Along with our participation as a works team in the all-Japan GT championships, our participation in the Dakar Rally (formally known as Paris-Dakar Rally) from this year is the main pillar of our global motor sports activities. Our rally challenge is based on a four-year plan targeted at an overall win, but two of our drivers came within the top ten in our first challenge. Giniel de Villiers finished fifth and Ari Vatanen seventh. Vatanen also recorded the best time in some special stages. Achieving our goal of finishing within the top five in the first year is quite a feat for an initial challenge. Having said this, we found the Dakar Rally certainly tougher than we first imagined, suffering such setbacks as driver Kenjiro Shinozuka retiring from the race. But in this adversity we learned a lot, including about the technical development of rally machines and team management. The rally was a valuable learning experience.
	We are often asked why we are competing with pickup trucks. We selected pickups for marketing reasons. As pickup trucks are sold globally, they can carry our brand image forward and enhance it further. Some people might think that our pickups are not as good as some rival machines, but we have made modifications within the scope of the rules and they have emerged almost unrecognizably as rally machines. Specifically speaking, we have protected their interiors by a roll cage and improved safety and rigidity. The VQ type V6 engine is placed nearer to the center so it is virtually beside the driver, and the weight distribution is nearly ideal. As a result, although these are called pickups, because of the roll cage installed to meet rally specifications, you can fit only three spare tires in the loading tray. (Laughs) This project was started under the management of Nissan Europe, but now vehicle planning and development are provided by Nismo and Nissan head office in Japan, and technical support by Nissan Shatai. Nissan South Africa is building super-production specification machines. Nissan South Africa once participated in touring car races under the banner of Nissan Motorsports, but is recently focusing on off-road races. Why is our team base located in South Africa and not Europe? We have two reasons. The first is the experience we have accumulated there in motor sports, and the second is that a perfect test course is available near our garage. South Africa has various driving surfaces, including desert, that resemble those of Dakar Rally, and we can fully test vehicles here. Our South African team performs tests here and repeatedly participates and wins in South Africa's off-road championships. We use this track record in our super-production specification vehicles.

			In our second year, the development of our 2004 specs is proceeding according to schedule toward our next goal of moving on toward victory. We are planning to achieve a shake down in one of the FIA Cross-Country Raid rallies. The official announcement of the team, including drivers, is likely to take place in the fall. Finally, I hope that everyone will work to gain more experience, refine the machines further, and strengthen our team so that we can fulfill our targets for the 2004 Dakar.