According to the guys at PistonHeads, Nissan has reconfirmed its commitment to the GT-R development program with a model replacement cycle in place that should see an R36 hit the streets by 2013 at the latest.
Andy Palmer, VP of Nissan’s Global Product Planning spoke to Nissan engineers and support staff at the Nurburgring and spoke warmly of their achievements and reaffirmed Nissan’s commitment to the GT-R project.
“These are very hard times and, as you know, we have had to make cuts to many programmes,’ he told the team. ‘However, it is very important to Nissan that we remain able to offer a diverse range of vehicles from electric cars, to LCVs and the GT-R and we continue to fully support the work you are doing here.”
He later spoke to PistonHeads and confirmed that a model replacement program was still in place in spite of the economic downturn. Nissan’s model replacement program is based on a roughly similar timescale to the Porsche replacement cycle.
With the 911 GT2 being the car Nissan likes to benchmark, that puts a lifespan of 5-6 years on the current R35 – according to PistonHeads rudimentary maths.
Unsurprisingly, Andy also confirmed that the next-generation GT-R will be an evolution of the current platform, and will therefore retain the twin-turbocharged V6 and rear transaxle configuration.
“In that respect, it’s not going to be a massive one-off investment,” Palmer told PH. “It’s more a case of putting a bit of money into the program every year, to make sure we keep the GT-R where it needs to be.” And that we are guessing, is ahead of the Porsche GT2.
