The Nissan team also raced a Nissan Gazelle in the 1987 Australian 2.0 Litre Touring Car Championship for 20-year-old Mark Skaife, who had previously shown good form finishing second in the 1985 and 1986 Ford Laser series held at Amaroo Park. Skaife, who had joined the Nissan team as a mechanic in 1987, went on to win the 2.0 Litre championship, winning three of the four rounds of the series to break the stranglehold that Toyota had on the baby car class. He was joined at Bathurst in the Gazelle by Adelaide Hills Nissan dealer Grant Jarrett. During qualifying, Jarrett was having trouble making the class cut off time and it looked as if the Gazelle, which due to the race being an FIA WTCC race was forced to run in a higher engine class than it did in Australia (putting it in the same class as the BMW M3), would be a non-qualifier. However, late in Friday qualifying Jarrett managed to make the cut. During the time Jarrett was on his qualifying run, Skaife was reportedly nowhere to be seen in the Nissan pits. When the car returned to the pits it was driven straight into the garage and the doors closed. Both drivers emerged a short time later, with Skaife having damp hair and a flushed face while Jarret looked more like he had just got out of a shower than a touring car. This led to speculation it was Skaife and not Jarrett who had just been in the car for its final qualifying run. The pair finished the race in 19th place after numerous mechanical problems which had started within the first 10 laps. Despite the speculation that he had not driven his fastest qualifying laps, in the race Jarrett proved his critics wrong and would be credited with a faster race lap than he recorded in qualifying. However, in a magazine interview almost 20 years later, Fred Gibson admitted that it was indeed Skaife who qualified the car using Jarrett's driving suit and helmet.
