Maybe it’s physically impossible to leave a Nissan GT-R standard. At first, you think that the facelift’s 570hp is more power than you’ll ever need, and that a 2.8-second 0-62mph time should be more than enough to terrify your mates on a late night blast. But then doubt begins to set it. Everyone says the GT-R’s 3.8-litre twin-turbo V6 is capable of stratospheric power, so a few engine mods won’t do any harm, will it? Maybe chuck in a meatier exhaust while you’re at it, and perhaps a firmer suspension setup.
A recipe for disaster on most cars, but so over engineered was the GT-R that it can take pretty much anything you can throw at it. Earlier this year, I drove a Litchfield LM20 that had been dialled up to around 800hp, and it just felt like a normal GT-R on fast forward. No ridiculous turbo lag, no wheel spin when it’s not expected. Granted, it was a bit more playful in the wet, but so would anything putting out ridiculous levels of thrust. And you’d expect nothing less from the folks at Litchfield, given it’s been tuning the GT-R since the first R35 landed in the Europe over 15 years ago. So while this 1,000hp Nismo may seem a tad excess, just know it’s been put together by people who absolutely know what they’re doing.
The Nismo is the ideal platform to throw more power at when you think about it. Power was left unchanged at 600hp when Nissan revised the Nismo R35 in 2019, though the GT3 racer-sourced turbochargers were upgraded for a sharper throttle response. Instead, the focus was on refining an already magnificent chassis. The roof switched from aluminium to carbon fibre, saving 4kg and lowering the centre of gravity (if only by a fraction), while tweaks to the carbon bonnet, wings and bumpers helped save a combined 6.5kg. Factor in standard carbon ceramic brakes (at a mahoosive 410mm in diameter on the front axle) and various other lighter components gets you a saving of 30kg over the original Nismo.
Naturally, it was absolutely rapid. Nissan didn’t go back to the Nurburgring to reclaim its production car record, but it did pump in a sub-one-minute lap at Tsukuba (that dinky test course from Gran Turimso and the old Best Motoring videos) which, apparently, is a unheard of for a road car. But just think how much quicker it would have gone had Nissan taken this Litchfield-fettled Nismo with 66 per cent more grunt. It’d probably be easier to list everything that the tuning arm hasn’t changed on this car, but the big upgrades include forged pistons, ported cylinder heads, new camshafts, uprated turbos and, of course, a 102mm Akrapovic exhaust.
That’s just the engine, too. The gearbox has been tweaked with new ratios for first and sixth, the software upgraded and the front differential upgraded to Litchfield’s own specification. Then there’s the upgraded suspension, retuned geometry and custom maps for the 4WD system for face-melting levels of grip.
Must have been quite the commitment for the original owner, given how rare the GT-R Nismo is in the UK. And this isn’t any old GT-R Nismo, either. It’s the very last Nismo R35 sold in the UK, as we never got the GT-R’s final update. Hard to think of a better send off for the R35 in Britain, and one that brings major bragging rights in the GT-R community. For a price, of course, which is £249,995. A hefty wedge more than this Litchfield-tuned Nismo at £179,995, or this Midnight Purple car for £159,950 which, again, has been worked on by Litcho. In fact, there aren’t any Nismo GT-Rs currently for sale on PH that haven’t passed through Litchfield’s workshop at some point, and if that doesn’t inspire confidence in a 1,000hp R35, I’m not sure what will.
1 / 6
