This post was originally published on Autocar
Time between generations of cars like the Nissan GT-R helped us appreciate them all the more
The Japanese concept of wabi-sabi is difficult, or impossible if you ask some Japanese people, to precisely define. But I have Google and all the false confidence of a mediocre, middle-aged, Western white man, so here we go.
Loosely, it’s an aesthetic that values imperfection and transience. Andrew Juniper, a furniture maker and author of the book Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence, says “it’s an aesthetic that finds beauty in things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete”.
Tanehisa Otabe, professor at Tokyo University’s Institute of Aesthetics, told the BBC in 2020 that “wabi-sabi leaves something unfinished or incomplete for the play of imagination”.
It is, then, one of a number of Japanese idioms that references an appreciation for or wistfulness towards impermanence. Not dissimilarly, the concept of mono no aware translates to “the pathos of things” or “a sensitivity to ephemera”.
This brings me to the current and soon to be not-current Nissan GT-R, the R35 generation, which is about to end a fairly astonishing 18-year production run. That’s a timeline which is anything but fleeting by automotive standards: cherry blossom, blooming and dying quickly, it is not.
But in its more recent years, there can only have been an awareness of the R35’s mortality. At the start of its life, we called it “the world’s cleverest car” and Japanese engineers told us it was comparable to a craftsperson-made Swiss watch.
But as time has gone on and its annual model-year revisions have slowed, its once-spectacular power outputs have been dwarfed and its Nürburgring lap times eclipsed.
Already it’s off sale in many markets, including the UK, where it no longer meets the latest safety or emissions regulations, and within months it will go out of production entirely. There is no imminent replacement.
And that, I get the impression, is fine by the Japanese. I could be wrong, of course. They could be more cross than a teacher after you’ve knocked on the staffroom door at breaktime.
But I don’t think so. Two-thirds of Japanese identify as Buddhists and that doctrine says that all existence is “transient, evanescent, inconstant”. There is an appreciation that things come and go.
So while there’s existential angst here that Jaguar doesn’t currently build sports cars and the idea of Ford without a Mustang or Porsche without a 911 is basically unthinkable, some time without a new GT-R should almost be expected. Appreciated.
Similarly, you could consider the Honda NSX, which spent years out of production between generations and has been deliberately unusual in all its forms. Rotary-engined Mazdas likewise.
Or even the Lexus LFA, which perhaps was a successor to the Toyota 2000GT, spiritually if not literally. All came, all went. Will we see replacements? Probably. But who knows?
Nissan promises it will make a new GT-R, it should be said. “I want to have four or five cars at the top of our portfolio that are really brand-oriented, cars that really represent what Nissan is about and show what the heartbeat of Nissan is,” incoming CEO Ivan Espinosa told us recently.
And there are practical reasons too for the absence of an immediate GT-R replacement: Nissan isn’t actually run by people who treat managing a business like a seasonal hobby.
There are, or were, honchos there, Westerners typically, who found very clever budgetary ways to make sure the Z made it into production as a direct, immediate replacement for the 370Z (by underneath being an awful lot like it).
If Nissan were to make a petrol replacement for the GT-R now, it could end up unable to sell it in all the places it would like to – especially if its life cycle approaches two decades again.
“And these cars should go everywhere in the world,” says Espinosa. Yet if it were electric, as previewed in 2023’s Hyper Force concept, today’s batteries would place limits on both how many laps of the Nordschleife it could do and how many people would buy one. Consumers, as I understand it, are not beating down doors to get hold of electric driver’s cars.
What the new GT-R will become, then, is still to be decided. The current one is out of place, out of time and about to be out of production. And that, we should appreciate, is fine.