Farewell drive: R35 Nissan GT-R, first and final forms

You could be forgiven for thinking that a farewell story for the R35 GT-R might mean that after 14 years, production has ceased for Nissan’s long-serving halo sports car.

You’d be wrong.

As you read this, men in overalls are (probably) still cobbling together R35 GT-Rs at Tochigi in Japan, and no end-date to production has actually been set. In what is approaching an almost Beetle-esque run of uninterrupted assembly (save for that thing that happened in 2020), the Nissan R35 GT-R will be around for an indeterminate amount more time yet, potentially a couple more years.

And don’t get us wrong, while some may joke that its end would be a merciful one, actually we’d be sad – a twin-turbo sports car in production is a twin-turbo sports car in production, after all, and if Nissan wants to keep making it forever, so be it.

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Alas, however, Godzilla v35.0 has staggered from the ocean on to Australian shores for the very last time. It might be able to vaporise skyscrapers by merely spewing an ‘atomic heat beam’ but in Australia a stroke of a pen in an office in Canberra was all it took to slay the beast forever.

The same side-impact ADR 85 ruling that has also killed off the Alpine A110 and Lexus RC Coupe and IS sedan, means the R35 GT-R, as a brand-new vehicle at least, is no more.

That was, however, until we got our grimy pincers on one of the very last cars in Nissan Australia’s possession – a new T-spec. And what a car it is. Shimmering in its Millennium Jade green, with its green leather interior and, err, light green window tint, our 2022 Nissan GT-R T-spec is one of the final officially imported, new R35s to enter Australia.

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It joins other R35 editions such as the Spec V, the Egoist, the Black Edition, the Track Edition, the Gentleman Edition, the Midnight Opal Special Edition, the Nismo N-Attack, the 45th Anniversary Gold Edition, the Naomi Osaka Edition, the 50th Anniversary Edition, the one they did with Usain Bolt and the GT-R Nismo Special Edition. Special editions indeed.

Of course, the T-spec, at $256,700, is truly unique, with its special T-spec badging, aforementioned love of all things green and, let’s see, gold-coloured engine cover.

Luckily, that’s not quite it. The T-spec does get some tricky gear from an admittedly very special parts bin, such as the carbon-ceramic rotors of the Nismo models (410mm at the front and 390mm at the rear compared to the standard, puny 390mm/380mm Brembo set-up), a carbonfibre rear wing, a curiously decoratively-stitched interior headliner and forged Rays 20-inch wheels.

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Its Millennium Jade paint joins Midnight Purple as new additions on the brochure palette, two colours not seen since the R34 – seriously cool, and sacred stuff to any worshipper of GT-R.

The T-spec does get some tricky gear from an admittedly very special parts bin

Mechanically, well, Nissan would call you a greedy little piggy if you complained about a twin-turbo 3.8-litre V6 with 419kW/632Nm; same an ATTESA all-wheel drive system and rear-mounted, six-speed twin-clutch transaxle.

And true, it speaks to how ahead of its time the R35 was in 2007 that, today, a manufacturer wouldn’t be ridiculed in announcing a new, twin-turbo V6, all-wheel drive sports car with a dual-clutch gearbox. Given the overwhelming proliferation of batteries and electric motors, it probably would be quite welcome, actually.

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Our T-spec is one of 48 cars that rolled off the boat at Port Brisbane mid-October last year, the very final shipment before ADRus horribilis came into force from October 31, 2021. Meaning that since 2009, 990 officially imported R35s roam Aussie roads – 28 of them T-specs. And hopefully by the end of our little drive today, they will be no rarer.

We’re sitting in a 2009 R35 GT-R, instantly transported back to an era when a nerdy bloke called Kevin Rudd was PM (the first time), Mumford & Son’s ‘Little Lion Man’ was doing the ear-worm and Swine Flu was making front-page news in a way that, in 2022, couldn’t be more acutely quaint.

This last Aussie blast in an R35 GT-R begins off Melbourne’s Eastlink Freeway at a service station where we’ve organised something special – meeting up with one of the first Aussie-delivered R35 GT-Rs. Owner Philip Pilven has kindly driven his pristine 24,000km unmolested example, which he’s owned since new, all the way from Ballarat just for us.

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Nissan claims since it went into production in December 2007, the R35 has steadily evolved into a finely-honed beast. Given more time has passed since 2007 than the timeline of R32, R33 and R34 GT-Rs combined, you’d want that to be the case.

Power has risen – from 358kW in 2009, steadily to the 419kW in even the ‘base’ cars today. A reasonably substantial facelift inside and out occurred in 2017, but if one anecdote had to summarise the R35’s development philosophy it would be the one where owners in Japan complained, early on, they had to touch exposed paintwork in order to close the boot.

In the next one of its yearly ‘running updates’, the R35 then came with a little leather pull-tab attached to the underside of the boot-lid. The story of the R35’s honing has been one of many tiny changes such as this.

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Parked next to each other with the bonnets up, you’d be hard-pressed to spot any difference in the engine bays between Philip’s original R35 and our T-spec. A carbonfibre strut brace in the T-spec – and that lovely gold engine cover – appears to be it.

The biggest difference is the interiors. The 2009 car’s feels like that of an X-Trail from the same period that a local mechanic might lend to you for a few days out of courtesy as much as pity.

The 2022 car – with its redesigned centre stack as per the 2017 facelift – is a total contrast, decked in plush carpet, luxe leather and Alcantara. Indeed, you can see how the original R35 offered all the performance of a 997 911 Turbo for half the price – it had half the interior quality.

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Not that that dissuaded early buyers. “The amount of people who traded their Porsches in for these was phenomenal,” says Philip. “The first few years, there was always a Porsche or two on Nissan showroom floors because they’d traded it in.”

While you seem to sit a bit higher in the new car, if you blindfolded someone and drove them around a carpark, based on the noises alone they would not be able to pick the cars, either. Low-speed transmission and clutch behaviour – supposedly more refined in the new car – feels more or less exactly the same.

After a couple of white-knuckled blats around an industrial estate in Philip’s R35, some stark differences between old and new begin to emerge. Hate to say it but while it’s obviously slower, the old car might actually drive better than the new one. It feels like the original GT-R that chief engineer Mizuno-san intended, sitting flatter through corners on its noticeably stiffer springs, and reacting more keenly to inputs.

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With ‘just’ 358kW, no single thing dominates the dynamic experience either – everything feels in harmony, from the power to the handling to the brakes and grip. It’s a Goldilocks car. And it’s still – be in no doubt whatsoever – eye-wateringly fast.

By comparison, the new car, with its additional 61kW and much bigger brakes, is more of a point-and-shoot, go-then-whoa experience. Softer suspension – while resulting in a nicer ride quality – has dulled its responses somewhat, and even introduced a kind of unwelcome doughiness to the front-end on turn-in.

Somehow, the new R35 doesn’t ‘shrink’ around you quite like the old one, and these aren’t huge cars. Obviously, the new car leaves the old one in its dust for sheer pace, but the old one, while slower, is somehow friendlier, more pure and more fun. It’s certainly more raw.

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Awkwardly, the new car might be better if it had slightly stiffer springs. To suggest as much is to almost hear the groans of the engineering team across the ocean in Japan.

One of the early criticisms of the R35 was it was too stiffly sprung, and a main theme of its journey since the late 2000s has been making it more comfortable, better appointed and easier to daily drive (to justify a price that hasn’t really budged).

Myself and photographer Brunelli bid Philip and his R35 adieu, scoff our faces with service station sushi (the mood took) and set course for Victoria’s Gippsland region for our final fling in a car that has graced our cover no less than six times since 2007. It’s a bit of a solemn moment.

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I’m not very old, and for many around my age this car has been somewhat of an unchanging constant in a constantly changing world. It certainly doesn’t feel like nearly 14 years ago I was glued to my old CRT computer monitor watching a clip on this new thing called YouTube, of a man called Jeremy Clarkson in an R35 racing a bullet train across Japan.

Nor tearing open my January 2008 issue of Wheels to read Michael Stahl’s first report from the Nurburgring, on what was basically Carlos Ghosn’s vanity project – a very exciting one at that.

And the R35, while it has changed, also has changed little. As back-to-backing it with Philip’s car revealed, aurally it has changed little. And it might have one of the most recognisable aural signatures of any car. It clatters mechanically to a start, almost spluttering, then motors around at low speeds with a military-grade whine like it’s an Abrams tank.

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Supposedly this is partly because the clutches are in the rear transaxle, meaning the propshaft down the middle of the car – connected straight to the flywheel – spins at the same speed as the engine, contributing to the delightful mix-tape of noises.

During a phone interview for our story, Fred Frederiksen – Nissan Australia’s in-house R35 guru – called this intriguing cacophony of low-speed whirrs, clacks and whines the ‘mechanical symphony’.

At motorway speeds, they all fade away to make for what is quite a comfortable car. Father of the R35, Mizuno-san, had decreed not only should the R35 be able to fit golf clubs in the boot – it can – but at 200km/h passengers should be able to hold a conversation without raising their voices. Something we weren’t game enough to test in Victoria.

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For its impressive pliancy at motorway speeds there’s no hiding the R35 has a few frown lines and tufts of hair growing out its ears. There’s no head-up display, no radar cruise control, no digital instrument display (the analogue items haven’t changed since 2007).

There’s not even blind-spot monitoring, let alone active emergency braking. A forward parking camera would also be nice; maybe Apple CarPlay too. If we put our staid road-tester’s hat on, a $50K car would cop a bollocking for these omissions, let alone a $250K one. At 2100rpm at 100km/h, it also would benefit from a seventh gear.

Luckily, slotting the three drive-mode toggles into ‘R’ mode and seeing them delightfully light up red with anger somewhat soothes these ails, as we arrive at our chosen 31km of bitumen. Ribboning along a ridgeline with distant vistas of the Southern Ocean, for us, this challenging bit of road linking Loch and Wonthaggi is Car of the Year country – hallowed ground and a special place for one last dance.

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That is, if driving an R35 GT-R hard wasn’t more like coming across a grizzly bear in the woods with nothing but a Swiss army knife for self-defence. It starts with the noise, one of urgent vengeance, like the GT-R has just learned everybody it loves has been brutally murdered and it knows exactly by whom and exactly where to find them.

With the drive mode toggles in ‘R’ for powertrain and stability control, and ‘Normal’ for suspension (the best combo, at least on these roads), it quickly becomes apparent that while still fun, the dynamic experience has aged.

Back in the day, road-testers lived in a comparatively skinny-tyred world and were easily awed at how the ATTESA all-wheel drive worked to create an almost atomic bond between tyres and a bitumen surface. These days, the Dunlop SP Sport Maxx GT600 run-flats – which Nissan has stubbornly stuck with – feel capriciously temperature sensitive in an old-school way.

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An R35 would doubtless be more fun and friendly on more modern rubber. And while it still wows with its grip – you feel deserving of a trophy getting it to understeer – a 992 Porsche 911 GT3 with rear-steering on Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 Rs would boast a corner entry speed that would have an R35 gasping with fear.

Also, the R35 was benchmarked on the 997 911 Turbo. An entire generation of 911 – the 991 – has come and gone in that time.

That’s not to take away from the fact that, as lap times and 0-100km/h times continue to show (3.4sec as-tested for this T-spec), the R35 is still blisteringly quick. The paddleshift dual-clutch can’t rapid-fire multiple downchanges like a Porsche PDK, yet with a bit of patience it’s still ultra fast.

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The T-spec even lets out a little crack from its titanium tips on upchanges; and in ‘R’ mode powertrain, some polite pops and crackles can be heard on heavy overrun. New tricks for this old dog, it seems.

Driving an R35 hard is like coming across a grizzly bear in the woods with nothing but a Swiss army knife for self-defence

The R35 is also more fun that it’s generally given credit. It’s a heavy car, and those oft-binary tyres can feel more foe than friend. The R35, too, does not care to flatter your ability in the same ways as more modern sports cars. In fact, sweaty-palmed fear while driving an R35 is not uncommon.

An inconsistent all-wheel drive system doesn’t help (rear-drive until tractions necessitates; up to 50 percent of torque can be shunted forwards).

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But push through the intimidation and drive it like a rear-drive machine, and with a bit of risk comes great reward. And an utterly unique driving experience, as thrilling and exciting as sports car come.

Mind-scrambled – another R35 trait – we pull up at a lookout as the sun sets over the distant ocean, and there is a sense of gratitude. We love the R35 and we will miss it. But as it transitions from the corner of the Nissan showroom into the immortal world of cult classics – at least in Australia – we reckon the R35 will be more celebrated in posterity than in life.

Borderline disdained by some GT-R purists for being a bit too heavy, a bit too expensive and, probably, a bit too hard to drive, we reckon they’ll come around to the R35 and see it for what it is – Nissan’s LFA moment. One that entered mass production, and stands to be one of the longest-running sports cars of the modern era. If you ask us, long may it continue.

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Will Godzilla have a successor?

Tenuous reports suggest Nissan is working on an R35 facelift incorporating the brand’s 48-volt hybrid system. An integrated starter generator could add 20kW/250Nm and improve fuel economy, as well as reducing the 0-100km/h
time to 3.0sec.

If Nissan instead committed to an entirely new GT-R, our guess is it would buddy up with another manufacturer – a la Toyota and BMW with Supra/Z4 – to build a technology showcasing, all-electric, dual-motor monster.

2022 Nissan GT-R specifications

Nissan GT-R sales