Kozo Watanabe (engineer)

In 1999, he was promoted to the Executive Director of NISMO and supervised the entire Nissan motor sports project. Whenever NISMO sold the Z-tune R34 Skylines to the customers at the NISMO headquarters, Watanabe was present to congratulate the new owners.

Incidentally, the fifth generation C210 Skyline is the only Skyline which he was not involved in until he being assigned as the Executive Director of NISMO in 1999.

Although in late 1990s and early 2000s, the GT car and the sports car were not popular in Japan, Watanabe and his team completed the R34 as the ultimate Skyline.

In 1987, he was sent to Nissan Tochigi Plant in Kaminokawa, Tochigi to test the R32 Skyline under the command of Itō, the chief engineer. He tested the R32 carefully and with insistence. He collected the data and provided them to Itō.

In 1985, he was assigned to the Strategy Department of Nissan headquarters. At this time, he wrote the "screen play" for each of the Nissan cars. For example, the character and image of the cars.

In 1985, he was assigned to the Vehicle Experiment Department. He tested N13 Pulsar, and its variants Exa, Langley and Liberta Villa.

In 1973, he was once again assigned to the Chassis Department in Ogikubo, a department to which Itō had been promoted to manager. As a result of many engineers being assigned to the vehicle emissions control project, Itō and Watanabe were one of few people who designed or improved the chassis of the former Prince vehicles such as the later version of Skyline C110, Pulsar and Nissan Prince Homer truck. (On the other hand, genuine Nissan vehicles were designed at Nissan Tsurumi Design Center in Yokohama.)

In 1970, he was assigned to the ESV (Experimental Safety Vehicle) Division in Tsurumi, Yokohama to research collision safety.

In March 1967, one month before he joined Nissan, he went to Europe to watch a Formula 1 race.

He joined Nissan in April 1967 and was assigned to the Prince Division, which had recently been merged into Nissan in August 1966, located in Ogikubo, Tokyo, as he hoped. The main building was the former Nakajima Aircraft Company's Tokyo Plant facility.

As a boy, he was a car enthusiast who loved motor sports. He saw the Prince cars being completely defeated at the 1st Japanese Grand Prix held at Suzuka Circuit in 1963.

Kozo Watanabe (渡邉 衡三, Watanabe Kōzō, born 1942) is a Japanese automotive engineer who was responsible for the development of the ninth generation Nissan Skyline (R33) and the tenth generation Nissan Skyline (R34).