Weird, it’s almost like it’s a 17-year-old Nissan that costs $123,000.
It’s been a long, slow decline for the Nissan GT-R. Revealed all the way back in 2007, the R35 was once a supercar beater on a budget; now it’s just a supercar, and it’s priced like one. Between that and being a 17-year-old Nissan, you won’t be surprised to hear Nissan has averaged only one sale a day so far this year.
The GT-R’s pace in 2024 was clocked in Nissan’s first-quarter sales summary, released Tuesday. At the end of Q1, Nissan had notched 77 GT-R sales in 77 “selling days”—that’s approximately 22 to 23 cars per month, and barely half the paltry 143 Nissan sold in Q1 last year. It’s familiar territory for the GT-R, which first visited this low-water mark in October 2017 when just 21 cars sold. Since then, the GT-R has never beaten 90 sales in a month, with that figure being reached all the way back in 2018. It has occasionally dipped under, but Nissan still consistently sells a few dozen.
2024 Nissan GT-R Nismo. Nissan
The GT-R’s low sales are widely attributed to the car’s cost increases since launch in June 2008, when it started at $69,850. Today it costs $122,985 delivered, and only has 85 more horsepower and 37 pound-feet more torque to show for it. But that’s a little unfair on the GT-R, which like all of Nissan’s lineup was neglected during the Carlos Ghosn era. It’s also less drastic when you account for inflation, and find the 2008 GT-R’s MSRP would be $104,540 in today’s money.
Of course, we won’t have many more months to watch the R35 circle the drain, because Nissan will soon pull the plug. It’ll make way for an R36 that Nissan executives recently confirmed is in early development, with multiple designs under evaluation and an almost certainly electrified drivetrain. When it’ll arrive isn’t clear, but one thing is: Nissan isn’t giving up on Godzilla.
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