[Auto] The Nissan GT-R Is Dead. Here's How It Redefined Sports Cars Forever

[Depo -]

Forget the Countach. In 2007, Nissan dropped the poster car which defined a generation. This burly silver coupe tore down the establishment, lit the rubble on fire, then paved the way forward. With news that the Skyline GT-R namesake is dead—at least on our shores—it felt an appropriate time to take stock.

Indeed, the R35 Nissan GT-R arrived with a boom that very year. For a middle-class Millenial kid like myself, the R35 seemed as though it'd crawled from a sizzling impact crater like some gleaming alien mech. Those core memories remain. But the GT-R left us with something far more important when the dust settled, a performance-car formula that would dictate everything hence, from Bimmer to Tesla, even as the R35 faded into obsolescence itself.

Maybe that first bit, the one about the alien mech, that feeling, is hard to remember now. After all, it was 17 years ago. Or perhaps it's because the GT-R has undergone so little change since it bowed. The R35 feels like old wallpaper. But if you adjust those rose-colored Ray-Bans just so, you might even remember that swelling sense of anticipation…

Even before “the new GT-R” arrived, we devoted readers of Super Street magazine and Sport Compact Car knew something wicked on the way. Every detail that leaked from the GT-R's development seemed an impossibility, like a dork mindlessly crossing off Bingo squares generated by a JDM fever dream.

Its engine shall be assembled by hand in a hermetically sealed vault. Its interior will sound whisper-quiet at 186 mph. Its computers will account for wheel slip within thousandths of seconds. It's faster around The ‘Ring than Porsche's best.

All proved true.

 

Link: https://www.motor1.com/features/723422/goodbye-nissan-skyline-gtr/