While Nissan’s fabled high performance coupe has worn the honour of Godzilla for the past few decades, one unlucky Filipino owner took the reference literally after leaving the beast in neutral before it slowly rolled into salt water behind it. This is the second GT-R fail a week after an American owner careened into a tree after leaving a meet in Connecticut.
In 1989, the fabled Nissan Skyline R32 was nicknamed Godzilla for its ability to dominate in the Japanese Touring Car Racing series and instil fear into everything it came against thereafter. The reptilian reference has stayed with the model ever since and as a result it is only ironic that a bizarre turn of events in the Philippines has seen one of the R35 come to its inevitable demise after disappearing into the salt water adjacent to a drag strip.
A drag racing event taking place in Cebu, one of the major islands in the equatorially located island nation of Philippines, is where the GT-R fail took place. By the looks of things, some highly tuned vehicles, including intimadating looking Honda’s turned up, but the major talking point for the incident came after the GT-R owner stopped his VR38 powered coupe on a decline towards the salt water embankment without engaging the parking brake. The vehicle was obviously still left in neutral when it slowly rolled into the water behind it.
The model didn’t sink immediately, after staying afloat for a few seconds but the damage was already done before a horde of bystanders were able to come to its rescue and tow it out. At least the water looked warm but we can’t imagine the electronics or exposed metal components took a liking to the highly corrosive salt water in the humid country.
It is unknown why the owner didn’t engage his parking brake or leave the model in the correct gear when stationary but we can speculate that based on racing modus operandi, he left the parking brake off to prevent warping the discs had the white R35 completed a run on the strip just before slamming on brakes to bring the icon to a halt.
