Nissan has announced that a successor to the GT-R will be ready in 2018 as it waits to see if Honda’s claim that the upcoming NSX will blitz Godzilla’s Nurburgring lap time turns out to be true.
There have been rumblings in the automotive sphere that Nissan had no intention of building a follow-up to the crushingly capable GT-R supercar, but a report from Edmunds has put pay to such rumours. The development of the new model has, however, been delayed.
According the report, GT-R chief engineer and product specialist Kazutoshi Mizuno left the company due to health issues, but has recently returned to head up the GT-R development team.
Another reason behind the next-generation GT-R’s development also concerns the firm’s decision to wait and see how their supercar’s main rival, the upcoming Honda/Acura NSX, will turn out. Sources within the NSX development team have claimed that the hybrid-powered supercar will best the GT-R’s Nurburgring lap time.
When Edmunds asked Mizuno about the potential competition posed by another hybrid supercar, the Porsche 918 Spyder, the GT-R chief engineer didn’t seem too fazed. Having said that, the combination of two highly desirable hybrid supercars emerging before the GT-R may be crucial to the firm’s decision on whether to develop a heavily revised powertrain or possibly revise the existing VR38DETT engine to accept a supplementary hybrid system.
While the all-new GT-R may be some way off, the current car is currently undergoing a cosmetic overhaul for the 2013 model year. It has been hinted that noticeable changes will be made to the bumper and headlamps, but most of the body panels will remain untouched as the car goes into its sixth year of production.
Source: Edmunds
