First Drive Review
Your recognition of this car might be more vivid if you wedge the word "Skyline" in there somewhere, because that's what it was called when it first began to register on the radar screens of American speed freaks along about 1989: the Skyline GT-R. This is true even though the Skyline name actually goes back much farther, to distant 1957, when it was first applied to an eminently forgettable little Prince sedan, predating Nissan's 1966 absorption of that company.
Prince fielded a competition version of the Skyline in 1964—the 2000GT—but the GT-R suffix (for " gran turismo racer") didn't appear until 1969, when Nissan made it the centerpiece of a successful racing program over the next couple of years.
But in 1973 the Skyline GT-R disappeared, yielding the limelight to the new Datsun 240Z (a.k.a. Fairlady). The GT-R badge gathered dust until its 1989 revival with the advent of the R32 chassis, earmarked as the foundation for an FIA Group A racing effort, as well as a production sports coupe. The R33 followed the R32 in 1995, and the R33 gave way to the R34 in 1999, each generation a little hotter, each providing an improved basis for race cars, as well as various limited-edition street versions from NISMO, Nissan's in-house performance division.
Inevitably, these slightly fabulous cars attracted media attention, and awareness grew in markets outside Japan. Including the U.S.—particularly after our March 1991 test of a modestly tweaked gray-market car. With 350 horsepower on tap, that R32 Skyline whooshed to 60 in 4.2 seconds and covered the quarter in 12.9 seconds at 105 mph, acceleration that would have smoked such glamorous contemporaries as the Acura NSX, Corvette ZR-1, Lotus Esprit Turbo, and Ferrari 348ts. Awareness begat gotta-have-it, which begat a growing ground swell of clamor for Skylines in American showrooms.
