Ever wondered, how do movie makers film high-speed chases and how are they able to keep up with some of the fastest speed machines on the silver screen? Wonder no longer thanks to Nissan, who’ve showed off their purpose-built GT-R camera car.
The Nissan GT-R camera car came as a solution for a problem Nissan created. They needed something that could keep up with the razor-sharp 2020 GT-R Nismo around a circuit and their solution was a phone call to Mauro Calo, a professional precision driver and an automotive video expert. You may not have heard of the gentleman but it’s a fair assumption to say you may have seen some of his work.
Calo is known for his work on big-budget movies and automotive TV shows, the latter including BBC’s Top Gear and Amazon Prime’s The Grand Tour. Yes, two of the world’s biggest motoring shows enlists Calo’s services, who then calls upon a high-performance SUV camera car such as the W163 Mercedes-Benz ML55 AMG with a high-speed mobile crane – dubbed the Russian Arm – mounted on the roof to film those scenes.
But as Calo points out, the AMG-powered Merc just isn’t agile or fast enough to keep up with some of the cars they film. Enter the GT-R. The Nissan that Calo got his hands on was sourced by the manufacturer, which was then stripped to fit a bespoke tubular structure that was welded to the chassis so that it could hold the weight of the carbon-fibre gimbal camera mounting system.
“When I started to think about developing a high-performance camera car, I quickly realized that the Nissan GT-R was the only car that would meet my criteria,” said Calo. “It has supercar performance, with outstanding all-wheel drive handling and stability. It’s famously reliable, and it can seat the team I need to operate the camera system. There were no other contenders.”
Thanks to the GT-R’s low centre of gravity, adjustable sports suspension and (quite importantly) four-seater configuration, the GT-R is the perfect base to mount a camera rig of this type. And once the performance of the VR38DETT twin-turbo 3.8 V6 was deployed via its all-grip drive system, it’s easy to see why Calo chose it as the camera car for filming the 2020 GT-R Nismo around the Lausitzring racetrack in Brandenburg, Germany. Enjoy the video.
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