Nissan R390 GT1 Road-Legal Conversion Is a Twin-Turbo V8 Beast, Sounds Wild

The R390 was born out of Nissan's need for a more powerful race car that would keep up with or even outgun the Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR and the Porsche 911 GT1. Developed by Nismo and Tom Walkinshaw Racing for the GT1 category, the R390 required a road-legal version to obtain homologation for the Le Mans.

But since the rules no longer stipulated- a certain number of cars for 1997 (the minimum for 1996 was 25 examples), Nissan built just one street-spec R390. Powered by a 3.5.-liter twin-turbo V8 good for 550 horsepower, this unique R390 GT1 is currently stored at Nismo's Zama warehouse. And that's probably why the R390 isn't exactly famous.

But the truth is there's more than just one road-legal R390 GT1 out there. That's because one of the eight race cars was converted to street specs once its racing career came to an end. As a result, it's basically the only R390 that's being used on public roads since Nissan's original street-legal unit spends its life in storage.

An extremely rare supercar that many of us will never see in the metal, the road-spec R390 GT1 was recently showcased at Villa d'Este 2022. And even though it's not as famous as the cars it was displayed with (including a Maserati MC12 and a Ferrari F40), it gathered a big crowd thanks to its sleek looks and aggressive-sounding V8.

Unfortunately, the R390 GT1 doesn't have a successful motorsport history to brag about. Even though it was the quickest GT1 car at the 1997 24 Hours of Le Mans, the R390 had to settle for a 12th-place overall due to gearbox issues. Things went better in 1998 when Nissan scored a third-place finish, but the R390 wasn't quick enough to win against the Porsche 911 GT1.