Nissan GT-R at 50: Top Gear's best Skyline moments

By topgear, 25 April 2019
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Tom Ford, associate editor, Top Gear magazine
GT-R. Possibly the most evocative three letters from my colourful youth, always the car I aspired to own while driving various dilapidated  - and viciously slow - old sheds. I ran an R35 GT-R for six months a while back, a car pampered to within an inch of its life until its gearbox suspiciously ‘failed’ (blew up) in the hands of Charles Turner and Oliver Marriage - both of whom shall remain nameless. I’ve driven standard R32s, an R32 with a big single turbo running monster boost and the AWD disabled so that I could drift it around an LA port. I’ve punted a drag-spec R33, hoiked R35s around ice lakes on spikes, got confused about NISMO designations…

And yet the one I’ll always remember is my first: an R34 GT-R in Bayside Blue. Being the office junior at the time (on another UK car mag), I had to pick it up from a famous comedian who had been writing about it. I duly trotted off on the train, to find the car very dirty, with all four wheels curbed, a selection of parking tickets/fines in the glovebox and dog poo in the passenger footwell.

And yet. And yet it was spectacular. A hard ride, yes, but everything I hoped it might be. And scary as hell when it wanted to be. But the best bit was the fact that even when I had duly cleaned it, it was still a little whiffy, and the only people who would drive it were me, and a certain Charlie Turner (who was a designer on the same mag at the time). Our own GT-R for three weeks. We thought we’d made it at the time. Still do.

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Jack Rix, deputy editor, Top Gear magazine
Driving a GT-R Nismo back to London from the Nurburgring 24hrs in 2014. Should have been a memorable road trip – best mate in the passenger seat, 592bhp to scare him with and autobahns – but the combination of a nuclear-grade hangover and basically no sleep thanks to a randy German in the room next to be meant I’d felt fresher. Intermittent bursts of violent acceleration coaxed out enough adrenalin to keep me alert, but the granite-hard ride was not my friend that day. Still hit 175mph at one point I seem to remember. Lad.

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Ollie Marriage, motoring editor, Top Gear magazine
Dirk Schoysman was the first anointed Nurburgring hand. He was Nissan’s development guru, so they brought him over to the UK for the launch of the R34 at Goodwood. I sat in the passenger seat. Over the course of the following few laps I learned that the R34 must be the smoothest, most polished and effortless sports car ever devised.

Nissan had sent another chap along as well, who went by the name of Laurent Aiello. He usually drove a Primera, but they let him have a go in the R34 too. Once again, I passengered. Over the course of the following few laps I learned that everything I thought I knew about the R34 was wrong. It was an utter savage, completely wild and capable of pointing in many different directions at the same time. I’ve sat alongside many, many fast circuit racers, and by and large I’ve been able to figure out what they’re up to. But I’ve never, NEVER, sat next to anyone who drove like Aiello. He didn’t brake until he turned in.

First GT-R experience? The R33 (like the one pictured), to and around Wales on one of those ridiculous Autocar tests that aimed to find the best point-to-point car on the planet. And to find it by driving from point-to-point as fast as humanly possible. Steve Sutcliffe got into a tussle with a biker that ended in a shoving match on a petrol station forecourt. And he’d only been driving a Ford Puma.

I was 23 and just starting out. I watched this going on, while Colin Goodwin nonchalantly reclined on the sunny verge, body language informing me this was all completely standard. I remember having this gorgeous little titanium GT-R key in my hand and thinking this was all pretty rock n’ roll actually. It was the first proper fast car I’d ever driven and here I was driving it way faster than I should. And it lapped it up and looked after me, turned me into a hero. So big, yet so agile. Best stance of all the GT-Rs, too. I kept up with the old hands well enough that they shoved me in the Morgan Plus 8 once Sutcliffe had got control of himself. That was when I realised just how good the GT-R was, and I wasn’t.

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Paul Horrell, consultant editor, Top Gear magazine
This car and I go back 22 years. Here’s a distilled history.

1997, had a day in the first official R33 in Britain. 1999, went to Japan to the R34 launch. 1999 (same trip), visited Nismo and drove their R33 400R: bored and stroked, carbon bonnet, boot and propshaft, titanium exhaust, belligerent performance.

2001, saw the Tokyo Show GT-R concept, became R35. 2006 Interviewed the designers about the GT-R prototype. 2008, drove the first R35 into the UK to and around the Isle of Man. Late in trip reversed at some speed into Mr Barlow who was in the first Audi RS6 into the UK. Both were due at Goodwood FoS four days later.

2010, tested the facelifted R35 in Buckinghamshire on a biblically wet afternoon. Didn’t learn much. 2016, drove the considerably more revised 2017 car at Spa circuit, coached by Spa and Ring legend Ron Simons. Then on road with YouTube legend Henry Catchpole. 2016, drove same car around Iceland, 900 miles (above), between sunrise and sunset, with photography legend (and legendarily tolerant of prolonged exposure to Horrell in unhygienic situations) Rowan Horncastle.

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Stephen Dobie, deputy editor, TopGear.com
My first experience of the GT-R legend was the R35, and I’ve had countless drives in various iterations that I probably shouldn’t ever retell in detail. Better and more memorable than any of those, however, was a recent drive in an original R34 Skyline GT-R while recreating a classic Gran Turismo race in real life.

I plonked myself in the Skyline with a colleague in an NSX up front, the videographer rigged a camera to my helmet, and we were told ‘make it look like you’re racing’. I’m not sure I’ve ever had as much fun on circuit, the GT-R serving up either tenacious grip or lurid slides depending on how I threw it into corners. It didn’t just feel great ‘for its age’, it felt utterly spectacular with zero caveats. There’s no chance it was making its claimed, gentleman’s agreement 276bhp, though. Think they’d added at least 20 per cent to that…

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Ollie Kew, senior road test editor, Top Gear magazine
Doing 0-130mph(ish) in the Nissan heritage fleet R34 (reg V16 SKY I think) on a CAR mag used heroes shoot at Bruntingthorpe. Spent five minutes beforehand setting up the screens with all the pressure/temp graphics. It’s illegal to write about the R34 without mentioning that the graphics were done by the folks from Gran Turismo…

I’m still two and a half years from being officially old enough to drive an R35 on Nissan’s insurance. So naturally I’ve raced one across an ice lake against a Tesla and got to drive one that’d been set up to do the world’s fastest drift at an old RAF base. 1,300bhp and more steering lock than a forklift truck.

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Rowan Horncastle, digital editor at large, TopGear.com
I can recall my first GT-R memory easily as it ended with me getting grounded. It was a Saturday morning, where, as a hormonally unstable prepubescent, I’d spent about six hours completing one of Gran Turismo’s Endurance League events to win the GT-R to beat all GT-Rs – the rarest road-going GT-R on the planet, the LM. Obsessed with this squat, wide-arched R33, I endlessly drove and drove it around the ‘Tokyo R246’ circuit. But having thumbed the controller solidly for six or so hours, my mother had enough. So stormed in and yanked the plug out of the back of the PlayStation. Exasperated, I involuntarily called my mother something I really shouldn’t have. “YOU’RE GROUNDED!,” she replied. 

Fast-forward 15 years and I was lucky enough to have a one-on-one meeting with the homologation special GT-R that got me in the doghouse. Housed in Nissan’s incredible Zama DNA garage, I begged and begged to drive it. But that was out the question. Even Carlos Ghosn – Nissan’s former chairman, president, CEO – was never allowed to get behind the wheel. But that didn’t stop me contemplating stealing it in order to see what it’s like to drive without a PlayStation controller.

Luckily, I have driven a few GT-Rs over the years. My first was an R34 to Le Mans as the black cab I was meant to be driving detonated a few miles outside Calais. That’s a story for another day. But my introduction to the R35 was late with the ‘Track Pack’. I’ve since lapped Iceland in one, sampled a Nismo and even run a glorious Katsura Orange example as a long-termer. Over a few months it was drifted endlessly around an ice lake in Sweden, did a lap of the Alps with skis lashed to the roof, and even made my mother involuntarily call me something she really shouldn’t have when I subjected her to a full-bore launch. Funny how things come round in circles. Long live Godzilla!

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Jason Barlow, editor at large, Top Gear magazine
Leaving Tokyo in the first R35 ever to be driven by a civilian was something to savour – not least because it was past midnight, and two hours prior to that me and another large bloke had found ourselves kicking a locked fire door off its hinges on the 37th floor of our hotel. (It wasn’t a towering inferno, but there was an actual fire.)

We headed south and drove the Hakone Parkway, where photographer Anton Watts persuaded Samurai Stig or whatever we called him to do some sort of martial arts high kick across the car. An amazing image.

Elsewhere, Paul Horrell will have noted that I was the one who received a face full of GT-R – the only one in Europe at the time – whilst sitting in an Audi RS6, somewhere on the Isle of Man. But he was driving it, in reverse, not me, so it doesn’t count. The Audi came off better.

But most of all I remember my encounter with Kazutoshi Mizuno, the fabled ‘father of the GT-R’. This was at Silverstone, during the presentation of the 2012 MY upgrade (pictured above). Now everyone knows that the GT-R, as wondrous as it is, is also a chunky motor car. When I ran this theory past Mizuno-san, and posited a lighter iteration, I received the full hair-drier treatment. A thermonuclear hair-drier.

“Thinking that my car is too heavy is a mistake!” he thundered. “All journalists say, [puts on a funny voice] ‘GT-R is heavy, heavy, heavy, it should be lighter, lighter, lighter!’ I say, journalists need to develop a more professional level of thinking! More study! More thought! The GT-R needs to be this weight. A car with less weight does not handle. Lighter weight can be dangerous. And it will not be driveable by all customers. You have a responsibility for the customer. I have a big responsibility for the customer!”

He was brilliant; bat-sh*t bonkers but utterly brilliant.

“I am like the painter who keeps painting, in search of the perfect picture, until he dies. The GT-R is the same as an artist painting a picture. Nothing is ever perfect but we must carry on.”

You wouldn’t catch a Ferrari or Porsche engineer talking like that.

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Tom Harrison, staff writer, TopGear.com
Think I might be the only person here to have driven a real-life GT-R without actually sitting in the driver’s seat. See, back in 2017 a company called JLB design modified a 2011 GT-R so it could be driven using nothing but a standard PlayStation controller. From up to a kilometre away. It was all to celebrate the launch of Gran Turismo Sport - the latest game from a series that’s been indelibly linked to the GT-R since the first game came out in 1997.

I got about 20 minutes at the controls, sat in the passenger seat of a Qashqai trailing the GT-R/C (get it?) around a backlot at Silverstone. I hit maybe 50mph. GT Academy alumni Jann Mardenborough had a go too. They let him drive it around the full Silverstone circuit, from a trailing helicopter. He hit 131mph/211kph, and set the same lap time as a well-driven 370Z…