An R30 with attitude: how students built the Re30 Skyline Silhouette in just 2.5 months

Third-year Nissan Aichi Auto College students spent 2.5 months turning a four-door R30 sedan into a wide-body homage. It debuts at Auto Messe in Aichi 2026.

Nissan Auto College will bring its student-built Re30 Skyline Silhouette to Auto Messe in Aichi 2026. The car goes on display on 16 and 17 May at Aichi Sky Expo, and it's one of those cases where a school project ends up looking more interesting than most factory show cars.

The build was carried out by third-year students of the Nissan Aichi Auto College body repair and restoration course. They spent 2.5 months on it. The base is a four-door Skyline R30 — one of the icons of 1980s Japan — and the team turned it into an homage to the legendary Skyline Super Silhouette, the racer remembered for its monstrous bodywork.

The name Re30 carries several meanings at once: Reborn, Respect and Remake. So this isn't just a copy of an old race car. It's an attempt to bring back the atmosphere of the era, pay tribute to the original and rebuild the idea through the hands of a new generation.

The front bumper echoes the Super Silhouette's massive splitter. The rear arches are squared off and flared, and the students kept the doors opening normally — a separate engineering challenge on a wide body. The flares also forced them to relocate the rear lights.

The interior was kept close to stock. The thinking is clear: give those who remember the 1980s a familiar atmosphere, and show younger viewers what made Japanese race cars so compelling back then. Even the floor mats were custom-made to highlight the blue seats without crowding the cabin.

The body wears a red and black scheme that nods to the Super Silhouette, but the red sections got a touch of metallic flake — a small modern accent the students added themselves. The result isn't a museum piece. It's a living dialogue between two generations: the one that saw these cars on track, and the one now learning to recreate them.