Nissan Discontinues R35 GT-R After 17 Years in Production
It’s rare that a single generation of a vehicle gets old enough to hold a driver’s license, but after 17 years (15 in the U.S.), Nissan is finally ending production of its R35-generation GT-R. Nissan says it will stop production of North American-bound GT-Rs in October 2024.
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The recently announced T-Spec Takumi and Skyline special editions are now the generation’s swan songs, with pricing announced at $152,985 for the T-Spec Takumi Edition and $132,985 for the Skyline Edition (all prices include $1,895 destination). Fewer than 200 of these cars are bound for the United States, so act fast if you want one. Both special editions arrive at Nissan dealerships this summer.
Nissan did not give any information as to if and when a next-generation GT-R might arrive, but such an announcement would be a pleasant surprise if it did come. Sports cars haven’t really been at the forefront of Nissan’s lineup for a while, with even the current Nissan Z still riding on the same platform (albeit with a host of other updates) as the previous 370Z. A moonshot of a halo car like the GT-R requires a lot of resources to pull off well, and Nissan’s been refocusing its lineup around its stronger-selling models lately.
Today, it feels a bit like the R35 was left to wither on the vine, with even modestly priced performance cars now featuring the kind of torque-shifting all-wheel-drive systems that made us ooh and aah when the R35 debuted. Yet the R35 was a groundbreaking car when it was released, offering a then state-of-the-art dual-clutch automatic transmission, a high-tech AWD system and a powerful (and highly modifiable) turbocharged engine at a price that undercut many higher-priced sports cars that it could beat around a race track. Its combination of high-tech tricks and raw power made this relatively heavy, chunkily-styled sports car fly.
With the release of the R35, the GT-R was no longer a piece of Japanese-market unobtanium that Americans could only access through video games or potentially shady gray-market importers. It was finally released for the U.S. market — and it stayed here for a very long time.
The GT-R’s price grew closer to its performance rivals in subsequent years, and things like its Nurburgring lap-time records were long eclipsed by even faster production cars. Fans have been wondering what was going to happen with the long-in-the-tooth R35 for a while, and now we have an answer.
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