Nissan officially confirms end of GT-R production

While it’s been almost three years since the end of European GT-R sales – the PH Carbituary was penned in March 2022 – old Godzilla had soldiered on elsewhere for a good while. As recently as last spring new variants like the Skyline Edition and Takumi Edition were being launched with tweaks here, fettles there and some cool new colours introduced. But now all that is done as well, really and truly, as Nissan has quietly announced the end of GT-R production. Which feels like McDonald’s announcing the end of Big Mac production, yet here we are. 

‘End of new orders for GT-R’ reads the modest subsection on Nissan’s Japanese website. It continues: ‘We have received many orders for the Nissan GT-R and have now finished accepting orders for the planned production quantity. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all our customers for their support since its release in 2007.’

Going strong till the end – it’s enough to make you a bit emotional, not least because this was meant to be the car that ended driving fun (if you believed the haters) with its dual-clutch transmission, all-wheel drive and turbo V6. Only the GT-R became a legend in its own (considerable) lifetime, absorbing and exciting like the very best despite – or in fact, because – of the tech involved. 

Let’s not forget, either, how long ago 2007 was, or how significantly the GT-R moved the game on. 18 years ago (yes, really), Tony Blair was still Prime Minister, Jaguar still sold an S-Type and smoking in pubs had only just been banned. So a generation ago, yet in the GT-R swaggered in with so many of the features we’ve come to accept as the norm for fast cars in the 2020s: adaptive suspension, a dual-clutch gearbox, a twin-turbo six-cylinder and a freakishly sophisticated four-wheel drive system. Plus a whole lot of weight it worked miracles to hide. Talk about prescient. 

And it was less than £60k. Without wishing to repeat too much of the Carbituary, the GT-R’s impact could be considered unrivalled in its time. Remember that the previous R34s that had come to the UK through official channels at the turn of the millennium were more than £50,000; it’s amazing to think that something as advanced and as fast as the R35 cost £56,800 in 2009 (you’ll need almost twice that to secure a late model, low-mileage example now). It was so much quicker than anything that cost that same amount; it was tens of thousands cheaper than anything that could keep up. A new Godzilla icon was established almost overnight. 

Which you all knew by now, of course. But all worth repeating on the day the R35 finally met its maker. What on earth happens next is anyone’s guess, given the perilous state of Nissan generally and its looming cost-cutting drive. A new GT-R doesn’t comfortably fit into that predicament. But if this is where the lineage ends, it’s been some run. So farewell (again) then R35 GT-R – thanks for the memories and boggled minds.