Shiro Nakamura

Nissan’s long-standing Chief Creative Officer became architect of the marque’s style-led revival… and is also known as ‘Mr GT-R’

- Elliott Hughes

MANY OF US FONDLY recall childhood moments spent gazing at photographs of exotic cars - it's often the starting point for a lifelong passion. For Shiro Nakamura, however, it sparked a remarkable career as a car designer, spanning more than four decades. Best known for his near-20-year tenure at Nissan, Nakamura has designed everything from humble hatchbacks and city cars to crossover SUVs and saloons. Yet his true passion has always been sports cars, and he is the visionary behind one of Japan's most iconic performance machines: the R35 GT-R.

'I was born in Osaka in 1950, and when I was young, there weren't many sports cars in Japan,' Shiro reminisces. Amiable, softly spoken, and dressed in a crisp white shirt, he sits in his Tokyo office during our video call. Behind him, on neat shelves, a gunmetal grey R35 GT-R model is proudly displayed beneath myriad books on design.

'When I was ten, I had this book on Italian carrozzerie, and I remember loving Ferraris and thinking they were very impressive. I was attracted to all of these exotic sports cars, but all I had were photographs, and they were all in black and white. There was no chance to see them in the metal in Japan back then - all I had was my imagination. That's when I knew I wanted to be a car designer.'

Luckily for the young Shiro, he didn't have to wait too much longer before real sports cars began to roll out of factories and onto the roads of 1960s Japan. 'I grew up as the Japanese auto industry was developing, and my career grew alongside it, he explains. "Gradually, some domestic sports cars began to appear, and when I was 20, fast cars like the Nissan 240Z had come out as Japan's car industry began its global expansion.