HISTORY OF THE BRAND

The Skyline name originated from Prince automobile company, which developed and sold the Skyline line of sedans before merging with Nissan-Datsun.Then the GT-R abbreviation stands for Gran Turismo Racer while the GT-B stands for Gran Turismo Berlinetta. The Japanese chose to use Italian when naming the car as most cars made in Japan at that time used Western abbreviations to further enhance sales. The earliest predecessor of the GT-R, the S54 2000 GT-B was came second in its first race in 1964 to the purpose-built Porsche 904 GTS. The last of the original GT-Rs, the KPGC110 2000GT-R, used an unchanged S20 160hp inline-6 engine from the earlier 2000 GT-R and only sold 197 units due to the worldwide energy crisis.This model was the only GT-R to never participate in a major race despite the sole purpose-built racecar which now resides in Nissan's storage unit for historical cars in Zama.Then,the Skyline continued into the 1990s when it became popular largely because it remained rear wheel drive, while most other manufacturers were focusing on front wheel drive cars.