- The R34-generation Skyline is the most prized by collectors.
- Its M-Spec Nür designation indicates a special edition with a race-bred engine and tuned suspension.
- This is one of the last ones ever built, and it's up for sale in an online auction that ends on Wednesday, February 21.
As of 2024, the earliest R34-chassis Nissan Skylines are finally legal for U.S. import under 25-year DOT rules. But if you were hoping to finally get your hands on your JDM dream car, it's already too late—there's already a voracious worldwide appetite for these cars. If you're going to spend the money, you might as well go for the best of the best, so here it is.
This 2002 example hits practically all the high notes of the R34 Skyline range. It's from the last year of production, it's the last one of its kind built in Japan's national racing color of white, and as you would expect of royalty, it has more last names than a British peer. It's a 2002 Nissan Skyline GT-R M-Spec Nür, and the best part is that it's already on this side of the Pacific Ocean and is up for auction on Bring a Trailer (which, like Car and Driver, is a part of Hearst Autos).
The Skyline nameplate is old enough to have had a life before Nissan, being launched as a luxury coupe by the Prince Motor Company in the 1950s. Picture a three-quarter-scale '57 Bel Air, and you've basically got it. Later, Prince pulled the old trick of stuffing an engine from its larger cars into the nose of the Skyline, and that car eventually passed a Porsche 904 at the 1964 Japanese Grand Prix. This was basically the first moment the Japanese auto industry realized it could beat the world's best—it didn't win the race, but the event galvanized the country, and the Skyline name was on every racing fan's lips.
Eventually Nissan snapped up Prince, and the more modern Skyline R32 showed up in 1989 as a tech juggernaut to be reckoned with. The Australian press dubbed it Godzilla, as, with its twin-turbocharged inline-six and all-wheel drive, it tore through the competition at Bathhurst like it was a kaiju leveling downtown Tokyo.
The R34 is two generations on from the R32, and its secret is that it was developed by Nissan on a budget of basically pocket lint. It is thus a refinement rather than a re-invention. However, precisely because it was not an evolutionary leap forward, the R34 blended old school charm with nimbler handling and greater speed. It was the last of the manual-transmission Skyline GT-Rs, and there is character in that definition.
As is typical with sporting Japanese machines, Nissan built an encyclopedia's worth of Skyline special editions. To decode this example, "M-spec" means that it was named for Nissan's then-head-engineer Kazutoshi Mizuno, and came with various suspension upgrades and tweaks. "Nür" is of course an abbreviation of Nürburgring, and marked a final evolution of the R34 equipped with what basically amounted to a racing version of the 2.6-liter twin-turbo inline-six. It had a little more lag than the standard R34 GT-R, but could handle boost levels approaching that of a Bugatti Veyron.
Essentially, this is Nissan's Porsche 959 moment, and as with the 959, fewer than 300 examples of the Skyline GT-R M-Spec Nür were made. This one has previously lived in Australia and the UK before being imported to the U.S. in January of last year under Show and Display rules. These limit the car to just 2500 miles per year until 2027, and there are a few other NHTSA hoops to jump through.
Last year, an Australian M-Spec Nür fetched a whopping $455,000 on BaT, a record for the marque. This one is already in California, and although it comes with a true mileage unknown asterisk, just-completed compression and leakdown tests show that it is healthy and ready to run. Initial bids are already at $150,000, and this GT-R is likely to fetch multiples of that figure.
For those not in the know, there's likely to be a chorus of, "How much? For a Nissan?" but the R34 marks the end of the forbidden-fruit era of JDM greats. With the exception of the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution Wagon, every cool Japanese performance car after this one also come to the U.S. market.
The auction ends February 21.
Brendan McAleer
Contributing Editor
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels.
