Originally posted by SeanDezart
I confess to a lack of knowledge, bordering on the ignorant of the Skyline range, it's evolution, spin-offs (432 engine ?) and racing pedigree.
Nissan bought Prinz for their engines ?
First Skylines to race and also to race as factory cars ?
Maybe someone could reccomend a book or two ?
Racing pedigree of the Skyline name ( in both Prince and Nissan guises ) would take all night and then some.
But 1963/4 would be generally acknowledged as the proper start of the Skyline name's race career, with the S54 series.
Nissan
merged with Prince rather than buying them. It was a deal 'suggested' ( ie forced smilingly ) by the Japanese government in order to help both sides. Prince was struggling a bit and Nissan needed a bit of an adrenalin injection, but don't kid yourself that this was just a straight buy-up. It was much more complicated than that.
Most books ( as you would expect ) are in Japanese, but you can still glean a lot of useful info. There are a plethora of Skyline-related titles, and the majority of these concentrate on the GT-R side of the story ( with a few GTs thrown in ).
I'd recommend a cheap and easily accessible one as "SKYLINE" - No.25 in Neko Publishing's "World Car Guide" series, which covers most models from ALSIS-1 through to BCNR33. ( ISBN4-87366-155-2 )
The more impressive coffee-table type of book would be Neko Publishing's "SKYLINE GT-R - Volume 1", which covers mainly the C10 and C110 GT-R models, but has a really nice race section ( ISBN4-87366-001-7 ). The Volume 2 covers later models up to the BCNR33 too.