Although Lola built the basic chassis, Nissan Motorsports Europe constructed the R90CK in its shops evolving the R89C design.

At the same time, the R90CP was built at Nismo's headquarters in Japan in a lower downforce, high speed layout.

Small slated inlets were placed on the leading edge of the car, partially feeding brake cooling ducts.

The design and development of NPTI's R90CK was conducted in association with Ray Mallock Limited and the cars were prepared and run out of RML's workshop in 1990, before being shipped to the United States to take part in the 1991 24 Hours of Daytona.

Pre-season testing for the R90CK (alongside the older R89C) was conducted in part at the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit in Australia, which just happened to also be just a 90 km drive from the Melbourne home of Nissan Europe's British born Australian team manager, Howard Marsden.

[1] The R90CP ("P" referring to the Oppama Nissan plant [1] Archived 2 November 2011 at the Wayback Machine where Nismo is based[2]) had a low downforce design.

The front of the car featured a higher nose, with the narrow channels eliminated and replaced with large ducts on the inside of the fender.

The turbo inlet was placed on the front edge of the rear fender, instead of on top of the engine cover on the R90CK.

Nismo continued competition in the All Japan Sports Prototype Championship, and decided to upgrade the R90CPs to better compete with Toyota and Mazda.

Most notably, the boxy turbo inlets placed on the rear fenders of the R90CP were made into smaller slits, while a large snorkel was added to the top of the engine cover to cool the rear brakes in place of the previous twin brake ducts.

The opening round of the 1990 World Sportscar Championship season was held at Suzuka Circuit in Japan, but the new R90CKs intended for the series would not be completed in time for the event.

By the second round of the season at Monza, the first three R90CK chassis were completed with Northern Ireland's Kenny Acheson and Brits Julian Bailey and Mark Blundell joining Italian Gianfranco Brancatelli in the driving line-up.

Although the Nissans would not win podiums at the Nürburgring, the team finished both cars in the top ten for the first time.

The good results for the team continued into the final round of the season at Mexico City with Bailey and Blundell taking second place once again, although this time two laps behind the winning Mercedes-Benz.

Nissans only competed one other time before the World Sportscar Championship was abandoned after 1992, with Nova Engineering's R91CK running in an invitational class at the 1992 1000km of Suzuka, finishing in fourth place.

Hoshino and Suzuki then took the next race win at the 1000km Suzuka, followed by Hasemi and Olofsson taking their second victory at Sugo.

Nova Engineering upgraded its R90C to R91CK specification utilizing the Yatabe (Japan Automobile Research Institute—JARI) wind tunnel, while Team Le Mans bought a R90CP and modified it into its own R91VP.

Jaguar won at the final race of the year, wit Toyota in second and Nissan in third and fourth, several laps behind.

Kazuyoshi Hoshino and Toshio Suzuki won the drivers championship by just two points over Toyota's leading pair.

Nissan won in the R92CP's debut, with Jeff Krosnoff and Masahiko Kageyama replacing Anders Olofsson on the winning car's driver line-up.

Nissan won the next race at Fuji, where Hoshino and Suzuki beat the fastest Toyota by over a minute.

The lone R90CP of Masahiro Hasemi, Kazuyoshi Hoshino, and Toshio Suzuki finished fifth place, 11 laps behind the winning Jaguar.

Although part of the IMSA GT Championship which was contested by Nissan's GTP ZX-Turbo, it was decided that the R90Cs were better suited for Daytona.

The R90C platform made its final appearance at the 1993 1000km Suzuka, part of the new All Japan GT Championship (JGTC) which replaced the JSPC.