It seemed like it took forever, but Nissan finally revealed an all-new Nissan Z, but what about the aging Nissan GT-R? That car has been in production for 15 years, and there’s literally no sign of a new-gen R36 GT-R being in the works. This comes despite the fact that noise regulations have killed its presence in Europe and safety regulations have killed its presence in Australia, leaving just the U.S. and Japan as the primary markets. Nissan isn’t planning to kill off the GT-R as once previously expected, though it is already looking well into the future beyond the next-gen model whenever that will actually happen.

The Future of the Nissan GT-R

The automotive industry is changing, and it’s changing fast. Models once adored and worshiped as the epitome of performance are in danger of fading away along with the life-giving fuel that has powered them over the years. The Nissan GT-R is one such model that, while we don’t want to see it be retired we have a hard time envisioning what it would be like without that amazing high-performance VR38DETT V-6 under the hood. Apparently, Nissan doesn’t have such concerns, as it’s already considering what it will be like when the GT-R name represents a model that runs strictly on electricity.

In an interview with Top Gear, Nissan COO, Ashwani Gupta, explained just where the company sits with the GT-R’s future. “I think it's too early to say when, but definitely it will come one day.” When that day will come is a completely different story, as nobody really knows, but Nissan is clear that – just like the case with the Nissan Z – the technology just isn’t there yet. “At present, when we do all the simulations to the electrification on these cars, we don't find the right technology to define what is 'Z' and what is 'GT-R'. And, in the end, these two are not cars, these are our culture.”

On top of this, Gupta explained that the Nissan Z and GT-R will always remain in their current positions within the Nissan Hierarchy. Even once electrification is possible, they will remain in their current positions – the Z as an affordable sports car and the GT-R as a thoroughbred supercar that sits at the top of the range. They are known internally as the beauty and the beast, by the way. So, now that we know that Nissan won’t pull the plug on either of these downright amazing cars, when can we expect to see that extreme transition and evolution.

Well, the Nissan Z is new, so it’s going to stick around for at least seven years and probably longer unless Nissan is forced to kill off its ICE lineup before that. That model’s official launch has even been delayed until summer in Japan due to supply chain issues and here in the States we don’t even have a solid confirmation of how much the Z will cost but the $40,000 range seems about right.

As for the GT-R, it wouldn’t be surprising if it just kept existing in its current form until Nissan is prepared to electrify it. That could mean we won’t see anything new until at least the end of this decade. Nissan is currently working on solid-state battery technology, which is a big part of the equation that will make the GT-R EV possible, but with only a single prototype in hand and production not expected to start until 2028, we have quite a while to wait before we start seeing it in mainstream cars, let alone a performance beast like the GT-R.

Either way, at least we can rest assured that Nissan isn’t going to give up on the two finest vehicles in its lineup and will wait until it can do the job right before forcing them into electrification.