What I didn’t know until today — thanks to the wonderful Instagram page Japanese Racing Cars — was that through his relationship with Datsun via Bob Sharp’s SCCA outfit, Newman employed his trustworthy, confident smirk to boost Skyline sales in Japan.
Japanese Racing Cars reminds us that Newman drove a Skyline that looked an awful lot like Masahiro Hasemi’s heroic Group 5 Silhouette chassis in a spot filmed at Daytona.Although similarities with the original Skyline Super Silhouette entered by Nissan/Hasemi Sport at the Super Silhouette races from Japan, the counterpart driven by Paul for the ads was just a replica built by Nissan supposedly just for the occasion.So this post is killing another myth that Paul Newman “shared” the wheel of the R30 Super Silhouette with Masahiro Hasemi in a certain time between 1982/1983.