Which Nissan GT-R is your hero: the new R35 or the older R34?
It’s a fair question. The new GT-R is, well, new. It has more power, more torque, a better dual-clutch transmission, tons of new technology to keep it steady no matter what ridiculousness the driver tries to perform, and it’s faster.
But the older R34 GT-R just has a certain nostalgic magic to it. Maybe it’s being one of the star cars throughout the import tuner era leading to its showcase in the Fast & Furious series. Maybe it was all the various video games that made the R34 out to be a legendary vehicle. Maybe it was all the drift and street racers that chose the R34 as their ride and then tuned it to within an inch of its life.
Or maybe it was the legendary RB26 engine, a motor so tough and able to endure ridiculous loads that even today some people seek out used models to sink into their personal rides. In fact, the RB26 is so popular that Nissan recently announced that they’ll be making brand new ones to sell directly to tuning garages around the world.
This particular model featured in a video from YouTube channel TheStraightPipes is modified, but then again, it's hard to find a stock R34 GT-R at this point. It's a Bayside Blue R34 Skyline GT-R Spec-V with 504 horsepower and 380 lb-ft of torque at the wheels. When it was brand new, the Skyline's twin-turbo inline 6-cylinder was advertised as producing 276 horsepower due to a gentleman's agreement among Japanese carmakers to not make powerful cars for fear of causing highway accidents. So instead, they made powerful engines and just said they weren't so great.
Once it became clear that the RB26 was making way more power than advertised, folks starting tuning it. And then they discovered the RB26 was capable of producing way more power than any engine out there with just a few bolt-on mods. And thus, the legend of the R34 Skyline was born.
Our hosts were able to get one in Canada since Canadian law allows imports that are 15 years or older. In America, it's 25 years, but that time limit is coming soon. Expect R34s to spike in price very shortly.