To celebrate this legacy and honor the the latest round of improvements to the current R35 GT-R, Nissan brought some of the most significant GT-R models to the 2016 New York auto show. If you're thinking that in so doing Nissan may have upstaged many of the new-car debuts of other manufacturers, you're right. Read on and make sure to click through the gallery to take in all the GT-R hotness you can handle.
While the Nissan S54 Skyline 2000GT was arguably the maker's first attempt at building a performance vehicle, it was the 1969 arrival of the Skyline 2000GT-R that let the world know it was serious. Legendary almost from the start, the GT-R name has become synonymous with Nissan performance.
Based on the freshly minted C10 Skyline, the 1969 Skyline 2000GT-R made its debut at the Tokyo Motor Show in the fall of 1968. Initially introduced as a four-door sedan (Type PGC10), it was the legendary S20 2.0-liter inline six-cylinder engine under the hood that excited. Featuring dual overhead camshafts, a cross-flow head with four valves per cylinder, hemispherical combustion chambers, and a trio of dual-throat Mikuni-Solex side-draft carburetors, it incorporated almost every known horsepower trick of the era to churn up 158 horsepower and 137 lb-ft of torque. While it can't compare horsepower-wise to the numbers being produced by the American V-8s of the era, the S20 did more with less, a philosophy that Japanese makers would practice for decades. The two-door coupe version (KPGC10) of the GT-R arrived in October of 1970, capping GT-R sedan production at 832 examples. Renowned for its ability to hit 124 mph and run a 16.1-second quarter-mile, the 2000GT-R marked the beginning of a long and passionate affair between Nissan and performance fans.
Although the fourth-generation Skyline C110 (nicknamed "Kenmeri," or "Ken and Mary," for a successful Japanese advertising campaign featuring characters so named) launched in 1972, its GT-R variant wouldn't arrive for another year. One of the first Japanese cars to feature four-wheel disc brakes, the second-gen 2000GT-R saw the return of the S20 inline-six with an additional eight horsepower. Sadly, rapidly changing emission laws in Japan brought production to an end after only 197 units had been produced. At the time, most enthusiasts considered it the end of the line for the GT-R name.
In August of the 1989, after a sixteen-year absence from the Nissan lineup, the GT-R nameplate made its triumphant return. Based on the then-current R32 Skyline, the new GT-R retained the trademark straight-six engine layout, but it was an entirely new design known internally as RB26DETT. Displacing 2.6 liters and packing an additional 118 horsepower and exactly twice the torque, it featured fuel-injection for the first time in a GT-R. Impressive, but the real news was the electronically controlled all-wheel-drive system, which featured Nissan's Advanced Total Traction Engineering System for All-Terrain with Electronic Torque Split (ATTESA E-TS). The BNR32 GT-R also holds the honor of not losing a single race in the All Japan Championships.
The final evolution of the second-generation GT-R, the 1990 R34 model would mark the last pairing of the vaunted RB26DETT engine and ATESA E-TS four-wheel-drive system. Both stiffer and shorter (two inches were removed from the wheelbase) than the R33, the R34 addressed the issue of aerodynamics, improving the underfloor aerodynamics for increased downforce and improved high-speed stability.
Just to make sure no one forgets how quickly Godzilla can move when prodded, Nissan brought along the record-setting crazy-camo'd GT-R NISMO that put down a 7:08.679 lap time at the Nürburgring.
All of which leads directly to the newly revised, 2017 version.