KEY POINTS:
Right from the beginning, the Skyline was destined to be involved in racing.
Although introduced in 1955, its dominance on the race track really began in the 1960s thanks to advanced technology that gave the car the edge over its competitors.
By 1996, the 2.0ltr engine was producing 160hp and the Skyline won more than 50 races in three years.
The car most people regarded as the first GT-R was in fact the R32 Skyline GT-R, re-introduced after production of the GT-R was stopped during the oil crisis of the 1980s. On its re-launch, the GT-R made the entire motoring world sit up and take notice.
The new car was developed for racing, as was its predecessor in the late 1960s. Nissan used the Porsche 959 supercar as its benchmark for the GT-R.
The 2.6ltr engine produced 600hp and power was delivered to the rear wheels via a bullet-proof drive-train. As with all rear-wheel-drive cars of the time, producing the power was not the problem - it was getting the rear tyres to grip that proved challenging.
The Porsche 959 four-wheel-drive technology was initially developed for off-road rallying.
Engineers at Nissan believed an all-wheel-drive could work on the tarmac and executed their paper plan to perfection by using a computer to distribute torque between the four wheels in real time.
When the car was built and entered in the Japanese Touring Car Group A championships, it never lost a race - winning 27 straight in its debut year and eventually causing the cancellation of the series. The GT-R was then launched on an unsuspecting Australia and continued its Group A domination.
Although it was the heaviest car in the series, its success was a result of great technology and awesome power, and it was eventually banned from endurance races in Australia. At the time, no other manufacturer could touch the GT-R. There were only minor technological improvements with the R33 and R34 generations and, although regarded as hi-tech today, these essentially drew on mid-'80s technology.
The GT-R's race pedigree and history is impeccable, and about as close to perfect as it gets in motorsport, earning the sobriquet Godzilla.
Although it was developed more than 20 years ago, the 2.6ltr, six-cylinder engine can produce in excess of 1000hp.
Despite having a relatively small engine, this boxy, heavy car will hold its own against any of the modern-day supercars.
This power coupled with the excellent drive-train allows the power to be delivered to the road with minimal undue wheel spin.
The GT-R breaks many rules and ignores a lot of tradition. The RB26DETT was the first available production engine with oil-cooled pistons, individual throttle bodies and various other tweaks.
This kind of technology is only now beginning to be utilised by some of the rest - including Porsche, BMW, and Ferrari - in their road cars. Mitsubishi and Subaru have finally come close to matching the electronic all-wheel-drive technology of the GT-R, 15 years later. You would have to say the R32 and its successors were cars of the future.
