EVERY PLAUSIBLE RUMOR ABOUT THE NEXT-GEN NISSAN GT-R

At the 2024 New York Motor Show, Nissan's Senior VP and Chief Planning Officer for Nissan North America confirmed that the beloved GT-R and Z will remain part of the Japanese automaker's range in the future.

This is excellent news, especially for the iconic GT-R, which has been giving supercars a hiding since 2008. Despite being 16 years old already, the Nissan GT-R will continue on for another model year, and its maker will introduce all-new limited edition models as an homage to older Godzilla models. Let's remind ourselves just how good the GT-R and GT-R Nismo are by taking a quick look at the vital specs.

Because the GT-R is such an iconic car, there are literally hundreds of rumors about what the next model will be. Most of these rumors were dreamed up by fanboys with nothing better to do, but there are a few notable exceptions. Some rumors are more plausible than others and have been circling for ages, backed up by comments made by various higher-ups within Nissan, so we decided to take a closer look at a few of the most feasible suggestions, and some of the more questionable reports out there.

The information in this article is related only to rumors, and Nissan has yet to confirm anything other than the fact that the next-gen GT-R is still in development and that it will take some time to arrive. With that in mind, let's explore the rumors surrounding a potential powertrain, both of which could be true.

R36 Nissan GT-R Could Be Hybrid, But May Adapt The Existing Platform

Rumors of the next-generation GT-R date back more than a decade. In 2018, Nissan design chief Alfonso Albaisa said he had already started early design work on the next GT-R. Earlier this year, Albaisa stated that the design is still not done. He has said that it will retain its signature quad taillights. In short, Nissan isn't even done with the design yet. We do have a theory regarding the styling, but we'll get to that a bit later.

In 2019, Nissan admitted that its customers aren't keen on a hybrid, but the world has changed a lot since then. According to The Wall Street Journal, hybrid sales are on the rise in the USA because most customers aren't willing to commit to an EV yet. And let's not forget that other famous performance carmakers have already established that hybrid hypercars can be fun. It started with the Holy Trinity, but now we have the McLaren Artura and Ferrari 296. Even Porsche confirmed a hybrid 911, and people don't seem to be too upset about it.

The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance has already said it will spend $26 billion to go electric. It's set to unveil 35 new vehicles by 2030, 90% of which will be based on five common EV platforms. Will it set a billion dollars aside to develop an all-new gas-powered hybrid GT-R? We don't think so, and the sales figures sort of prove it. The USA is the biggest Nissan GT-R market; the most units sold was 1,730 in 2008. All in, a little over 40,000 R35s have been built so far.

Despite politicians now thinking twice about banning gas-powered cars, the signs still point to most governments going full steam ahead. An all-new GT-R on an all-new platform would have roughly five years to make a return on a rather significant investment. That means Nissan would have to charge a lot of money for one, which goes against what the GT-R has always stood for.

The images above are of the 2008 GT-R, which sold for $77,000. It wiped the floor with the 2008 Porsche 911 Turbo, which cost $130,000. The 2013 Nissan GT-R also set a Nürburgring lap time of 7:19.1, humiliating cars like the Ferrari 812 Superfast, McLaren 12C, the C8 Chevrolet Corvette, and the Ferrari 458. It was a giant killer that was within reach of the people, and that made it incredibly charming.

If Nissan wants to keep it gas-powered, it would have to adapt the existing platform to save cost. That epic V6 could be carried over, but Nissan can make it even more potent by adding electricity. However, there are two major problems with this theory. First, the current GT-R platform is so old that there's no space for hybrid components. You could remove the rear seats, but then you lose practicality, and it feels like a stopgap. Secondly, will people still pay a premium for an older platform? Last year, Nissan sold 391 GT-Rs, and that's after folks found out that the car was living on borrowed time.

Or... The R36 Nissan GT-R Will Be An Electric Vehicle

Near the end of 2022, a chief engineer stated that Nissan had not made a decision about whether the R36 would be ICE or EV. This tracks with Albaisa's statements that he hadn't even finished the basic design yet. But then Nissan unveiled the Hyper Force concept a year later at the Japan Mobility Show. The futuristic concept was equipped with an all-electric powertrain producing nearly 1,400 horsepower, powered by next-generation solid-state batteries.

Nissan didn't call it the GT-R concept, which is good news. The R35 made its debut as the GT-R Proto Concept in 2005, and most of the design was carried over. Still, the Hyper Force had several hints, including an obscured GT-R logo at the front and those four famous round taillights Albaisa mentioned. This time, the concept was too radical to put into production as is, whereas the GT-R Proto was near production-ready, as you can see in the images below.

Nissan also unveiled a few other "Hyper" models, all with radical styling. To us, these Hyper models are more about design than anything else. One of the reasons concepts exist is that a company can gauge interest in design to see whether it's on the right path. It also gives a company like Nissan a platform to debut future technologies and what the average customer thinks about them. Looking at the comments we received about the Hyper Force, it's clear the world is not ready for an electric Nissan GT-R yet. A company like Hyundai can get away with an electric hyper hatch like the Ioniq 5 N because it doesn't have a name as sacred as the Skyline GT-R, dating back to 1969.

Even Nissan Doesn't Know What It's Doing Next

The car industry is facing a tumultuous time. EV sales are declining despite the government's best efforts to persuade customers to go electric. Fisker, which once looked like a promising Tesla alternative, is currently in a downward spiral, and the European Court of Auditors has found that there hasn't been a drop in emissions in a decade despite an increase in EV sales.

That's why we want to chuck a new rumor into the mix. Nissan hasn't revealed what the next GT-R's power source will be because it doesn't know yet. With most emissions regulations up in the air and consumers refusing to abide by said rules, nothing appears to be set in stone. With that in mind, why would Nissan make a big gamble right now?

Traditionally, Nissan has not been afraid to wait a bit. There was a big gap between the R34 and R35, so there might be a gap between the current car and its successor while Nissan waits for the chips to fall.

Other Rumors About The Next-Generation GT-R

We've heard some wild rumors about the R36 over the last few years. From Godzilla turning into a four-door Porsche Taycan rival to its famous twin-turbocharged V6 engine switching over from gas to harnessing the tears of protestors who glue themselves to supercars. (We made that last one up).

But the part about the GT-R becoming a Taycan rival is a genuine rumor that has done the rounds, and it makes sense. If Chevrolet and Ford can use the Corvette and Mustang names to sell cars in a segment with higher sales figures, why can't Nissan do the same? The GT-R nameplate also has a history of being a high-performance trim based on the humble Skyline sedan, with the R35 becoming the first standalone GT-R and moving towards true supercar territory.

Nissan may have already given us a glimpse of the GT-R's future when it debuted the Ariya Nismo. It's a crossover, electric, and it's fast, which is the new holy trinity if you ask early adopters. Will Nissan use an existing platform, dial the power up to roughly 800 horses, and call it a GT-R? Stranger things have happened, but we don't think so. Because the GT-R has traditionally been relatively affordable, the customer pool is large enough to start a riot.

Another interesting rumor from years ago is that Nismo would be put in charge of building the GT-R. Instead of selling a Nismo version, the go-faster department would be tasked with designing and building the entire car, much like AMG did with the SLS and GT. But this brings us back to the affordability issue. If you go up against Porsche at the same price, you're going to lose the battle.

Finally, Nissan might retire the GT-R and focus on building electric crossovers. Its partners in crime (Mitsubishi and Renault) have dropped all performance models from their range, betting big on EVs. Is this an early warning of what we can expect from Nissan? We hope not.

2024-04-04T03:06:47Z dg43tfdfdgfd