Nissan Sunny - Pulsar GTI-R RNN14 Nissan Motorsports Europe Team sponsored by Jecs - Acropolis Rally 1991
Car scale model kit in 1/24 scale manufactured by Hasegawa (ref. 21153, also 4967834211537 and HC47)

It must be recognized that at the level of results in the World Championship, the Nissan Sunny GTI-R Gr.A can be described as a disaster. And that Nissan had carefully prepared its return to the World Rally Championship, with months of preparation, and even testing the car in the same stages where a rally had previously been held. The brand's simulations and calculations predicted that it would be a winning car from the first stage of the competition... at least that's what the brand's engineers claimed. And it is that perhaps the expectations were too high, so the blow was of equal dimensions.

The Nissan Sunny was very heavy, but its main handicap was precisely its most characteristic element, the intercooler at the top of the engine, just above the cylinder head. This meant that the intercooler could not carry out its function, cooling the air that goes to the intake system, so the engine is estimated to have lost around 70 hp in hot ambient conditions. In fact, as a joke, his intercooler ended up being called "interwarmer".

Perhaps that is why his best result, and the only podium he achieved in the world championship, was in the 1992 Swedish rally, with the great Stig Blomqvist at the wheel. But it was too late, Nissan had lost interest and did not homologate any evolution in its street Sunny that would allow changing the location of the intercooler, which perhaps would have allowed taking advantage of its advanced all-wheel drive system derived from the one used with great success in the Skyline R32. Eighth place in the RAC in England, the last round of the 1992 season with a certain Tommi Mäkinen at the wheel, put an end to the sporting career of the Sunny in the world championship.