When the Prince Automobile Company merged with Nissan-Datsun in 1967, it gave way to the beginning of the new GT-R legend series. Though the supercar came from the humble Nissan Skyline family saloon, it was right at the time when the FIA GT series was making waves in the market. Nissan wanted to take on the Porsche 904 in the Japanese Grand Prix since the earliest predecessor of the GTR, the S54 2000 GT-B, came second in the very first race in 1964. So in 1969, Nissan premiered its first race-spec GT-R and it overtook the Porsche 904 in the race. That was the beginning of the legend of the GTR Skyline.
Nissan rolled out the next generation of the GTR, a four-door sedan PGC10 2000 GTR. It was good enough to achieve 33 victories in a short span of one and a half years. In 1972, the Skyline GTR, which had 1000 victories, was discontinued by the company. The next year, it brought out a better version of Skyline GT-R, a 2-liter engine driving the rear wheels. The production was suddenly stopped in 1977 due to poor sales. The last of the original GTRs from the Nissan saloon was the KPGC110 2000GTR. But it was never used for race and is still kept at a unit as a historical reference in Zama.
The setback of 1973 Skyline GT-R, which was powered by a 1989cc engine, was due to the oil crisis and it smothered the enthusiasm for high-performance cars in the market. Sixteen years later, in 1989 the new GT-R version of Skyline with advanced technologies like the four-wheel-drive system ‘Attesa-ETS’ and the Super-Hicas four-wheel steering was launched. It progressed from 1989 until 2002 in R32, R33, and R34 specifications. In 2007, Nissan displayed a redesigned concept. The new Nissan GT-R was based on this concept and did not carry the Skyline badge. Thus the Nissan Skyline GT-R, which has achieved great success on the race track, still forms the heritage of Nissan.
In 2009, the Nissan reached an agreement with Federation Internationale de l’Automobile GT Championship (FIA GT1) to fine-tune its performance to market the car to the racing team. And in 2010, Nissan was declared the Official Vehicle Supplier for the new FIA GT1 World Championship in which it will supply four GT-R cars for each SRO event and one of its high-performance vehicles will take the Official Safety Car role at each event.
