Hagerty Video Transcript

They have a bit of a waiting list of engines to be built holy what in the world that’s a lot of RBS I’m Larry Chen I’ve been shooting car culture all over the world for the past 18 years from the best builds to the fastest races I’ve seen it all in this series I’m highlighting the gear heads that inspire me in our generation we’re at mines this is uh a pilgrimage

Of sorts if you’re a big Skyline guy like I’m gonna come here you’re gonna see this place once at least not so long ago Paul Walker came here and did the whole tour I had a chance to drive some of the mines vehicles and I’m doing the

Same thing now I had my R34 here and I’m just so excited to actually see this place see where these epic engines are built and also we’re here to shoot the bill by Legends r33 GTR which is a full complete car that you can actually buy that’s tuned by mines yeah and we’re

Gonna speak to the founder nicurasan who’s actually come over today to open the shop for us and then we’re gonna have a bit of a technical chat with Nakai Amazon who’s being building the engines and is responsible for the development of you know the the legendary engine the power their demo

Car that we saw in best motoring and all those uh cool JDM videos yeah honestly that’s the video that kind of it up for them I feel like let’s check it out [Applause] RV Yeah so not too many people get this kind of access so you’re uh you’re lucky today this is the engine where the engines get assembled there’s many little locations where stuff gets stored and prepped for each build look at this this is crazy so it’s a kind of small machine shop

Just to do the basics they collaborate with napric for all their head work so you know prepping the file seams and Port polish they have a bit of a waiting list of engines to be built holy what in the world that’s a lot of RBS you know the thing I’m worried about is

That there was an earthquake this morning is this floor even weight loaded for something like this jeez and you know what’s crazy to me is these are brand new engine blocks from Nissan in the Box never opened Arby’s even though Arby’s have not come in a car from Nissan in so many years

This is crazy how many RVs are in here I think Amazon was saying that he’s had up to about a hundred blocks in here waiting 100 one time yeah obviously there’s not that many today but uh I’m so blown away I just I can’t believe I’ve never seen anything like that all

Right so we’ll talk to nikurasan and get a little bit of uh history and walk through about the mind’s philosophy We got Masa here to talk about the r33 but I actually wanted to ask why you went with mines versus so many other companies to build the r33 our concept was to build a perfect well-balanced Streetcar and there’s no one else besides mines that can do their job they’ve been

Executing their demo cars they’re tuning in that way so that’s why we asked Minds to partner with us to build this BBL mines complete r33 GTR there’s a lot of people that might build 900 horsepower 1000 horsepower cars but it’s never been about the power with the minds tuning concept and it’s always

Been a well-balanced streetable well-tamed GTR and that’s what he’s been doing from the beginning until now the concept that we had exactly fit into that category yeah because for you guys you want to offer a car that the customer can actually enjoy on the street and onsl on the track

The thing is my introduction to mines was watching the best motoring video of suchia driving the R34 when he’s basically saying that it was popping wheelies you know over the corners it just seemed like it was just the craziest build like I couldn’t imagine even being able to see that car why did

He want to start tuning GTRs in the first place of course there was an ERA where people were competing for top speed putting in big turbos but at the same time there were people that preferred more balanced more streetable controllable cars and he kind of saw the

Market there and he remembers all Walker coming to his shop he was amazed with the the mines cars acceleration response rather than the the total power itself so although there was a market for big Power he also found that there’s people that prefer the the well-balanced GTRs and GTRs wasn’t made for cornering

But he wanted to make it into a all-around good cornering track car and streetable so he kind of built on that first concept and he just kept on doing it for over the years and he thinks that the fans of his shop grew over the years understanding the full concept of wines

And that’s why there’s such a long wait list to even get your car here in the shop or even get an engine for me you know I just wanted to thank him for really changing car culture worldwide for the better just from being able to drive his cars in video games even has

Just been such a pleasure really he really appreciates those words you know it’s it’s probably one of a tuner’s dream to be appreciated that much and you know he’ll take that compliment to his grave and be happy with it thank you thank you me being such a big Nissan Skyline

Fanboy it was already so crazy to go to minds and see where all those legendary engines were built the fact that they actually handed me the keys to their brand new r33 GTR blew me away and on top of that it only had nine kilometers on it

It wasn’t even broken in the engine wasn’t even dynoed it just had a bass tune so you can bet I drove it very very slow I babied it I was so careful and I did end up putting about 75 kilometers on it foreign they’re gonna show us a little bit about

This build especially the underside everything looks brand new yeah we built the car from the chassis up we took the car apart to its bare chassis and it was taken to garage Yoshida first the chassis was uh redone put some additional spot welds reinforced and repainted so right now we have the r33

Transmission in it but you have a brand new R34 get drag transmission just sitting here that’s actually going in as soon as we leave and on top of that you have a lightweight carbon drive shaft so the concept of this seems like it’s like a lot of R34 running gear it’s not by

Design yes it’s it’s for improvements without going outside of Nissan you know if there’s any good parts that we can you know transfuse into this car from the R34 or even the R35 uh we did and mines does that a lot we need the the get like six-speed

Transmission because the engine is much more powerful now it’s never been dynoed but it should be making 650 to 700 horsepowers so the stock 5-speed transmission would not withstand that tell us about the engine so what are we looking at here I told them please talk about the

Special parts of the engine he says everything’s special first of all I’ve never seen rb26 with this green color why is it green the green color comes from the carbon Parts actually and the green carbon Parts it’s a mine signature color that was kind of put into the the engine

Cover as well so did this engine block start off as a new one from Nissan or was this refreshed from this car all the parts are brand new including the engine block it truly is a brand new car what is uh the engine specs it’s a 2.8 liter

Full complete engine for the BBL car and then what kind of engine management stock ECU but mine’s tuned oh okay it’s incredible that it can make that much power the injector has been increased to 700 CC and then what about like the cooling it looks like it’s pretty stock too

It’s enough these were no stock that brass no aluminum brass is better the Mind same with the grass really it’s it’s a very special engine it’s there’s there’s no part that’s not been changed or that’s not been modified although it looks very stock tell me about the hood

I know this is pretty special yeah the hood is dry carbon we installed the the signature NASA duct on there just like the the R32 that we had built just like the R34 that mines had built we designed the the Strat Tower bar this is based on the mines strut Tower bar

On the exterior the hood that you lifted already the bumper and the trunk is made out of a dry carbon and this is a one piece no way you know we left part of the the dry carbon exposed that’s why it looks like a two or three piece but it’s a one

Piece this is really blowing my mind right now so you have to mask this off and paint it and then this is yes painted different we always drive uh yoshidasana garage Yoshida crazy because we make the we make all these requests I just I can’t believe it this is truly

Unbelievable this piece is so beautiful and it fits so well like the lines and everything the underneath all of this is done so well made to look like the metal yeah paint it painted that is some flex and actually the front bumper is also on piece too with the lip really if you

Look closely yeah okay let me check that out so this is all one piece yes if you if you remember the R32 that you drove in the U.S yeah it was also a one-piece bumper this is exactly like that is there a reason why you wanted to make

This one piece because it would be pretty easy to just use a stock bumper and then have a carbon lower lip area because we wanted to make the entire bumper out of dry carbon make it lightweight the interior is incredible so this is something that you guys

Designed to match the exterior Yes again we’re following the the mines green signature color of the dry carbon so that’s why we completed the interior with uh green and black tone and then the seats there are aftermarket yes they are you have some Minds bits like the e-brake handle but you also

Have your built by Legends custom shift knob and tell me about the dash this looks a lot better than stock so when we decided to do the upholstery we did the whole interior for this car so we have our Alcantara on the dash the doors the seats

It looks honestly better than stock yeah because we changed the color we made it black or matte black to match the entire interior theme and this is a mind steering yes it is pretty much just driving this a couple kilometers on the street today showed me what it would have been like

To drive a brand new r33 GTR [Applause] Um last thing I wanted to talk to you about is price obviously this is a little crazier than what you would normally offer as a car that you build and then try to sell because this was a commission car and they really went all the way yes price wise it would be

Roughly around 500 000 including the base car so the base car who knows 50 to 100 000 depending on the condition yeah maybe more right um and this car was in pristine condition actually so you started with a really nice car we started with a really nice car that we kind of

Had second thoughts about taking it apart because it was in such pristine condition but we still did mines became famous from people seeing all of the demo cars doing extraordinary things but it’s not like you could just call up mind and buy the demo car you can’t do

That no that’s impossible this is the first time that it’s finally possible to do that I think so and that was your 100 intention yes right I wouldn’t say you know we were trying to imitate the demo car but we were trying to make uh the mind’s complete car as complete as possible

To be a mind’s Complete Car Minds thinks that it needs to be done from scratch their concept their ways of thinking is all put in from the chassis the engine the suspension and the brakes it’s all it’s a complete package Thank you