It’s hardly an unusual thing to meet a bloke who’s excited to talk to you about his car, pop the bonnet, and point at all the little things that make that model special. What does make that a bit more unusual is that happening right in the heart of Circular Quay, and that bloke being the head of a globally recognised performance car brand.
Yutaka Sanada is the president and CEO of Nissan Motorsports & Customising Company, which you’ll better recognise by the brand name NISMO. As project manager for the R35 GT-R, one of a number of roles he’s held in his 30-year tenure at Nissan, Sanada-san is a man who holds legend status among Japanese performance car enthusiasts.
When he saw the rare Nissan Fairlady Z NISMO Type 380RS parked up next to the current Nissan Z NISMO with the iconic backdrop of Sydney Harbour Bridge, his eyes immediately lit up. Only 300 of these racing-engine-powered cars were ever made, and Sanada-san has one in his garage back at home.
The way he spoke about all its unique features was in the way only an owner – and a genuine petrolhead – ever could. When the first thing he said to a small group of Aussie media including Retro Rides that morning was that he “wanted to do this as casually as possible”, he clearly wasn’t kidding.
The reason for his visit was two-pronged, partly to announce the launch of the first NISMO Performance Centre to open in Australia, slated for Melbourne in the latter half of 2026 ahead of wider expansion across the country, and partly to attend GT-R Festival in Parramatta, the largest of its kind in the world.
Even though the revitalised NISMO brand – originally founded in 1984, but recently merged with customisation brand AUTECH in 2022 to create Nissan Motorsport & Customising Company – is only at the start of its planned expansion in the Australian market, it’s clear how highly-regarded our country’s automotive sector is by Sanada-san.
“I know there is a lot of high-end engineering knowledge here in Australia, so I want to collaborate more widely with our partners especially in Australia as there is really amazing and advanced technology here,” he explains.
Sanada-san is also clearly well aware of the unique nature of our market, in terms of both the vast number of brands on offer today, but also the unique nature for Japanese performance cars in our market.
“JDM expansion is very well recognised Australia and the United States, but also in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East,” notes Sanada-san.
“But the GT-R, Z, and Nissan brand community is so wide here in Australia, and I think the culture of seeking performance out of sports cars is so unique, ranging all the way up to 3000 horsepower builds, so there’s a very wide variety of expectations here in Australia.
“If we want to make a direct contact point with NISMO customers, Australia is the best place in the world for that.
“In Australia, out of such a wide choice of brands, I really appreciate customers keeping with Nissan. But I don’t just want to appreciate them [while attending the GT-R Festival], I want to learn more. What type of parts and specific service are expected from our customers?
“I want to understand the wider community of customers in Australia more. I want to keep coming to Australia much more frequently, myself and my team, to understand more what’s the expectation.”
That’s where the launch of NISMO Performance Centres here Down Under factors in. Offering genuine parts, servicing, merchandise, and a direct link to NISMO’s Omori Factory in Japan for complete restorations or restomod builds, Australia was chosen as one of the first markets to launch into outside of Japan because of the sheer number of JDM imports in this country.
“When we look at the data, particularly R32 and R33 Skyline registrations, some of it is estimated and isn’t broken down by grade level, but Australia has imported somewhere around seven percent of all R32s, up to nearly 36 percent of R34s that were ever built,” explains Michael Hill, aftersales director for Nissan Oceania.
“So, if you think about what the opportunity is here, obviously they’re being exported from Japan now, the numbers are shrinking in Japan, so the opportunity is in the market that they’re moving to, so you can see we are a prime market, hence why Sanada-san said that we’re a priority market for this.
“We get heaps of visitors to the Omori Factory in Japan from Australia, but accessing the services of that factory is really difficult unless you want to do it yourself and go to straight to the factory.
“So, the NISMO Performance Centre will be the gateway to the Omori Factory – they’ll be able to help you, and they’ll be trained by the Omori Factory to service your vehicle and maintain your vehicle, and even fit some of the performance parts.
“But if someone wants to get an Omori restoration done, they’ll be able to facilitate that for you and access that for you in local area.”
Future value and investment potential is something that also factored in, as Nissan wants to support owners in keeping these cars on the road with genuine parts fitted, despite a large proportion of these cars being grey imports.
“If you look at the RedBook value of an R32, it has gone from $70,000 in mid-2024 to $118,000 now, so we’re seeing the appreciation of people investing more in these cars to try and generate a better investment for the future,” Hill says.
In terms of what parts and services will be available, that’s something that will be led directly by customer demand.
“From what we can see being brought in, a number of the core performance parts include clutches, diffs, suspension components,” Hill says.
“The huge demand is on the heritage restoration parts, some of which we haven’t had access to before because these parts are exclusive to NISMO Performance Centres. We’re often talking about simple things that you just can’t get anymore.”
Sanada-san was also very keen to elaborate on how important the role of Nissan and NISMO as OEMs is when it comes to producing these parts.
“The specific demand is unique in Australia, but we will come to learn the trend [of what parts are being ordered] and can quickly understand what’s happening,” Sanada-san told Retro Rides.
“I’m now motivated to expand Nissan’s range of unique parts, because while there are a lot of excellent suppliers in Australia, only Nissan at the OEM level can make an RB engine block, so we are going to extend this type of capacity in Japan.
“That’s why this local window to the customer is extremely important, especially in Australia. We want to offer the appropriate authentic support to the customers.”
At a time when the car industry finds itself at a crossroads – with ever-increasing emissions restrictions, the rise of electric vehicles, and current fuel price fluctuations – it’s reassuring to see a figure like Sanada-san at the helm of such a storied performance car and motorsport brand as NISMO.
Even if it wasn’t just for his clear passion and enthusiasm for cars and driving, one line alone that he said should be reassurance enough: “I’m very happy to be pushed by the customer.”
Even Nissan Oceania is looking to also adopt this same customer-led approach under newly-appointed managing director Steve Milette, who held previous posts in Canada and the US.
“Michael [Hill] and I have been travelling between Australia and New Zealand during my first couple of weeks here. We have one of the largest networks in the country, we have dealers who have been with us almost since the very beginning; we have lots of 40-plus year veterans that are out there who are very passionate about the brand with which they started,” says Milette.
“So again, I’m learning from them, trying to accelerate my understanding of the country, of the business, of how we can do things differently in this market, and so far it has been quite a learning experience.
“I’ve been spending a lot of time learning about customers, whether it’s through the call centres or directly with customers, but also all the studies of what consumers want and were we are as a brand in this country; what do we need for consumers in Australia and New Zealand?”
You’ve got to give the people what they want, and that’s clearly what both NISMO and Nissan’s local arm are already taking great steps towards doing.
