1988 Australian Touring Car Championship

However, the team's testing and development of the GTS-R was in the races due to the late arrival of parts from Japan and the 400 bhp (298 kW; 406 PS) cars did not have the speed or reliability of the Fords with a best finish of 3rd for Fury at Amaroo Park.

Unfortunately for Fred Gibson's team, the Australian racing program had fallen behind both the Japanese domestic scene as well as the European Touring Car Championship (ETCC) campaign run by Howard Marsden in importance to Nismo in 1988 and as such the Gibson Team had a late arrival for their cars and did not appear until Round 5 in Adelaide with a single car for Fury (to keep his eye in, Seton actually drove a Nissan powered Ralt RT4 in a one-off appearance and won the Adelaide round of the Australian Drivers' Championship that weekend).

Other problems for the new Skyline turbos included the cars being approximately 70 kg (150 lb) over their homologated 1,100 kg (2,400 lb) weight, a production rather than racing (Getrag) gear box which developed a bad habit of locking in gear under the greater stress of racing, as well as the straight rather than V6 engine which, with two of the six cylinders being over the front axle caused understeer (similar to the old BMW 635) which the team took some time to overcome.

Fury then stepped aside at the final round at Oran Park to allow 1987 Australian 2.0 Litre Champion Mark Skaife to drive in his ATCC debut.

Perkins best finish was 3rd at Sandown in Round 7, greatly helped by the number of retirements from the front running Sierras and the still bug riddled Nissan driven that weekend by Fury.

Although the Commodore was producing approximately 450 bhp (336 kW; 456 PS) from its V8 engine, as usual its weight (1,325 kg (2,921 lb), over 200 more than the Sierra and Nissan and around 350 more than the BMW's) saw the big car unable to live with the lighter turbocharged Sierra's, the short of development Skylines and the nimble M3's in the shorter races on the tighter tracks used in the championship with tyres and brakes being the usual issues.

From 1989, the South Australian round of the series would be held at the track AIR replaced on the ATCC calendar in 1972, Mallala Motor Sport Park.

Despite the disqualification of the Eggenberger Sierras at the 1987 James Hardie 1000, Moffat had no problems with scrutineering, unlike 1986 ATCC champion Robbie Francevic whose Sierra, built in West Germany by Walter Wolf Racing, raced under protest in Round 3 at Winton before the car was ruled illegal before the start of practice for Round 5 at Adelaide.