Nissan Skyline - GT-R

With its high-tech twin-turbo straight-six, all-wheel steering and variable all-wheel drive, a careful approach will pay off when buying your version of the original ‘Godzilla’

- Cliff Chambers /Alex Affat

NISSAN’S DECISION TO BUILD a car that would challenge Porsche’s fast car hegemony reverberated throughout the entire performance car world.

Locally, however, the BNR32 (“R32”) Skyline GT-R didn’t prove quite as successful in showrooms as it did the racetracks of the Australian Touring Car Championship. Australian-complied GT-Rs arrived in 1991 priced at $110,000. Despite tricky economic times and with the cheapest Porsche 911 costing $55,000 more, the GT-R looked to be a bargain.

Nissan built Australia’s first batch of R32 GT-Rs at Murayama, Japan, in May and June 1991. The second run of 50 cars came down the same production line in August. They were then shipped to Melbourne where 50 extra hours per car were allocated to fit local compliance items including child-seat restraints, a fuel-filler f restrictor and high-mount stop-light.

Of the 100 cars that arrived as ‘official’ imports, 26 were painted Black Pearl Metallic with a further 37 of each in Jet Silver and Red Pearl Metallic. Reportedly just 63 of the available cars had found owners.

With a decent proportion sold to local Nissan execs and senior dealership types, just a few dozen remained for private buyers, but even those seemed impossible to move. Today, demand for R32 GT-Rs, Australian-delivered examples especially, couldn’t be stronger.

MARKET REVIEW

With almost 44,000 R32 GT-Rs built between 1989 and 1994, many have been imported privately into Australia from Japan. Lots of these cars are available and represent the bottom of the R32 GT-R ‘pile’. Too many cars in an ambivalent market (with many of them in sub-standard condition) drag down the prospects of better examples to appreciate.