Back in February of 1969 the Prince Motor Car Company introduced a high performance racing version of their premium Skyline sedan for the streets, introducing the world to the first ever Nissan GT-R. The squared off Japanese super car immediately gained cult status by enthusiasts as the Hakosuka GT-R; hako coming from the word for box and the abbreviation for sukairain which stands for skyline. The Hakosuka GT-R was powered by a 2.0 Liter S20 inline six cylinder engine that produced a total of 160 HP. The cars were stripped of unnecessary equipment to be as light as possible for racing, which helped with the new sports car rack up over 50 race wins by 1972.
Back in February of 1969 the Prince Motor Car Company introduced a high performance racing version of their premium Skyline sedan for the streets, introducing the world to the first ever Nissan GT-R. The squared off Japanese super car immediately gained cult status by enthusiasts as the Hakosuka GT-R; hako coming from the word for box and the abbreviation for sukairain which stands for skyline. The Hakosuka GT-R was powered by a 2.0 Liter S20 inline six cylinder engine that produced a total of 160 HP. The cars were stripped of unnecessary equipment to be as light as possible for racing, which helped with the new sports car rack up over 50 race wins by 1972.
As great as the Hakosuka GT-R was, Nissan never saw fit to import any of their flagship sports cars to the U.S. but thanks to the team at Right Hand Drive Japan in Torrance, California we now have the chance to own a piece of Japanese sports car history; sort of. According to the restoration specialists “This is a 1972 Nissan Skyline 2000GT GT-R Clone (it was converted from a 2000GT to a GT-R). This model Skyline is affectionately known by enthusiasts as the Hakosuka... Venerated by Skyline/GT-R and classic Japanese car enthusiasts as the birth of a legend, these vehicles are even very rare in Japan.”
Even though this is not the real McCoy, these Hakosuka Skyline 2000 GT-R clones offer an excellent and affordable alternative to the real thing. After all, owning and operating an authentic Hakosuka GT-R would be so nerve racking you would be hard pressed to take it out of the garage and the classic Japanese race car would be doomed to a life of dark damp days hidden away as opposed to being enjoyed outside for the world to see. Now all you need to do is find an even rarer S20 engine to complete the Hakosuka GT-R experience.
In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Topspeed is running down a list of the most attention-grabbing pink cars spotted anywhere in the world. After showing you the pink Audi R8, we know head to Australia to show the Donut King Nissan GT-R.
Outlandish colors for road cars are pretty rare, but when it comes to race cars, it seems that conservative colorways are thrown out the window in favor of the more eye-catching variety.
Take this Nissan GT-R as an example. Owned by Donut King CEO Tony Alford, this Nissan GT-R was entered during the 2008 Targa Tasmania rally crown where it went exhaust-to-exhaust with a bunch of supercars that were also entered in the competition.
In a field that included a Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera, a Porsche 911 GT2, and a Corvette Z06, it seemed like Alford had to come up with a way to make his GT-R stand out from the rest of the pack.
So he did what any self-respecting donut chain owner would do to a sports car: he colored it pink. If the GT-R’s colorway isn’t enough, Alford also took advantage of the free publicity by plastering his company’s logo all over the car. So much for subtlety, huh?
Vancover was the scene of yet another Nissan GT-R crash after the owner of the sports car slammed into a VanCity Credit Union Bank. Fortunately, except for the driver who had a few gashes here and there, nobody was hurt or seriously injured from the accident.
According to News 1130, the GT-R barely hit a few civilians, including one who was just in front of the car after it crashed into a row of ATM machines. Another woman was inches away from being run over before jumping out of the way seconds before it would’ve hit her.
The police are currently investigating the situation and are not ruling out the idea that the GT-R may have been going faster than it should have, which probably led to the driver losing control of the car.
The driver was fortunate that nobody was seriously hurt because he would’ve had to face a much stiffer penalty than just paying for the damages. Then again, crashing a GT-R onto a bank is going to be pretty damaging to his bank account anyway.
It’s been an enormously successful car for the better part of its run over the past few years, but as it turns out, Nissan may finally be ready to park the Nissan R35 in the garage and be replaced by the R36.
According to the boys over at Pistonheads, Nissan vice president of global product planning, Andy Palmer flew in to check up on the brand’s GT-R program at the Nurburgring. While he was there, Palmer reemphasized Nissan’s continued commitment in the development of the GT-R program, so much so that he also hinted on a model (the R36) replacing the R35 in the coming years, expected to be 2013.
Do you see anything wrong with these photos? It’s a beautiful Nissan GT-R with one notable problem: it has no tires.
The Nissan sports car was the victim of a robbery in Long Island as the petty crooks took out all four tires from their spokes in the middle of the night. The hapless owner, who we can only assume was dozing off when the crime happened, had no way of knowing that his gorgeous ride would end up tireless when the sun came up.
We don’t condone – nor will we ever – any form of robbery but we can bet that the thiefs who stole the GT-R’s wheels had amateurs written all over them.
That’s because you can always tell the difference between a smooth criminal from a riff-raff just looking for kicks on a weekend night. The former knows what he’s trying to steal and sets about it in a discrete and timely way. The latter just takes anything he can and prays that it’s worth something out on the market.
As in the case of this one, we’re guessing that those douches had no idea what a Nissan GT-R is, so they just decided to swipe the tires, thinking that they’re worth more than the whole car itself.
To those who did this, we believe in karma, boys; sooner or later, it’s going to run you down.
The German tuners at Avus Performance are trying their hand at modifying a Japanese super car, the Nissan GT-R. Right from the get go, the boys at Avus knew that their GT-R was going to be covered in the very stealth like matte black finish that would instantaneously set this particular example apart from more ordinary GT-R super cars. The tuners have left the chassis very close to the way it came from the factory, the only additions they made were a set of ride height adjustable coil overs and some slight wheel spacers to increase the super car’s track. It is hard to imagine that a simple monochromatic finish, combined with a set of glossy black painted wheels, dark tints and cleared out marker lights can completely transform the appearance of the GT-R without even changing up the car’s profile.
The dark exterior treatment is only the beginning of what AVUS has done with the GT-R. Under the hood, they have swapped out the factory engine computer for a modified unit that takes full advantage of the less restricted free flowing exhaust that has upped the GT-R’s maximum output from the factory rated 485 HP and 433 lb-ft of torque all the way up to an earth shattering 580 HP and 516 lb-ft of thrust.
With this kind of newfound power and stealth appearance, it is no wonder that the latest edition of Avus’s Black Edition GT-R has earned the nickname Batmobile. Batman would certainly be able to catch up to any of his arch nemesis in this hot rod GT-R and would easily be able to outrun Gotham City’s finest, now all the German modification specialists need to add are a few crime fighting features like a a grappling hook and oil slick to make the dark knight feel right at home behind the wheel of his newest toy.
When the Japanese automaker Nissan released the R35 Nissan GT-R onto the U.S. market, they did so with a little hesitation. At the time it seemed a bit peculiar to me when Nissan’s Technology, Environment and Motorsports PR manager Colin Price refused to comment on camera about anything regarding Godzilla’s launch control. But only a couple of months later, everything started to make sense when GT-R owners began to complain about the car’s problematic transmission.
The problem is that the GT-R’s gear box wasn’t made to handle the constant abuse of lead footed American drivers and their inability to understand exactly how much stress repeated hard launches put on the super car’s drivetrain. The worst part of this is that that the R35’s high tech transmission doesn’t come cheap, a replacement unit will run owners about $20,000. After one particular victim of the less than bullet proof gear box took the Nissan motor company to court claiming that if they equipped the car with a function, it shouldn’t be his fault when the car goes kaput just because he is using it.
So after about a year of deliberation, Nissan settled the suit by offering an upgraded LC2 launch control feature as well as putting a few new stipulations on the use of the car’s VDC and are offering a $75 coupon to all 2009 GT-R owners. From now on Nissan will have to prove that the use of the VDC system is a direct cause of the catastrophic failure before they can refuse to flip the bill.
After the R34, it didn’t seem like Nissan would be able to produce a car worthy of the name R35, until the GT-R was created. The r34 proved to be the mastermind in power and performance, with reliability mixed in. It stood side by side with the Toyota Supra, as the ideal Japanese sports car. The japanese way of making a smaller engine compete with bigger engines by tacking on performance parts and upgrades, helps keep them as the country of reliability and fuel-efficiency. The GT-R, although only a V6, has the power to beat cars with V10’s and V12’s, put to the test with a twin turbo, dual intake AWD monster. Since the halt of the Supra, which is very sad, the GT-R has taken over the spotlight and become the 2009 MotorTrend Car of The Year, as well as many other awards. Nissan’s obsession with acceleration, instead of top speed, makes this the ideal car for streets. It was never meant to be in a 1 mile drag vs a lamborghini murcielago. It was designed to be the ultimate, efficient, car of the year, as well as car of the century
With all of the hype being pumped into the Need For Speed franchise by video game developers Electronic Arts, it would seem that the highly anticipated release of the latest Real Driving Simulator is falling by the wayside. That won’t be the case if the marketing department at Gran Turismo 5’s creators Polyphony Digital has anything to say about it. These screenshots of the game’s menu screen show off the designers ability to blend intricately designed sports cars with highly detailed backgrounds and ever evolving humans.
The vehicle on display is a GT500 Nissan GT-R from Japan’s Super GT racing series. If this were an SAT question we could ask "V8 Super cars is to Austrialia as Super GT is to (blank)", and you ought to know that the four door race cars from down under are bigger than NASCAR is here in the U.S. In what looks like over a billion polygons of GT-R you can see the extensive detail that the game’s designers went to as evident by the countless louvers and intricate head lamps. The surroundings look to be a plaza somewhere in western Europe because of all the German tourists and the Foto hut, but the best part about the people is that they have gained an extra dimension, just another display of the extent that the team at Polyphony go to.
From what we can tell from the images, Gran Turismo 5 will offer the classic Arcade mode, online gameplay, something that looks like the best birthday present ever, the tedious driver tests, some sort of a manage everything garage, a multimedia center, and the usual tools for adjusting the game settings and a place to save your progress. From previous experience we aren’t going to bother predicting when GT5 will be available, but one thing is for certain, no matter how many delays each new version of Gran Turismo endures, they are always well worth the wait.
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