When stunt driver Mauro Calo was tasked with helping Nissan film promotional footage for its 2020 GT-R Nismo, he and his team needed a camera car that was sturdy and fast enough to keep up. Like Bruce Willis’ A-team in Armageddon, there was apparently only one thing up to the task: another Nissan GT-R.
Usually, high-speed camera duty is relegated to high-performance SUVs like the Porsche Cayenne and AMG M-Classes but they apparently weren’t up to snuff. “When I started to think about developing a high-performance camera car, I quickly realized that the Nissan GT-R was the only car that would meet my criteria,” said Calo. “It has supercar performance, with outstanding all-wheel-drive handling and stability. It’s famously reliable, and it can seat the team I need to operate the camera system. There were no other contenders.”
Calo and his team designed and welded a tubular rig to the GT-R’s chassis that would support the carbon fiber camera gimbal. Even with a bunch of heavy camera gear attached to it, the 3,800-pound GT-R’s handling apparently doesn’t suffer all that much, probably because it already weighed two tons to begin with.
Like any good camera car, it’s been painted in light-absorbing matte black so as to not be reflected into any of its own shots. Calo also says that the rig can be moved from the front of the car to the back, and presumably vice-versa, in just 20 minutes.
All of this begs the question: While the GT-R camera car is filming the GT-R Nismo, what was filming the GT-R camera car? Another GT-R camera car? Is it GT-R camera cars all the way down the rabbit hole? Have we stumbled upon a portal into the never-ending void of reality? This is too much for a Friday afternoon.
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