Watch Nissan Completely Take Apart and Reassemble an R32 Skyline GT-R In a Factory Restoration
The Nismo Restored Car program makes classic Nissan Skyline GT-Rs look brand new—for a hefty price.
Factory restorations are all the rage nowadays, but have you ever wondered what that looks like? Wonder no more, thanks to Nismo, who posted a montage of an R32-generation Nissan Skyline GT-R getting completely restored through their Nismo Restored Car program at the Omori Factory.
If you go for a complete restoration, Nismo will completely disassemble your R32, R33 or R34 GT-R down to the bare metal and rebuild it with parts that look factory-fresh. For this car, Nismo removed absolutely everything to completely repaint the body and start fresh. From there, the whole car is reassembled with fresh-looking, hand-chosen parts.
No detail is left unexamined. Nismo checks the torsional rigidity and shape of the car to make sure it'll be like new and everything will go back together correctly when they're done with it. Interior components are given a deep clean when they're out of the car. You can see even more photos of Nismo's restoration process here, and you can see that they're basically rebuilding you a new car.
Nismo tests its work along the way, too. The engine is run on a dyno to make sure it's up to spec after the rebuild. The whole reassembled car, too, goes onto a dyno. Finally, at the end, Nismo even takes the car out on track for some shakedown runs. According to Nismo's pricing and options sheet, "a check run on a designated course" is required for any car not registered in Japan. It would be bad to send a car halfway around the world only to find out that they missed something, after all. Of course, this test drive is performed by a pro or test driver on staff, and so there won't be any chips in the fresh paint, the entire front end is wrapped up more than an autocross Corvette whose owner went all-out with the roll(s) of painter's tape. (There's always that one guy. Always.)
Mind you, Nissan says this video is of its "standard" restoration for an R32. There are all kinds of add-ons and upgrades to choose from that can drive the price up, including tuning options to get as much as 493 horsepower out of the R32's RB26 engine, per the option sheet.
You can either provide your own GT-R or Nismo will help you find one—but either way, you're going to pay a pretty penny. A Nismo sales rep told one staffer at The Drive who inquired about these factory restorations that the average price for an R32 restoration like this is 45 million yen, which comes out to $420,536 U.S. at the time of this writing.
There are multiple levels to these restorations, and everything's customizable. The base Nismo Restored Car using standard R32 GT-R parts starts at 35 million yen ($327,143 U.S.). If you want what Nismo calls a "complete refresh and overhaul," that's where the average 45 million yen figure comes from. That price depends on the options you choose that deviate from Nissan's base package, however. Lastly, you could do what they call a "section refresh and overhaul," where you choose specific areas of the car to focus on. That averages about 25 million yen ($233,673 U.S.).
Ready to ship your classic GT-R to Japan for a full factory refresh? Inquire here, moneybags.
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