The history of the automobile has seen many, great sports cars and supercars created. We have had amazing machines such as the Porsche 911, perhaps the greatest of all sports cars. We’ve had supercars such as the Honda NSX and McLaren F1, plus more recent additions such as the Bugatti Chiron, and the epic hypercars such as the Ferrari LaFerrari. One series of cars though that could potentially be the greatest of all time is that of the Nissan Skyline GT-R series.
The very first car to carry the Skyline name was the Prince Skyline S54, a company that sold Skyline sedans before merging with Nissan-Datsun. This first Skyline appeared in 1957, but the first, true Skyline GT-R first appeared on the scene back in 1969. What this car spawned is quite possibly one of the very best ranges of cars ever made. So much so that Nissan brought the GT-R name back in 2009 with its true successor to the Skyline. We are going to take a brief look at the history of the Skyline from the first generation to the last generation.
The First Generation Of The Skyline
The Skyline GT-R as we would first know it was launched back in 1969, and was designated the PGC10 internally at Nissan. Initially, the car was available solely as an exclusive to the Japanese Nissan dealership network “Nissan Prince Store”, when the Prince company merged into the Nissan operations. A four-door sedan, the car was powered by a 2.0-liter DOHC S20 inline-six engine with 160 hp, and only 1,945 examples of the car were produced from 1969 to 1972. 1963 saw the second generation of Skyline GT-R introduced, designated the KPGC110.
The Skyline was now powered by a 1,989cc S20 inline-six engine. However, things took a sudden turn for the worst. When the car was put into production in 1973, the gasoline crisis of the early 1970s hit hard, which virtually overnight destroyed any demand for high-performance sports cars. Because of this, only 197 second generation Skyline’s were ever produced, making them some of the rarest cars in the range's history. Even more remarkably, no Skyline would be seen until the late 1980s, with the GT-R Skyline name being benched until Nissan brought out the third generation of the car in 1989. And that would turn out to be one of the greatest in the cars history.
The R32 Skyline Emerges
What Nissan created in 1989 was the Skyline GT-R R32, one of the greatest cars in the range. Designed to dominated Group A racing, the car now had a 2.6-liter twin-turbo RB26 inline-six engine that produced 276 hp, and was also all-wheel drive. The Group A racing campaign for the car would begin in 1990. This was when the popularity of the Skyline started to take off. In 1989, a production version of the car went around the Nürburgring with a time of 8:22.38, making it the fastest road-legal production car around the track at the time, and on a semi-wet track too.
The next generation that followed would be the R33, and this was released in early 1995. The R33 corrected some of the shortcomings of the R32, such as its weak oil pump drive collar, and it was still powered by a 2.6-liter inline-six RB26 engine. In 1997, Nissan released the special NISMO 400R edition of the R32. This was powered by the RBX-GT2 engine, which was 2.8-liters and produced 400 hp, and gave the car a top speed of 186 mph. Only 44 of these were ever built, making this one of the most exclusive GT-Rs ever made.
The Final GT-R Chapter
All good things must come to an end though, and in 1999 the final generation of the original Skyline, the R34, was introduced. The R34 Skyline had the same RB26 engine as in the previous generations, but it was a shorter car than the previous generations, and the 2.8-litre engine made its return in the form of the Z-Tune model. What perhaps helped elevate the Skyline was its role in the Fast & Furious movies, but all too soon the end had come. The original Skyline run came to an end in 2002, and no GT-R would be seen until 2009 with the new GT-R.
A New Generation Of GT-R
The 2009 GT-R that emerged was the true successor to the original Skyline, dubbed the R35 and technically the sixth-generation GT-R car. However, the car no long carries the Skyline name, that name now reserved for Nissan’s luxury-sport vehicles. The GT-R that we have now though is a fitting continuation of one of the greatest sports car ranges ever created. The Fast and Furious films helped them reach a new audience, and their exclusivity has made them incredibly desirable, too. For great Japanese performance, you can’t go wrong with the GT-R.
Sources: Hemmings, Cars Club, CAR Magazine, Car Scoops, Top Gear, Nissan UK,