The History of the Nissan GT-R

When the Nissan Skyline, the predecessor of the modern Nissan GT-R, was introduced in 1957, it wasn’t actually a Nissan. Japan’s Prince Motor Company built the very first one, and it was a rather modest four-door luxury car. It would take a few twists and turns, literally and figuratively, to become the 600 horsepower supercar we know as the GT-R today.

Moving ahead to 1964, Prince decided it was time to put a Skyline on the racetrack. Beginning with an earlier model, they did some major performance modifications including the addition of a straight six motor that made up to 125 horsepower in its top configuration. Highly successful in GT racing, the newly named Skyline 2000 GT (S54) was then put into full production in the Japanese market.

While the Nissan Skyline has been a fixture in Japanese movies and television since its inception, an argument could be made that The Fast & Furious movies helped boost its popularity in places like America where it wasn’t widely available. 

The highly successful inline six cylinder was also shelved. In its place was an alloy V-6 with twin huffers capable of 473 hp and 434 ft lbs of torque. Top speed is now an extremely impressive 195 mph with 0 to 60 times in the low 3 second range. Styling is modern and very aggressive but with considerable homage paid to previous GT-R models. And while this has been disputed by other parties, Nissan claims the GT-R on stock Dunlops lapped the Nurburgring in 7 minutes 26 seconds, making it one of the fastest production cars in the world.