We've known for a while now that Nissan was planning to kill the R35 GT-R. The company announced the final limited edition cars over a year ago, and closed its order books back in March. Today, though, the car is well and truly dead: 18 years after the first GT-R was built, the last R35 just rolled off the production line in Nissan's Tochigi factory. Over the course of its lifespan around 48,000 GT-Rs were built, 37% of which were sold in Japan, and during those 18 years only 9 Takumi craftsmen hand-built
the V6 engines. The final car built wears Midnight Purple paint and gold wheels, which is a fitting sendoff for the car that singlehandedly changed the supercar world.
When the R35 was revealed in 2007, it brought three things to the table: Speed, reliability, and affordability. The 473 horsepower it made may not sound like much now, but combined with its advanced all-wheel-drive system the GT-R put the big names on notice — when Nissan first showed it at the 2007 Tokyo Auto Show, it did so while boasting a Nürburgring time that beat the Porsche 911 Turbo. On a damp track. For half the money. It won Car and Driver shootouts, it was less than half a second off the acceleration of a Ferrari 430 Scuderia, and it cost under $70,000. The R35 GT-R — no Skyline badge this time — dragged supercars into the modern era of performance, and now it's dead.
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What's Next?
The R35 was the first production car to crack the 7:30 barrier at the Nurburgring, and that time was chipped down year after year until a 7:08.679 lap in 2013 set by a GT-R Nismo. Its pricing may have crept up alongside its power over the years, making it no longer the bargain it once was — it's still hard to find one for much less than that 2008 MSRP, and likely won't get any easier now — but the GT-R was always a performer. It's still an absolute bucket list drive for me, something I'm desperate to take a spin behind the wheel of.
Nissan says this isn't the end for the GT-R nameplate, that a presumed R36 is somewhere down the way. But Ivan Espinosa, CEO of Nissan, says that "we don't have a precise plan finalized today," and that what the next GT-R will be is still up in the air. Whatever form it takes — hopefully something like the Hyper Force concept — if it ends up being half as revolutionary as the R35 was, we're in for a treat.
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