Godzilla is coming. The Nissan GT-R isn’t dead, it’s resting, but there are people already hard at work to wake it from its slumber. Turns out, there are headwinds and it’s not from within the automaker.
In Yokohama, Japan, on the latest episode of The Drivecast Senior Vice President and Chief Planning Officer for Nissan North America, Ponz Pandikuthira, exclusively told The Drive that the uncertainty in today’s U.S. political arena is slowing down the development of the next-generation GT-R.
Listen to the entire conversation starting at the moment Pandikuthira divulges that it’s political issues that are causing uncertainty with the path forward for next GT-R below.
Pandikuthira said, “Look, what I think is the biggest challenge with the current generation of GT-R is it just didn’t meet emissions. And there was too much stuff that had to be done to the car that would basically choke the powertrain to make it compatible with the latest emission standards. So it was definitely time to sunset that vehicle. What we want to do is future-proof next-generation GT-R that it can have a really long life and keep evolving over its lifecycle. But the unknown, the big unknown is which way are emissions regulations going to go? We currently have a reprieve with the current administration. They’ve backed off on a lot of the regulations. And so there’s many things we can do today, but we don’t know if we can do them maybe post ’28 or post ’32. And so that’s what’s actually slowing down the development of what we want this car to be.”
“That said, there is a core group of people, and Ivan’s confirmed it to you. There is a core group of enthusiasts based right here in Japan working on bringing the GT-R back. And they’re completely nuts about this car,” Pandikuthira noted.
In 2025 we learned from Pandikuthira that the next-gen GT-R will be a hybrid that arrives in 3 to 5 years. Earlier this month we learned it will keep the R35’s VR38 block. And newly-appointed Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa, who’s been in the hot seat for just over a year now, confirmed to The Drive that “we are actually working already on the GT-R,” as Pandikuthira noted.
The reason for that 3- to 5-year timeline is political in nature. “So the reason I said 2028 is that’s when we’ll actually know if there’s going to be a change in the administration, and then we’ll find out a trajectory of what emissions will look like, and then that’ll solidify the plans. That said, you can’t start in 2028. So clearly a lot of the work will be done here, but hopefully by 2028, with somebody like Ivan as the CEO now, I think it’ll get a higher priority and we should be able to make some concrete announcements by ’28 of a timeline of when exactly you’d be able to see a new GTR in showrooms,” Pandikuthira said.
A lot’s about to happen at Nissan before the next GT-R arrives. Espinosa just laid out a huge turnaround plan that will cut models and keep the good stuff. A family of frame-based vehicles is headed to the U.S. starting in 2028 and it will be kicked off with the new Xterra.
And while Nissan needs to sell a ton of Rogue crossover SUVs, its enthusiast CEO told The Drive that “sports cars are the core of what we are as a company.” Espinosa isn’t the only car guy in the C-suite. The hot seats are filled with passionate car guys. Richard Candler, the man in charge of Nissan’s global corporate product strategy, told The Drive, “We are really deeply looking at the sports [car] lineup again. We all want to do some cool cars.”
Pandikuthira’s advice while people wait for the GT-R to return? “Hakone Skyline Road, I highly recommend it. Rent a car, drive on this Ashinoko-Skyline Hakone Toll Road, because that’s where the GT-R was developed. When I lived here in Japan, I had an R35 GT-R. That road is made for it. And these guys who are working on us, this core group, they’re out there taking their cars every weekend and playing with it. So believe me, they’re actively working on figuring out the right way to bring the GT-R back. So when the time is right, the car will be absolutely right.”
One thing is for sure: Nissan’s Godfather of the GT-R is going to get his wish and the next-generation of Godzilla will be gas powered.
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