The oldest car on the market is in its final year

Thursday, 13 January 2022

Watch the GT-R Nismo and Darren Kelly's R35 drift machine do their thing at the Hampton Downs circuit.

The Nissan GT-R is, as far as we can tell, the oldest model of any vehicle on sale in New Zealand (and possibly the world). The R35 generation first debuted in 2007 and has never been replaced, or indeed, ever significantly refreshed, aside a few facelifts.

It has steadily sold since then, with a minor update in 2011 and another in 2016, but 2021 will mark the last year Kiwis can buy a brand-new Godzilla. As Australia wraps up sales of the GT-R, so does New Zealand.

The R35 GT-R joined an illustrious family, beginning in 1969 with the Prince Skyline GT-R, or Hakosuka (Box Skyline), which was built using motorsport know-how from the R380 prototype racer.

The Prince Skyline GT-R, or Hakosuka, was the first to bear the GT-R badge.

Powered by a 118kW/177Nm 2.0-litre inline-six with the first example of double overhead cams on a mass-produced Japanese engine, the Prince scored 49 consecutive race victories in Japanese touring car competitions.

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The R32 Skyline GT-R (right) was the first to be called Godzilla.

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The R33 Skyline GT-R spawned the Nismo 400R version, the first Japanese car to officially break 206kW.

The Hakosuka was replaced in 1973 by the second-generation Skyline GT-R, now sold as a Nissan. Unofficially named ‘Kenmeri’, the 2.0-litre inline six featured a number of new innovations to improve its performance and endurance, such as a full transistor ignition system and a double roller-type timing chain, even though it maintained the same power output as before.

The R34 GT-R was the one for the video game generation, as well as the Fast and Furious fanatics.

More importantly, it was the first GT-R to feature the twin round taillights that have become a GT-R signature.

Unfortunately, it launched in the middle of the 1970s oil crisis, and Nissan built less than 200 before it was cancelled, less than three months after the first cars were delivered in 1973.

The Z-Tune model produced a whopping 368kW/540Nm with a glorious 8000rpm rev limit.

Nissan wouldn’t resurrect the GT-R badge until 1989 with the now-iconic R32 Skyline generation.

Designed specifically for Group A touring car regulations, it ultimately forced Australia’s premier motorsport category to re-write its own rule book to favour locally built V8s.

The last special GT-R to grace Kiwi roads is this, the Nismo SV.

The newly developed ATTESSA E-TS all-wheel drive system paired with a 2.6-litre twin-turbocharged inline six gave the R32 GT-R massive traction to go with the 450kW (in race trim) engine.

After winning the 1990, 1991 and 1992 ATTC titles as well as the 1991 and ‘92 runnings of the Bathurst 1000 endurance race, the powers-that-be added more and more weight to the GT-R, before outright banning all-wheel drive systems, effectively killing the competition Skyline… Not before Aussie media gave it the Godzilla nickname, though.

The larger and heavier R33 Skyline GT-R launched in 1994 but with clever mechanical reworks to the chassis itself. As a result, the two-door become the first series-production car to lap the Nurburgring in less than eight minutes.

It also spawned the GT-R Nismo 400R special edition, which was the first car to break the Japanese ‘gentleman’s agreement’ to limit cars to 206kW of power.

It made 298kW and 440Nm and could accelerate from 0-100km/h in under four seconds. Only 44 units were ever built, making it one of the rarest – and most prized – GT-R model variants.

The last ever Skyline GT-R was the R34, and it’s probably the second most famous, behind the R32. This is the Fast and Furious one, as well as the Gran Turismo one with a 5.8-inch screen in the dash showing various vehicle readouts.

Once again, the R34 used the 2.6-litre biturbo straight-six, making a remarkably consistent 206kW with torque reaching 392Nm.

It sold for three years, between 1999 and 2002, culminating in the epic Z-Tune model that featured a 2.8-litre engine based on the GT500 racing car that produced 368kW and 540Nm and could rev to 8000rpm.

Considering production of the standard R34 GT-R had already been completed, Nissan purchased 20 second-hand examples to create the Z-Tune edition, each of which was stripped, resprayed in an exclusive Z-Tune silver and then hand built by master technicians.

Five years later, Nissan debuted the standalone GT-R, and proceeded to completely demolish almost every other supercar on the road while also becoming one of the original “check out the launch control” cars.

The last year of the GT-R is being celebrated in style with the full-fat GT-R Nismo SV. It retains the ‘standard’ Nismo-spec 3.8-litre biturbo V6 making 441kW/652Nm but adds the largest brakes ever fitted to a production Japanese car – carbon ceramic rotors measuring 410mm at the front and 390 at the rear.

It also gets a carbon bonnet, 20-inch Rays alloy wheels, and a handful of special design tweaks.

New Zealand is getting a couple of these red-hot GT-Rs, but expect to pay big money for them, if they aren’t already pre-sold. Speaking of, all of the standard 2022 GT-Rs are already asked for. Hopefully they don’t end up on Trade Me asking $400,000 each…

But most importantly, there will be another GT-R eventually. The R36 model has been mentioned plenty by Nissan officials, with Nissan Australia managing director, Adam Paterson, even specifying that this “isn’t the end of the GT-R’s story”. It’s just a waiting game.