To illustrate the difference between the world the R35 Nissan GT-R emerged into and the one it’s leaving this week, we can turn to that ever-present arbiter of the cultural zeitgeist – number one singles. On 24 October 2007, when the R35 was first revealed to the world, Britain was bumping to Crank That by Soulja Boy.
The GT-R comfortably outlived that particular viral dance trend and pretty much every other one up to… well, whatever’s going on on TikTok this hour, but its time is finally up. With the last ever R35 rolling out of Tochigi this week, we’re dealing with the grief the only way we know how: browsing the classifieds.
Nissan GT-R 45th Anniversary Edition – side
Even though it went off sale in Britain a few years ago, the GT-R’s immense longevity means there are still plenty to be found for sale, many of them touting ludicrous power outputs thanks to the highly tuneable nature of the VR38DETT V6 (remember how at the R35’s launch, Nissan claimed it was ‘untuneable’? Ha).
This one’s different. It’s that rarest of things, an entirely unmodified R35 GT-R. That’ll have you either breathing a sigh of relief that it’s not been mucked about with, or rubbing your hands at the idea of a blank canvas to turn into even more of a crazed, turbo-fluttering power beast than the standard car was.
Nissan GT-R 45th Anniversary Edition – interior
Then again, you might be better served leaving this one alone, because it’s not just any GT-R – it’s a 2015 45th Anniversary Edition. The anniversary in question was of the launch of the original ‘Hakosuka’ Skyline 2000GT-R, the car that kicked off the whole world’s obsession with those three innocuous letters.
To celebrate that particular birthday, the R35 didn’t get any extra performance, sticking with the 542bhp produced by the 2015 car, but gained uprated Bilstein dampers, a set of unique Rays wheels and, most notably, a superb exterior colour known as Silica Brass, the same shade featured on the ultra-rare R34 Skyline GT-R M-Spec.
Nissan GT-R 45th Anniversary Edition – rear
The 45th Anniversary is even rarer, though. Only 100 were produced worldwide, and just five of them came to the UK. This is one of them, and having covered a modest 31,500 miles across three owners, it’s up for sale at £62,995. That’s far from the cheapest way into an R35, but unmodded examples like this are only getting harder to come by – having an extra-rare special edition is just the icing on the cake.
Viewed in modern terms, it’s less than a Mercedes-AMG A45, and while the little Merc is now arguably an even more impressive giant slayer than the big Nissan, we doubt a hopped-up A-Class will ever have quite the cult, quite the mythology around it, of the R35 – and now Nissan’s finally called time on production, we suspect that mythology will only deepen. And it’ll definitely be remembered more fondly than Crank That.
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