Nissan needed a new poster boy for their Super GT racing campaign so it was no surprise that Nissan announced the retirement of the R35 in GT500
For almost 15 years, Nissan’s legendary R35 GTR was the brand’s halo model as it captured the imagination of school boys and car enthusiasts with its legendary performance, exotic-beating track record and an illustrious racing record. Spanning the same period of time it was in production, it competed in GT1, GT3 and GT4 category production-based professional motorsports, then dominated the Japanese Super GT Championship in 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015, thus establishing its status as one of the truly all-time greats. This legendary prowess helped earn it the moniker of Godzilla, or Gojira in Japanese, initially popularized by the earlier R32 GTR but brought to global legendary status with the R35.
Of course, the GTR remains a favorite in various grass-roots / entry-level motorsports activities which include drag racing, time-attack, hill-climb and tarmac rally events worldwide. The combination of its fearsome fire-breathing 3.8 liter closed-deck VR38DET twin-turbo V6 alloy engine, together with a sophisticated ATTESA-ETS Pro AWD system and a 6-speed dual-clutch transmission made for a surreal, unbelievably quick acceleration, whether in a straight-line or sling shooting out of tight corners. Drift King and Racing Legend Keith Tsuchiya once said the GTR accelerates unlike any car he has ever experienced in one of the many video reviews he did of the GTR in Tsukuba Track Battles.
Of course, the go was matched by planetary rotation stopping and exotic Brembo brakes , 6-piston calipers in the front and 4-piston callipers out back, with equally massive discs (early models received 380mm front rotors, later ones received even larger 400mm rotors, while the 2020 and later NISMO models received even more exotic and expensive carbon-ceramic brakes). Many of the GTR’s components were exclusive to the model, signifying its exclusivity and importance.
As for me, the GTR has always held a very close place in my heart: always quite there, but never quite enough for me to attain. It is, in many ways, the one that got away. The GTR was unveiled to a somewhat surprised audience at the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show, of which I was a guest of Nissan Motors Limited in Japan. We attended the media preview the day prior to the official launch and saw just how amazing the GTR was. At the launch proper the day after at the Tokyo Motor Show, the stands were piled thick, as if witnessing the birth of Japan’s savior from automotive monotony had finally arrived after a very long gestation period. I remember extending my stay in Japan a few days after, and got to visit Nissan’s old Global HQ at Ginza, the old, low-rise red brick structure providing a very stark contrast to the five GTRs on display at the lobby. The office was unfortunately closed as it was a Sunday. After 15 years, I still couldn’t get that image out of my mind.
Fast forward to two years, and I got to drive a grey-market GTR for a magazine feature. Fast forward again a few more years, and the GTR craze was overtaking the local custom car scene as throngs of modified GTR’s were roaming the streets. I was fortunate to try many of them. Fast forward again to late 2016, and Nissan once again invited us to Japan to experience the Nissan 360 Event, an intense brand immersion of what makes Nissan tick, with the highlight being NISMO Fest 2016 at Fuji Speedway, with a drive of the 2017 spec GTR on Sodegaura Forest Raceway in Chiba. A few months after, the 2017 spec GTR finally landed in the country, and I was the first Filipino motoring journalist to get behind the wheel of the first official Philippine model GTR. The pinnacle of my serendipitous GTR romance occurred in 2019, when Nissan invited me to attend the 2020 NISMO launch in Germany, where I spent time with Hiroshi Tamura–Mr. GTR to fans–and had become a good friend I kept tabs with and follow on social media through his travels all over the world and crucially, his bits of news and development on the R35 GTR. The drive at Eurospeedway Lausitzring just outside Berlin, Germany behind the wheel of the amazing R35 GTR NISMO was a feast for the senses, one that I cannot forget to this day.
Since the 2020 NISMO, Nissan has unveiled two special models, a newer 2021 spec NISMO and the T-Spec GTR, both launched during this pandemic. And were it not for this pandemic, I am almost certain I would have been physically present at either of those two launches. The launch of the new Z heralded change for Nissan. The ageing GTR was due for retirement and Nissan needed a new poster boy for their Super GT racing campaign so it was no surprise that Nissan announced the retirement of the R35 in GT500. Arguably, this sounded the death knell for the production GTR as the audience the R35 caters to has moved forward and upward to newer, more exotic machinery. Such is life.
Fitting then, that I recently found myself behind the wheel of this 2020 R35 GTR in Bayside Blue or Wanggan Blue, one of the most iconic, if not the most iconic color for the GTR popularized in the previous R34 GTR when I was invited to the Club Fairly Z Philippines track day at Batangas Racing Circuit. Trivia: Wangan in this context means bayside highway, specifically a nod to Wangan racers who would race the Shinkansen on the Wangan as it sped out of Tokyo and onto neighboring Yokohama, in a duel of high-speed, balls-to-the-wall racing. Eventually, these Wanggan racers started racing each other in perilous, do-or-die illegal high-speed races on public roads, romanticized by the legendary car club cum racing group Midnight, and the anime Wangan Midnight.
After an entire day of driving it as hard as I possibly could, I turned over the GTR its owner before it ran out of gas and I ran out of talent. And that pretty much sums it up with me and the GTR, for now at least. Just when things were getting better, life happened to get in the way, and all we have left are sweet memories that will last a lifetime.
