The Nissan VK56 engine is built in Decherd, Tennessee, and is tasked with powering the Nissan Titan, Armada, and Pathfinder here in the States, along with the Australian-made Nissan Patrol. It’s also repurposed as the automaker’s entry into the white-hot Australian V8 Supercar series. V8 Supercars have been receiving plenty of press lately, including EngineLabs, with the tour coming to the U.S. and close competition between Ford, Holden, Nissan and Mercedes AMG. The touring-car series features four-door sedans rolling round the twisties on a number of different Australian courses of varying lengths, from 60 kilometer sprint events to 400 kilometer endurance races.

This particular engine design powers the new Nissan Altima V8 Supercar entry for 2013, and features a number of technological developments. We recently covered another video discussing V8 Supercar fuel trims and how they affect the engine’s performance, and according to that video the competitive engines in the series produce around 620 horsepower.

The engine performs at the Supercar’s series-limited 5.0 liters of displacement, down from the 5.6-liter engine used in the production line, and the DOHC Nissan design is different from the Ford and Chevrolet overhead-valve designs already permitted in the class. Nissan Motorsports’ Todd Kelly talks about how the all-aluminum quad-cam technology has presented some challenges for the team, and also discusses some of the purpose-built equipment like the dry sump oil pump and pan design that has been manufactured in-house at Nissan Motorsports. The manifold design has been compromised due to the engine’s large physical size and need to fit under the Altima’s flat hood, and we’re interested to see how the cars actually perform under race conditions as the season progresses given the limitations that the manifold design places on performance. Physically the engine is based on the Nissan GT-R architecture that’s won the FIA GT-1 world championship, so if its performance turns out to be anything like the GT-R’s, it’s only a matter of time before Nissan Motorsports ends up in the winner’s circle.