FOR THE LOVE OF GODZILLA

After 18 years, the R35 Nissan GT-R has bowed out. Richard Porter pays tribute to this uncompromising, continually evolving tour de force that became a legend in its own lifetime

- by RICHARD PORTER

IF THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY, 2007 feels like a surprisingly long flight away. In the land of 2007, there was just one Taylor Swift album, one Transformers film and, as of January that year, one generation of iPhone. Lewis Hamilton drove for McLaren, Super Aguri drove round near the back, Toro Rosso gave a mid-season seat to a promising young driver called Sebastian Vettel. The Golf GTI was in its fifth generation, the Porsche 997 was still a year from its Gen 2 facelift, an entry-level Ferrari was an F430. And it was into this long-ago landscape that Nissan released a masterpiece, a technical nerdfest and a bona fide evo hero: the R35 GT-R.

Since this was almost two decades ago, it's worth reminding ourselves what a remarkable car the R35 was when it was announced. The Nissan of 2007 was bold and confident and it wanted this new, standalone GT-R to be a supercar-chewing statement of what it could achieve. In Kazutoshi Mizuno it found the relentlessly driven chief engineer it needed for such an ambitious project and he didn't disappoint. From the detailed aerodynamics perfected by spending two whole years in Lotus's wind tunnel, to the engine canted slightly forward at rest so under hard acceleration it tipped back to form a perfect straight line from crank to propshaft to transaxle, the attention to detail in the finished car was mind-melting.