The best car events start before you get there. For the 2023 NISMO Festival, ours started on a Tokyo platform, with a convenience-store coffee, a red commuter train and, a couple of changes later, a single-track line heading towards Mount Fuji. The whole journey, and the first hours at the track, are in the video above.
The festival
The 24th NISMO Festival took place at Fuji Speedway on 3 December 2023. Nissan built it around "the challenge for sustainable motorsports", with electrification and carbon-neutral fuel. The headline demo runs were the Super GT Nissan Z GT500 running on carbon-neutral fuel, Nissan's Formula E car (ahead of Formula E's first race in Japan, in Tokyo the following March) and the LEAF NISMO RC. There was also a Skyline motorsport history segment, open pits and paddock, driver talk shows and a live stream on NISMO's channel. Tickets were ¥2,500 in advance and ¥3,000 on the day.
Source: Nissan: the 24th NISMO Festival highlights.
The car park is the first show
Like every big Japanese meet, the spectator car park is half the reason to come. Ours had a blue R35 GT-R, white R35s, R34, R33 and R32 Skylines, several Fairlady Zs and at least one fully wrapped Z33 "itasha", the Japanese art of covering a car in anime characters. Nobody arranges it, and every year it looks like a museum that parked itself.
Inside the circuit
Inside, Fuji's long main straight and the grandstands under the mountain set the scene, with GT-Rs old and new rolling through the circuit grounds all day. It's a festival where the visitors' cars are as much a part of the show as the factory ones.
Tips if you go
- It's in December: dress for cold wind off the mountain.
- Go by train if you can: the car parks fill fast.
- Walk the car parks before the gates open; that's when the best cars arrive.
More NISMO
For more Japanese Skylines, see our Nissan Skylines in Tokyo, and for Nissans going sideways, our D1GP Ebisu coverage.
Video: One Breath Pictures.
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