Lock up your porsches: Bursting with muscle and not "nice" at all, this is how next year's Nissan GT-R will look.Godzilla is back...

 

Boil up the Nissan GT-R mythology and what do you get? A high proof distillate, part car and part culture. The car was born out of a staid line of big saloons, and turned into an adrenalised bruiser by packing it out with high-tech gadgetry so it emerged as an unlikely but entirely credible rival for 911s and Ferraris, a serial race winner, a Nurburgring legend and a blazingly memorable road drive. The culture part coalesces around its almost exclusively japanese origin and heritage, no one is better than the japanese at getting weirdly obsessive about something, especially if it's something the rest of the world, literally and metaphorically, doesn't get.

But now the GT-R is breaking out.The new generation isn't saloon derived, but uses its own unique sports car bodyshell. And unlike previous generation, this one will be global. No longer will the only non-japanese sales be the australians and a tiny number of individually homologated british cars, from now europe and the u.s will be able to get a slice of GT-R action.

So with those two critical pillars gone, surely nissan was tempted to reposition the new GT-R. Didn't it want to morph it into a traditional lower-than-a-catseye supercar silhouette? Didn't it aim for the internationally understood package of supercar cliches? did it heck!

Shiro Nakamura, Nissan's design chief, insists there's no way a GT-R should follow the pack. "There's no need for it to be a sleek-looking car. The strength of a GT-R is its presence. It has a substantial volume. It's totally different from the sleek, low-maybe too low-supercars.

That gives it a very unique positioning among porsches and lamborghinis and ferraris. It has a top-end performance, but it's not just a two seater. Plus it has good visibility, and you can get into and out of it easily. "That's why we didn't go low and sleek, even though we had total freedom, because it shares nothing-Zero-with any skyline this time". In fact, nissan will probably not call this a Skyline GT-R at all,but simply a GT-R. There are still skyline saloons and coupes(sold as the infinit G series in America), but theres no visual link.

So there are good logical reasons for making the car relatively boxy. But, c'mon, what part does logic play on planet supercar? Historical and cultural touchstones matter more, and matter quite desperately to Nakamura and his fellow custodians of the GT-R heritage:"the GT-R started as a four door skyline saloon,very boxy.The second GT-R was a two door coupe, and then the R32 (the first four wheel drive version) was still saloon based. We wanted to maintain the GT-R DNA. The styling comes from the history, because the GT-R line didn't start out as a pure sports car. Anyway, i think the slight boxiness is a japanese charateristic. It challenges the history of european and american sports cars. In fact, the message of the new GT-R is very challenging."

Damn right,it's challenging, just look at the sheer hard body muscle of the thing, the uncompromising countenance. This shape is actually the second "new" GT-R concept; its predecessor was simply deemed to be "too nice" says Nakamura.

Staring at the surface just increases the frustration of not knowing what's underneath. Because the car doesn't launch until October 2007, Nissan still refuses to divulge anything, beyond saying the mighty twin-turbo straight six of the old R34 GT-R is deceased.

Right then.There are twin bonnet bulges, implying a V engine, and when you propose that to the insiders they don't try to correct you. A V8 would suit the Infinit brand, but would that be a true GT-R engine? Porsche 911s are fone with six. So the smart money's on a compact, light V6. Nakamura says it'll have "a lot" more power than the R34. That listed a 280bhp-though it actually made more. The 350z's V6 makes 280 plus these days. But add twin turbos and you're easily upto the 400-450bhp.

Nakamura confirms the real car will use the same 20-inch rims as the concept and the same tyre sizes :255/40 at the front, 285/35 at the rear, a sure sign that extra power is coursing down to the road. The fancy 4WD system has been as central to the GT-R experience as the turbocharged muscle, so they won't be dropping that.

The japanese were always prepared to accept the noise and the punishing ride of the R32 to R34 generations, because they are maintained in GT-R culture. They have the fold memory of GT-Rs winning the most important race in the country, the JAF Japan Grand Prix, from the mid sixties on. They watched the R32 GT-R win first time out in the japanese touring car championship, and go on winning for every single race through the 1990 to 1993 seasons. They congregate at owner's club meetings, mixing with thousands of fellow believers all done up in their Nismo regalia, many arriving to show off modded specials with turbos the size of dustbins and carbon-fibre propshafts. Buy a GT-R in japan and you're buying a legend.
But buy one in America and you're probably an up and upcoming orthodontist buying a fast nissan. You're probably going to want an automatic box and a softened freeway ride. Will Nissan feel it needs to oblige these customers?

Let it not be so.There's too much at stake. These pictures show the designers have done right by the GT-R.Let's hope the engineers are allowed to as well.