Goodbye, GT-R

You never miss something until it's gone. You forget how important something is until it becomes finite.

The GT-R is going.

I forgot how important this car was to me. It went off sale in Europe, and the US, and became another example of Nissan's decay as a company alongside the 370Z. It got reduced in my mind to a news article every year about whatever minor update or special edition it had gained, getting uglier with every misguided attempt to update the styling. In my mind, a GT-R was perfect back in 2008, pre-facelift.

Then I saw someone claim that the Plaid had made the GT-R obsolite, got snippy, and in typing up my reply realised how damn important this car was to me and the wider automotive world. The Plaid wishes it was the GT-R. It wishes it utterly destroyed the establishment. It wishes it could go to Porsche's home turf and embarass it. As Clarkson said in his first Top Gear review of it, Nissan hadn't just made a new car, they'd made a new yardstick. Prescient words.

I can think of a lot of cars since the GT-R came out that have had an impact and become beloved. The Lexus LFA for its engine. The Dodge Demon for doing wheelstands. Koenigseggs and Rimacs and all manner of other hypercars pushing boundaries and pricetags. The original Tesla Model S for making electric cars cool for the first time in over 100 years. But none of these became the yardstick for as broad of a category as sportscar. Everything could, and would, be compared to the GT-R. And everything would return bruised and embarrassed.

The car was my childhood darling.

The GT-R was the first car in my consciousness that was claimed to do zero to sixty in under 3 seconds. I'd debate whether it ever could, but considering all the other 1ft rollout allowances and fudge factors, every other car was getting the same treatment. Specifically, I think this fact came in an issue of the Top Gear Turbo Challenge magazine doing a back to back of the GT-R and a 911. The GT-R had it for lunch, as I remember it.

My Dad, being a 911 lover, had many disagreements with me over the faster Datsun.

Considering Top Gear had a huge impact on me, and they worshipped the GT-R, it's no surprise that I have so many strong memories about it. Who can forget Clarkson tying a headband on and going banzai up a mountain pass to beat a bullet train, and or the following week's show where the car snapped his neck around Fuji Speedway. Facts like the way the wheels had to have a knurling to keep the tyres on during cornering, or the way Clarkson described the bodywork as guiding everything to the rear wing. Those little switches that adjusted the suspension and the gearbox. That in-car display. The graphics ripped straight from Gran Turismo 5 showing levels for things I had no comprehension of. A g-meter, whatever that was. Boost gauges, whatever they did. An array of temperature readouts covering... car stuff. And a lap timer. It didn't matter that they didn't mean anything to me. No other car had anything like that.

There was a healthy dose of Gran Turismo propaganda. Gran Turismo games pre 2010 included concepts and invented fantasy racing versions, and GT5 included the real thing at last. GT5 being the first time I felt like I was playing a game as it existed. There was a video about preparing an R35 to take on the Nurburgring 24 hours, which I remember willingly putting on and watching. Digging around for said video, there appears to be a few documentaries about Kaz taking on the 24 in a GT-R between 2011 and 2014. And while I'm at it, my profile on the "family" (my) PS3 was called Nissan GT-R. Not Nissan Skyline GT-R, as I would’ve been insistent on making the distinction that the R35 is not a Skyline. Nissan GT-R.

I don't think I can talk about the GT-R without covering the fair amount of weird mythos that Nissan themselves generated:

• Supposedly, the front driver’s side spring was made stiffer to compensate for the weight of the driver. Why they chose to asymmetric stiffness instead of just adjusting ride heights, I’m not sure.
• Each engine was hand made, meaning each power output was supposedly different.
• They claimed that the car was, “Untuneable.” I don’t know of an original source, but the claim was commonly referenced as the first tuned versions came out.
• An 1800kg kerb weight wasn't a sign that the car was overweight, journalists just don't get it. Their justification is the most paper thin, weak, nonsense I’ve ever read from an engineer. Maybe I’ll write a proper takedown of this one day.
• Did you know the car didn't come with launch control initially? People used the snow mode, which locked up all the diffs, to do the proper hard launches, and probably voided their warranty for it.

But these oddities only make it all the more mystical. Few other cars could incite such nonsense about the precision and uncontrollable nature of it.

It’s an old tired trope to only realise that you loved something after it’s gone. But tropes are tropes for a reason.

Sayonara, R35.

Here’s to R36.