyline (R32,33,34) have an I-6?
Yes it did, the legendary RB26DETT twin-turbo inline-six engine.
No, the GT-R did, there were many other grades of Skyline besides the GT-R.
Probably the V35 Skyline, aka Infiniti G35.
I wouldn’t mind designing my own car body to fit over an existing platform/engine, but, I WOULD NEVER try to make a car that looks like a more expensive car. Those are “posers”.
Doesn’t it make you a bit of a poser to go on the internet and trash talk someone who actually went and put a car together from scratch? Who cares, nobody thinks it’s a real lambo but the guy obviously loves it.
No – a Poser is:
1.one who pretends to be someone whose not.
2. who tries to fit in but with exaggeration
In this case, building a “Lamborghini” out of a cheap Japanese car is “posing”.
I think the term that would fit what I’m doing could be at worst: “hatin\'”
Skyline isn’t exactly a cheap Japanese car.
Cheaper than a Lamborghini.
It is poseur and not poser!
bigtruckseries, what’s the term for telling everyone on the forum that you have an MB S550 three times per week?
jackass.
Kudos to a real enthusiast! Any schmuck with enough cash can go down to the dealership and buy a Lambo (or Porsche, Ferrari, whatever)… but to actually BUILD one from scratch is amazing!
This is particularly more salient, given that those who are criticizing are probably unable to put together IKEA furniture, let alone anything remotely close to what this man is doing…
lots of conjecture here
first engine photo clearly shows twin turbos
2nd photo shows no turbos but the relatively ubiquitous 1uz-fe…
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/1989_Toyota_1UZ-FE_Type_engine_rear.jpg
that is, the 4.0 liter Lexus LS400 v8
also guy sitting next to gearbox… its a transaxle of some sort… obviously an rwd transaxle to fit a v8 would probably even be beyond the skill of the chinese so is it like the hewlands or the ones used by Factory Five?
I was wondering how a Nissan V6 had 32 valves, unless each cylinder had 5.33 valves. Just one-upped Audi in the wonky engine head department.
Yup, that’s a Lexus 1UZ-FE. Has a wonderful roar at high rpm. Fine choice for a supercar.
Let me know when he builds a Hispano-Suiza.
I laugh when someone criticizes a person like this.
This guy is the definition of a go getter with a can do attitude.
Who the hell cares if he didn’t reinvent the wheel in terms of exterior design of concept (he liked the Lambo, anyways – what’s to change?).
This guy is not:
1) Unmotivated.
2) Timid
3) Lazy
4) Non-improvising
5) and he’s not even non-creative (he’s very creative)
Agreed!
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. ” – Theodore Roosevelt
6) and he didn’t receive government bailout
I’m impressed. For what is essentially a car built in a shed on a shoestring budget, it’s not half bad. Even the interior is decent, with the exception of the skyward head unit. I would have chosen a different color, but that’s just nit picking.
I don’t know how far back we have to go but when I was a kid this would have been about a north american and would have been an article in popular mechanics. Now the north americans are on line criticizing this guy.
I built an electric trike in class before I retired from teaching and (if I haven’t become too old) I’m going to do it again. What I won’t do is go online and criticize someone who has put his personal skin in the game.
Great job. Don’t care what engine or even if it runs.
yes… at the end of the day, the man who gets off his behind and does something, makes something beats anyone who sits behind a keyboard and criticises…
the fact that the car seems to run a Lexus v8 and transaxle makes it cut about even those other chinese who use a putt putt toy 4 cyl. out of a Pinto or something…
I am admitting that Chinese car enthusiast has talent and he is putting it in good use to build the most reliable Lambo. Don’t hate !
More fantastic fab work; outstanding!
That guy is awesome!
In one of the pics it looks like he welded the flange from a Lexus V8 compatible tranny to the transaxle he got. That welding looks bloody well done.
And after hearing a couple of Soarers here with a proper exhaust, I agree, that engine has a proper note for that replica.
A few points you might like to correct in this article:
1. Old Skylines (prior to 2001) never had V6s and then only Japanese market ones.
2. The above point is moot given that this is not even a Nissan engine
3. It is a four cam engine
4. The engine in question is actually a V8
5. The engine in question is clearly a Toyota UZ like this one: http://images.wikia.com/tractors/images/5/57/1989_Toyota_1UZ-FE_Type_engine_rear.jpg
In America he would have been the head of a successful kit car body conversion company that advertises how you can turn your rusty Fox body mustang into an SCCA “winning” supercar through three line ads stuffed between male enhancement products and international mail order brides in the back of Car and Driver before his coke habit forced his shadetree company, run out of a warehouse in South Georgia, to go bankrupt and take with it 100 5000 dollar deposits from starry eyed clients straight to a mansion in Bermuda.
…but not before Car and Driver would have reviewed one of his better built examples as a peerless driving instrument and having more lateral g’s (the true defining factor of ANY car or SUV) than any of the readily available and reliable cars on the market, ignoring the fact it routinely wouldn’t start during the test and bits had a habit of falling off.
Wow- great to see some real DIY car enthusiasts coming out of China. I can’t wait till this guy starts his own kit car company.