Nissan GTR Proto | Japanese used cars blog

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When the Prince Automobile Company merged with Nissan-Datsun in 1967, it gave way to the beginning of a new GT-R legend series. Though the super car came from the humble Nissan Skyline family saloon, it was right at the time when the FIA GT series was making waves in the market. Nissan wanted to take on the Porsche 904 in the Japanese Grand Prix since the earliest predecessor of the GTR, the S54 2000 GT-B, came second in the very first race in 1964. So in 1969, Nissan premiered its first race-spec GT-R and it overtook the Porsche 904 in the race. That was the beginning of the legend of the GTR Skyline.

Nissan rolled out the next generation of the GTR, a four-door sedan PGC10 2000 GTR. It was good enough to achieve 33 victories in a short span of one and a half year. In 1972, the Skyline GTR, which had 1000 victories, was discontinued by the company. The next year, it brought out a better version of Skyline GT-R, a 2-litre engine driving the rear wheels. The production was suddenly stopped in 1977 due to poor sales. The last of the original GTRs from the Nissan saloon was the KPGC110 2000GTR. But it was never used for race and is still kept at a unit as historical reference in Zama.

The setback of 1973 Skyline GT-R, which was powered by a 1989cc engine, was due to the oil crisis and it smothered the enthusiasm for high-performance cars in the market. Sixteen years later, in 1989 the new GT-R version of Skyline with advanced technologies like four-wheel drive system ‘Attesa-ETS’ and the Super-Hicas four-wheel steering was launched. It progressed from 1989 until 2002 in R32, R33 and R34 specifications. In 2007, Nissan displayed a redesigned concept. The new Nissan GT-R was based on this concept and did not carry the Skyline badge. Thus the Nissan Skyline GT-R, which has achieved great success on the race track, still forms the heritage of Nissan.

In 2009, Nissan reached an agreement with Federation Internationale de l’Automobile GT Championship (FIA GT1) to fine tune its performance to market the car to racing teams. In 2010, Nissan was declared the Official Vehicle Supplier for the new FIA GT1 World Championship in which it will supply four GT-R cars for each SRO event and one of its high performance vehicles will take the Official Safety Car role at each event.

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What’s New for 2011

Nissan has made the decision to remove the base level version of the GT-R for 2011, which means that the Premium is the only choice on offer. Though you could argue there can’t be a premium model if it’s the only one there is.

The suspension has been re-tuned to provide greater comfort, the exterior has darker wheel center caps, a double clear-coat of paint has been used on the front and rear fascias, the rear cooling ducts have also been revised. Automatic headlights, speed-sensitive windshield wipers, iPod connectivity, streaming Bluetooth audio and DVD playback now all come as standard. The navigation system has been upgraded to include real time traffic and weather updates.

Introduction

When a company releases a supercar it is possible to gain a glimpse into the core of what makes the company tick. One car maker might build a supercar using  massive engines that put out the same amount of power as a small nuclear reactor. Others create beautiful, sleek works of art that appear to be straight out of a sci-fi movie. When it comes to Nissan, they have shown that by using high technology they can build a car with almost unbelievable performance while maintaining a relatively affordable price. Affordable in supercar terms that is.

Now in its third year of production, the 2011 model Nissan GT-R continues its predecessor’s reputation for being an absolute beast of a performance car. It possesses a O to 60 time of less than 4 seconds and blasts through a quarter mile in less than 12.

The GT-R handles like a dream, its steering is quick and responsive, its all wheel drive system making sure all four tires are on the floor providing power and grip at all times. All of this combines to make the the GT-R one of the easiest and most forgiving cars in its class to drive. While Nissan’s supercar is already an amazing machine they found some areas to improve upon. For the 2011 car, the suspension has be overhauled to reduce some of the harshness in the ride that was a complaint in previous years.

Remaining issues are the lack of a manual transmission option and the fact the the GT-R is still relatively heavy when compared to other high performance cars.

But even when taking this into consideration the GT-R faces no challenge from similarly priced cars.