It’s a sad day for Nissan GT-R fans. Godzilla is now officially retired from terrorising supercars, as the final R35 GT-R has rolled off the production line in Tochigi, Japan, marking the end of the current generation’s 18-year production run.
The last-ever R35 GT-R is a Premium Edition T-Spec, finished in Midnight Purple paint and heading to a lucky owner in Japan. It is the last of the 48,000 R35 GT-Rs produced over the course of 18 years.
Each and every one of those 48,000 cars sports the legendary 3.8-litre twin-turbocharged V6 engine. For the entire 18-year production run, every single one of these engines has been hand-built at Nissan’s plant in Yokohama. This incredible task was handled by a small, elite team of just nine master craftsmen, known by Nissan as the “Takumi”.
When the R35 Nissan GT-R made its debut in 2007, its engine initially produced 480 hp. Over the years, Nissan engineers continuously pushed to extract more power, reaching 570 hp in the 2017 facelift before hitting a staggering 600 hp in the most extreme Nismo variant. And that’s not even counting the unofficial, four-figure outputs that you’ve no doubt seen the tuners online playing with.
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Among the legacies left behind by the R35 Nissan GT-R are its several Nürburgring Nordschleife lap records, starting with a time of 7 minutes and 38 seconds back in 2007. While not fast by today’s standards of sub-seven-minute laps, it was impressive at the time.
This time was bettered as Nissan improved the GT-R, shaving off precious seconds over the years, before the GT-R Nismo achieved its fastest official time of 7 minutes and 8.679 seconds around the infamous Green Hell in 2013.
But it’s not all doom and gloom for the Nissan GT-R. According to Nissan CEO, Ivan Espinosa, the bossman has basically confirmed that Godzilla will return in the future, as he pledged to bring the GT-R nameplate back.
According to Nissan USA’s chief product planner, Ponz Pandikuthira, the next-generation Nissan GT-R will be a “very authentic car” and will feature the core specs that make a GT-R, a GT-R, like all-wheel drive and a front-mid engine layout.
However, it remains to be seen what Nissan has planned for the next GT-R, as it is reported that the company will need to completely start development from scratch due to “conflicting visions” from previous management, a process which could take around four to five years.
This means that we will likely have to wait at least until the 2030s to hear Godzilla roar again. But on the bright side, at least the Nissan GT-R is not gone from the road forever.
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