Ever notice how some cars stay on the market forever? We’re used to five-year or seven-year model cycles, so after nearly eighteen years, it’s probably time to bring the ship to shore. In that spirit, the last R35 Nissan GT-R has rolled off the assembly line in Japan, marking the end of a performance car dynasty as influential as it was controversial.
When the R35 GT-R arrived back in 2007, it spawned a non-stop 24/7 news cycle the likes of which we haven’t quite seen since. It was on the cover of every magazine, the home page of every website, the feature film of every TV program, and for good reason. This was the ignition point for the formula of the heavy turbocharged all-wheel-drive automatic performance car that posts ridiculous numbers despite mass working against it. Even though it weighed 3,836 pounds, early models could sprint to 60 MPH in the low-three-second range and lap the Nürburgring quicker than the 997 Porsche 911 GT2.
Of equal importance, the GT-R was a bargain when it first launched. Here was a supercar-slayer that would run prospective buyers $70,475 including freight, less than a Corvette Z06 let alone a Porsche 911 Turbo. Oh, and it brought “Fast and Furious” fantasies to America. For the first time, citizens of the red, white and blue could buy a GT-R directly from a Nissan dealer in left-hand-drive.
The result was an instant classic that won just about every award, set a Guinness World Record for the fastest-accelerating four-seat production car, and caused its fair share of controversy. Objectively, it could do amazing things. Subjectively, it was less like a scalpel and more like a laser-guided hammer. Ruthless, a bit blunt, heavy, and somewhat insulating. This was perfectly fine when light sports cars were relatively plentiful as a double-duty Super GT was something of a novelty in this band of the fast car spectrum, but then almost everyone sort-of copied Nissan’s homework.
Fifteen years ago, a BMW M3 had a screaming small-displacement V8 and a stick-shift, a base Porsche 911 had an atmospheric flat-six and a manual gearbox, a Corvette ZR1 had a supercharged pushrod V8 and a row-your-own transaxle, and an Aston Martin Vantage paired a sonorous British naturally aspirated V8 with a six-speed shifter. Now though, all those cars are turbocharged with either dual-clutch automatic or torque converter automatic transmissions as either the predominant choice or the only option.
Regardless, even though the competition got faster and the GT-R got more expensive over its production run, Nissan managed to sell 48,000 of these things worldwide in the past 17 years and eight months, from the original 480-horsepower variant to the 600-horsepower Nismo model. Wilder still, a group of nine artisans crafted every VR38DETT engine over that production run. That’s proper exotic car stuff. Still, every story eventually needs to end, and in this case, it happened slowly. The GT-R went off sale in Europe in 2022 and drove off into the American sunset last year. It clearly wasn’t long for this world, so, early this month, a Midnight Purple T-Spec GT-R drove off the line in Tochigi, the lights came down, and the credits rolled.
While this marks the end of the R35 GT-R, this isn’t the last you’ll hear of the GT-R nameplate. As Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa wrote in a media statement:
After 18 remarkable years, the R35 GT-R has left an enduring mark on automotive history. Its legacy is a testament to the passion of our team and the loyalty of our customers around the globe. Thank you for being part of this extraordinary journey. To the many fans of the GT-R worldwide, I want to tell you this isn’t a goodbye to the GT-R forever, it’s our goal for the GT-R nameplate to one day make a return.
Considering the five-year gap between the last R34 Skyline GT-R off the line and the first production-spec R35 GT-R, we could be waiting a while to see a successor to Nissan’s turbocharged all-wheel-drive destroyer of worlds. Until then, we’re left to reckon with what the R35 GT-R stands for.
Top graphic image: Nissan
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Pretty impressive run. Just for context, some notable cultural moments from 2007:
Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone, a revolutionary mobile device that changed the technology landscape.
Facebook and Twitter expanded their reach to a global audience, making them major players in social networking.
Google acquired YouTube, solidifying its position in online video content.
Netflix began streaming movies and TV shows over the internet.
Maybe it stayed a little past its prime but the R35 had an incredible run.
This car probably marks the start or close to it of cars being numbers generators. Impressive performance but many complained of lack of engagement, but the hype around this car was insane. Reviews of anything more expensive were flooded with comments from the most obnoxious people on the internet proclaiming Ferraris pointless because the Nissan was cheaper and faster. This car had a stranglehold on internet bench racing for nearly a decade.
Honestly I keep forgetting this car exists.
Same.
When this car debuted I proudly proclaimed I’d buy a used one in four years or so when they were 35K.
They still aren’t, the cheapest in the country on cars,com is 55 right now. Also I’ve had two kids and they are now too big to fit in it with me, but I’ve got about 5 or 6 years before I’ll need to haul them around all the time, maybe then it’ll be a 35K car?
Right?
Im in a similar place and at this point I’m holding out hope that the C8 will be our car in a few years. It’s still stubbornly expensive but at the end of the day it’s an automatic-only Corvette. There’s no way it’ll remain that way forever. Right? RIGHT?!?!
They’re gonna come down. In typical Corvette fashion they’re building gobs of them and the old guys who drained their retirement accounts to buy one won’t be around forever. I doubt they dip much below $40k at their cheapest, though.
40k is cheap enough for me.
The families of these people will want to get rid of them when clearing out the estates. I think you may in fact see a glut of them all hitting within a window of a few years.
The Great Boomer Wealth Redistribution will be upon us before we know it….
This was so mind blowing in 2007 in that they were sold at regular Nissan dealers not and easily seen on the street unlike other exotics. The price seems attainable, until the price went wild after the good press and then forgotten.
There’s a house that I often go past on weekends with a handful of GTRs, and WRX STI hatches (old-style Impreza bubbles) always parked outside.
It never ceases to make me smile when I go past.
The R35 has been a bit of an enigma on the used market to me, they seem fairly available, but prices really haven’t come down a ton. Despite the high values, it seems like they all have a half dozen owners, and so many former owner testimonials I see online say the same thing: that they’re fast, appealing from afar, but in the end sort of boring and unfulfilling to own for more than a few thousand miles. It will certainly be missed by many, but I wonder how well it will be viewed in 20 years.
Prices have stayed high because the prices kept rising year after year. If you bought the early one for $70k, and then the next year they were selling for $80+, you have no real reason to sell lower. That’s the worst part about these to me, they were such a bargain, then started pricing to the moon and made it far less exciting.
Exactly, Well said.
I’m convinced that Nissan just priced them at whatever a base 911 costed.
They’re pretty easy to drive quickly, with great performance. They give you a lot of confidence, and back that confidence up reliably.
They’re not an “experience” car though. Impressive? Sure. Exciting? No.
There’s plenty of fast cars nowadays. There’s not many “experience” cars.
“…a Midnight Purple T-Spec GT-R drove off the line in Tochigi…”
If it’s purple, why does it appear green?
It probably depends on whether you saw the dress as gold or blue.
Midnight Purple has kind of a chameleon effect depending on the lighting.
In the first image it’s reflecting that green floor just enough to make it look like lighter green highlights in the paint itself.
Where it all started or where it all ended, depending on who you ask. Godzilla will always be a bedroom poster car for me and other folks around my age who grew up at the height of the Fast series and games like Need For Speed though…so I’ll pour one out for a legend.
Now if the stubbornly high values on these could take a hike that would be great….
It’s fitting that this hit today. The R35 is my 8-y/o son’s favorite car (to be fair, he loves all Skylines but the R35 is his favorite) and we frequently get to see one by his school. It was even “waiting” for him with the garage door open on his back to school night. Yesterday I mentioned the garage being opened and his friend (who also likes cars) asked why that mattered. My son gave him an exasperated “I’ve told you about this, it’s a GT-R…”
Kids can be fun…
My son is 14 months old and I can’t wait for shit like this
The original NA1/2 NSX was produced across 16 calendar years.
The R35 GTR was produced across 18 calendar years.
The obvious answer is for Toyota to produce the same car for 20 calendar years.
LC500 come on down
Chevy Express still marching on, laughing at the concept of evolution.