Nissan Primera Super Touring

[Jimmy Magnusson]

Trying to wrap my head around this. Early part of the 1990s the Super Touring Primera's were developed by Janspeed wholesale, but that did of course change at some point. Going by the Super Touring Register the builders listed are usually Janspeed, RML or NME. Now I know of course RML took over the running of the cars for 1997, but I can't quite figure out how the work load was distributed. There were plenty of Nissans being run in the mid-to-late 90s, in the UK, Germany, Spain, Japan etc. What I can't quite figure out is if the cars were all built in one location and shipped away, or if NME did the initial work and let the local tuners do their thing from there. I mean, the JTCC cars look noticeably different from the European versions, but still have NME chassi plates.

So how did the process work from 1995 onwards? Who built the cars each year, what part of the build did they have responsibility for? Lots of people invovled here - Janspeed, NME, Rouse, RML, Judd, IES... What did the NME team look like? The organization was headed up by Alec Poole at the time and I know Richard Divila worked with them but not much else.

[KA]

That's a question! As you say, the early cars (the black 'Castrol' cars, and red 'Old Spice' cars) in the BTCC were Janspeed, but after that it seems to get a lot more complicated- and looking at the details of individual cars on Supertouring Register seems to complicate it further, as some cars seemed to move around between series...

As I remember the main early Nissan campaigns in Europe were Janspeed in the BTCC, cars run by BMS Scuderia Italia and Rosberg in Germany and the Repsol cars in Spain, but I've no idea how it fitted together.

Who (ie which actual team) ran the Spanish cars- was there an in-house 'Nissan Spain' race team, or was it contracted out to a separate team to run the programme, as with the other programmes?

[JDog]

I think from '96 onwards NME supplied the shells (which were fabricated at Gartrac).

Rouse ran one NME shell early '96 and one older Janspeed (more conventional engine position and non reverse head) then upgraded late in the season to another new spec shell. This was all too late as RML already had the contract for BTCC '97, i THINK they ran NME shells but did their own development.

Certainly all the Primera's ive worked on (a good few) have had NME chassis plates.

[Umai Naa]

The Japanese cars were a variation of the Primera, and built to slightly different specs.

Although, I doubt this would make much difference during th construction of the body shell.

[Craner Curves]

In 1993 you had the unusual situation of the two Janspeed cars of Kieth O'dor and Win Percy on Yokohamas, then the seperate entry of Tiff Needell in the development Primera run by NME on Dunlops.