Sunday morning drives hold different meanings for different drivers and when your ride comes with a ‘Skyline’ badge on its trunk, you know the term ‘easy rider’ is just going to be that 1969 movie by Peter Fonda and not the way they take their machines up Goh Tong Jaya.
That’s recently what some of the Skyliners did on a very wet Sunday morning on 30 January. A group of them had planned a drive through the Ulu Yam route all the way up to Goh Tong Jaya for some breakfast before coming down.
They also invited some other friends up for the drive and that saw a couple of A31 Cefiros and 180SX jumping aboard as well an S15 and a very powerful Evo that was a nice complement to the full range of R32s, R33s, R34 and the sole R35 on display. There was also a 300ZX Z31 and a little Pulsar GTI-R hatch that was the second car up the route, leaving some of the larger more powerful Skylines trailing.
The meeting point was set for before 7am at the Petronas station in Taman Samudera before the convoy was to depart no later than 7am for the drive up.
Problem was the weather had other ideas and decided to spice things up with some rain all the way up. Bear in mind that this wasn’t some light drizzle, it was quite a heavy downpour that left us feeling like it was London.
The plan was for me to follow along in my A31 Cefiro as well but Murphy had other plans and my car sprang a gasket leak the day before, leaving me ride-less and needing to hitch a ride up.
So I managed to snag shotgun in MrNismo’s 550whp GT-R33 for the drive up. After making sure my insurance premiums were all paid up, I made my way to the Petronas station and got there around 6.45am.
The group left slightly after 7am, as all the cars had made it and about 20-minutes after a huge convoy of Alfa Romeos left to make their way up the same route.
So as I jumped into the passenger seat of MrNismo’s car, the convoy left with none other than MrNismo leading the pack for the drive.
The route was a nice combination of high speed straights and some very sweeping corners with the majority of bends consisting of tightening apexes, leaving ‘slow in, fast out’ as the only method of dismissing those corners, if you were planning to make it back for lunch.
The rain made things very interesting as even the all-wheel drive GT-Rs were having some trouble maintaining traction, much less with over 500whp on tap and virtually no lag.
After the drive, the meeting point was set for behind the cable car building at Goh Tong Jaya. Naturally, MrNismo was the first up and stopped right behind the cable car building. We then waited for the following cars to reach the check point before moving on to the breakfast spot.
As we mentioned, the second car to reach was the little Pulsar GTI-R that left all the other cars trailing in its wake. Of course, the driver behind that roll caged hot hatch used to drive for the Honda Malaysia Racing Team.
Attacking the corners in full flight, even MrNismo’s car was sticking its rear end out through some of the corners and it’s a certainty that the RWD Skylines, Cefiros and Silvias were sliding their way all through the curves.
It wasn’t quite a smooth drive though for the combination of rain and twisty turns was always going to claim at least one victim, this time a black R33 that pirouetted and landed halfway into a drain. Luckily, the driver was safe and the damage wasn’t as bad as you would have expected. Rest assured that monster will be back to get even with the Ulu Yam-Goh Tong Jaya route soon.
All in all, the drive was probably the best reason to ever wake up at 6am on a Sunday morning. The camaraderie amongst the drivers was as tight as ever and the cars on display left us thinking we were in Japan for just the slightest blink of an eye.
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