Sayonara, R35: Nissan Japan has stopped taking orders for the GT-R

The R35 started development in 2000 and was launched in 2007. It has had a number of updates along the way, but you can only push an old platform so far. The R35 has already been discontinued in most markets because it can&#x27;t comply with new regulations. It&#x27;s sad to say goodbye to an icon, but the R35 has remained in production for far longer than anyone would reasonably have expected.<p>It probably doesn&#x27;t help that the car is so closely associated with Carlos Ghosn.

I&#x27;ve never driven the R35 -- it never particularly interested me, largely due to the dual clutch transmission but also because of the size. But I was in Japan in December and took the opportunity to rent an R34 GT-R which was just such a treat. I get the irony -- the R34 was a huge car for its time as well, especially in Japan. These cars always did punch above their weight, though.<p>As much as I have little interest in the R35 due to its transmission, I still think it was the correct choice- the GT-R was always the tech-forward, throw-the-kitchen-sink-at-it, performance-first car, it was never meant to be the lightweight purist choice.

Truly one of the greatest cars of its time, a snarling, cybernetic banshee that bent physics to its will; Now, just a fading watermark on the walls of history—a reminder of how high the tide once surged, before receding for good.<p>We&#x27;ve lost a lot of ground since the glory days of the mid 90&#x27;s.

Sad to see it go, but at the same time it’s been mostly the same car for 15 years.<p>It was a performance bargain at launch, but the rest of the automotive world has been catching up. You can now get nearly the same track performance at almost half the price.<p>The R35 will always retain a special place in the automotive world for being an AWD turbo platform with a lot of modification headroom. I’m not too surprised they’re discontinuing it after 15 years though.

Nissan had a huge amount of credibility in enthusiast car communities, not just with the GT-R but also the Nissan Z cars. Unfortunately, they chose not to continue in investing in those spaces, so they have slowly seen what was once a strength evaporate. It&#x27;s like watching a body builder lose discipline and get fat but still hang out at the beach thinking he looks like he does 10 years ago. Sad!

My brother worked at Nissan back when the R35 was new and exciting.<p>It sounded like the ownership experience (at least in the US) was not good. Reliability and maintenance were bad. Word got out that it wasn&#x27;t a fun car to own and then they got very hard to sell so the salesforce didn&#x27;t even like them. Dealers didn&#x27;t want to put them on the lot, etc..<p>And then it did the standard Japanese sports car thing where it languished without updates and got old and outdated compared to other brands&#x27; sports cars.

Nissan&#x27;s Skyline&#x2F;R35 lines were largely wildly expensive projects that Nissan had no business doing, at the expense of their company&#x27;s future. They were a form of a charity (bless them) to the automotive world. But then they had to pivot hard (see Carlos Ghosn) to be try to be profitable and killed their brand. (There were of course other issues than just these projects, though.)<p>RIP Nissan.

I bought one of the first 2012’s available in the US. Flew out to St. Louis to pick it up.<p>It was a very cool car. Drew way too much attention for my taste. And it was very unrefined in many ways that I didn’t expect.<p>It was a special car, but I ended up not liking it that much. I sold it after about 6 months.<p>Maybe once a year I have a very vivid dream about it. Kind of sad to hear this is the end of the line for it.

One of the most fun experiences I have ever had in a car was traveling from Tokyo to the Friday night Daikoku car meetup in a GT-R Skyline. It was legit like being in a scene from Fast and the Furious, multiple GT-Rs cruising through traffic, girlfriends hanging out the windows filming with phones. Fire shooting out of exhaust pipes, it was unforgettable.

Driven the R35 in 2020. A lot of fun but definitely felt outdated by then.<p>It&#x27;s a shame that Nissan somehow had all the cards right (a working man&#x27;s super car under $100k) and fumbled so much by just not innovating in the 2010s. Their luxury brand Infiniti suffered as much as well. I don&#x27;t know what they were doing.

&gt; After nearly two decades of embarrassing supercars, Nissan has<p>is this intended to mean &quot;After nearly two decades of making embarrassing supercars, Nissan has&quot; or &quot;After nearly two decades of embarrassing the supercars, Nissan has&quot; ?

Guess I’ll get a Supra instead if my paper money ever pans out

Surely this means we will see a 2027 R390.

Well I feel like Mazda is the last true hope for performance production cars.

A joke i have on tap is when i see a GTR i say it has the second hottest rear end i&#x27;ve ever seen. When I&#x27;m get the inevitable follow up question i say &quot;i married the first!&quot;. heh it still makes me chuckle.

Nissan is dying. It&#x27;s time to accept it already. The moment they created a plastic oil pan, it&#x27;s game over. Nobody cares about engineering anymore at Nissan.

Unless you live near a track or some really technical mountain roads a Plaid makes cars like this obsolete.