Nissan Almost Imported the Skyline GT-R to the US in the '90s

The company also considered putting a V-6 into the R34 Skyline GT-R, according to an interview with the car's developers.

By: Brian Silvestro

Aug 26, 2024 at 9:57am ET

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An interview with past Nissan Skyline GT-R development heads reveals the car almost made its way to North America in the 1990s.
The R33-generation Skyline was briefly considered for importation, but couldn't be converted to left-hand drive easily.
The interviews reveal the R34-generation Skyline nearly got a V-6 engine instead of the iconic RB26 straight-six.

Nissan famously never imported its legendary line of Skyline GT-R sports cars into North America. It turns out that nearly wasn't the case, according to a set of interviews with the car's head developers published last week by the Japanese publication Best Car Web.

Following huge demand in Europe for the R33-generation GT-R after its appearance on Top Gear in the 1990s, then-president Hanawa Yoshikazu ordered GT-R team boss Watanabe Shozo to look into the possibility of selling the car in North America.

"North America requires left-hand drive," Shozo told Best Car Web. "If the steering wheel is moved to the left, the GT-R has twin turbos, so the steering shaft would be closer to the turbo at the rear, which would cause a thermal problem. There was also an idea to make it a single turbo, but we gave up on that idea as it wouldn't have been a GT-R."

The next-generation R34 was also very close to having a V-6 instead of its now-legendary RB26DETT straight-six engine, according to Shozo. The team went as far as building a prototype with a V-6 engine under the hood.

"When I drove it on the test course, it had good cornering characteristics and felt really good," Shozo told Best Car Web.

Though Nissan "seriously considered" opting for the V-6, ultimately the development team decided to keep the straight-six in order to avoid the development time needed to adapt the new engine to the GT-R's advanced all-wheel drive system.

"We couldn't imagine the R34 Skyline without the GT-R, so we thought hard about it," Shozo added. "In the end, we decided to refine the straight-six GT-R. We decided to leave the V-6 to the next generation."

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The next generation he's referring to isn't the R35 GT-R, but rather the Skyline-badged coupe sold in Japan that we in America know as the Infiniti G35.

The interviews go further into depth on the GT-R development and history, including stories from the days before the R32, and how engineers used the concept of horses—yes, horses—to develop Godzilla's all-wheel drive system. If you love Skylines, it's worth a read.