Liberty Walk debuts S15 Silvia widebody with Super Silhouette throwback

The widebody wizards at Liberty Walk have done it again, and this time the subject is the S15 Nissan Silvia. Called the LB-Super Silhouette S15, the name is fitting, as it’s a direct callback to the Nichira Silvia Group 5 race car of the 1980s. Now, it’s aura has been resurrected as a monster drift machine.

The original Nichira Silvia was driven by Kazuyoshi Hoshino, one of the three famed Nissan Super Silhouette race cars of the 80s. Along with its comrades, the red and black DR30 Skyline and Coca-Cola Bluebird, these cars inspired a generation of kaido racers with their angular aero kits and massive wings. Wataru Kato of Liberty Walk was very much of this generation, and he’s already paid tribute to the Skyline with a widebody kit for the R34 Skyline GT-R.

There’s lineage in the LB S15, as the original Nichira racer was based on an S110 Silvia. When the S12 Silvia debuted, Nissan rebodied the race car with an S12 face, but from the B-pillars back you can still see the S110 roofline. And while the red and black Skyline livery is more popular, Nichira’s yellow lightning bolt ultimately evolved into Calsonic Blue.

The Liberty Walk kit beautifully captures the spirit of the original. From the angular front splitter that morphed into deppa spoilers to the spats to the box flares to the razor sharp rear spoiler, everything is translated faithfully with lots of carbon fiber and fiberglass.

The kit will retail for $25,135 for overseas customers, so we don’t expect to see a lot of them in the US. However, the kit will adorn the drift car of Formula D Japan driver Tetsuya Hibino. Besides the (relatively) modern base car, there’s another update beneath the hood too.

Nissan’s three original Super Silhouette racers all ran an LZ20B under the hood that generated 570PS (562 hp) at maximum tune. Hibino’s car, however, will  run a Mazda quad-rotor engine built by TCP-Magic churning out a claimed 1,000 horsepower.

Hibino’s LB S15 also marks the launch of the Liberty Walk Racing Team, which will compete in Formula D. According to Hibino, the four-rotor Silvia will compete in the US as well. We look forward to seeing this neo kaido racer on the track.

Images courtesy of Liberty Walk