Nissan Skyline GT-R R33 Nismo 400R listed for £1.6 million in the UK

A British dealer currently has a Nissan Skyline GT-R R33 Nismo 400R for sale, priced at £1.6 million (around €1.92 million).

The R33 never created quite the same shockwaves as the R32 and R34, yet that hardly makes the Nissan Skyline GT-R R33 any less noteworthy. In Nismo 400R form, it becomes one of the most distinctive Japanese performance cars ever built.

So what, exactly, makes this Nissan Skyline GT-R Nismo 400R so desirable and so special? In truth: almost everything.

A true unicorn

Released in November 1997, the Skyline GT-R Nismo 400R represented the very best work Nismo - Nissan’s official tuning and motorsport arm - was capable of at the time.

It was developed from the GT-R V-spec and conceived as a celebration of Nissan and Nismo’s competition success throughout the 1990s.

The original plan was to build 100 examples, but according to the GTR-Registry website, only 40 cars were registered, plus a single prototype. Even so, other sources suggest as many as 44 may have been produced.

There is no official figure - back then, the talk was of producing 100 units - and the most reliable gauge is the one “provided” by GTR-Registry.

On that basis, these 40 cars are the total typically referenced, and the example featured here was the final one made (#40/40).

That fact alone goes a long way towards explaining the appetite for this particular car, which shows just 61,000 km on the odometer and retains complete maintenance documentation dating back to when it left the factory.

Different in almost every way

But there is more - far more. Nismo made sure this Skyline GT-R Nismo 400R served as a kind of “swan song” for the R33 generation of the Japanese icon.

Take the engine: it was an evolution of the RB26DET, enlarged by 200 cm³ (to 2.8 litres), and “worked on” by Reinik Motorsport, which supplied a strengthened block and reinforced cylinder head.

Both turbochargers ran higher boost, the cooling system was improved, and the transmission was carbon fibre. Added to that was an entirely new exhaust system, finished with tailpipes bearing the R400 marking.

The changes to the straight-six were so extensive that it dropped the RB26DET name altogether and became known as the RB-X GT2. Yet the most significant leap was power: it rose from 280 hp to 400 hp, with Nismo effectively sweeping aside the “gentlemen’s agreement” among Japanese manufacturers to cap output at 280 hp.

To understand what that meant at the time, it is worth remembering that in 1998 - when this example left the factory - the Ferrari F355 made “only” 380 hp, and its replacement, the Ferrari 360 Modena, arrived with “just” 400 hp.

A DNA all of its own

With figures like these, the Skyline GT-R Nismo 400R could sprint from 0 to 100 km/h in a little over 4.0 seconds and reach 300 km/h flat out, with the redline only arriving at 9000 rpm.

But as impressive as those numbers were, it was the exclusive, model-specific details that truly cemented its desirability.

Nismo developed parts for this version that were never offered outside the R400 programme, meaning they were never within reach of owners of “conventional” Skyline GT-R R33 models.

There is, then, no shortage of reasons to be fascinated by this particular car - but will anyone actually pay close to €2 million for it? Only time will tell, but if we had to guess, we would say yes. In fact, of course they will.