GOODBYE GODZILLA

The end is nigh for the GT-R. Please join us in a celebration of its very existence and a commemoration of the supercar scalps it took

- VIJAY PATTNI

Japan's motoring kaiju has been laid to rest, driven back into the icy depths of the Pacific and far away from this clanging metaphor. The supercar world is safe once again.

Because for the best part of 18 years, the 'R35' Nissan GT-R was busy laying waste to all that came before it. Including, in its very earliest incarnation, Jeremy Clarkson's neck. “They haven't built a new car here,” JC said, right before Nissan's reanimated Godzilla attacked him. “They've built a new yardstick.”

Perhaps foolishly, we reanimated the R35 from its deep slumber in Nissan's Yokohama HQ for one last ride; a valedictory sendoff on home turf before a hot ride to its natural hunting ground - the Hakone turnpike - flanked by pair of modified GT-Rs that never left our side. Our travels quickly taught us that Japan's a brilliant paradox of a nation: high tech with an ancient, historic core.

Just like Godzilla, itself an unconventional yardstick wrapped ina paradox. Here was a car designed like a brick that featured cutting edge aerodynamics. A car that appeared to be an artificial, self driven computer on wheels that required very human effort to tame and extract performance from.

And crucially, a four seater, £50k-ish Nissan (at launch) that'd eat a BMW M3 for breakfast and eye up a Porsche 911 Turbo for lunch. Ferrari and Lamborghini were on the menu for dinner. Not that the R35's chief engineer, Kazutoshi Mizuno, ever saw it that way, thinking of his 2007 baby as a “new kind of supercar, one with no competitors”.

Hiroshi Tamura - the GT-R's product planner back in those heady days - elaborated. “Some people asked me, 'What were your competitors for the R35?'” Tamura-san told TopGear. “In some circumstances like a track day, it's OK to compare to some of the other performance cars.