When we saw last week that a rare R34 Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec II Nür Nismo R-Tune was up for auction, the CT Slack channel was awash with guesses of what outrageous sum of money it would fetch. Now, we’ve got our answer: £250,500, which is… perhaps not as much as we expected.
There’s a general rule of thumb with Japanese performance cars: the more words, letters and numbers tacked onto its name, the better. With a name like that, you know this one’s special.
Nissan Skyline Nismo R-Tune – engine bay
The R34 GT-R, of course, needs no introduction. Produced between 1999 and 2002, it’s quite possibly the most legendary performance car to ever come out of Japan (or anywhere else for that matter). The V-Spec II was an even harder, firmer, and more focused version; and the Nür (short for Nürburgring, obvs) built on that with beefed-up turbochargers and a couple of other tweaks.
It was the most focused factory R34 of all, and probably the most desirable, with power taken to somewhere around 330bhp (although it still ‘officially’ made 276bhp thanks to the Japanese gentleman’s agreement).
Nissan Skyline Nismo R-Tune – side
This isn’t just any Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec II Nür, though. This is a Nismo R-Tune Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec II Nür. Nismo, of course, is Nissan’s in-house motorsport and performance division, and before it started doing electric crossovers, it was cooking up stuff like this.
The R-Tune package saw Nismo go to town on the R34’s 2.6-litre, twin-turbo RB26DETT straight-six, fitting it with an enormous raft of upgrades that boosted its power to somewhere in the region of 444bhp. It continued to drive all four wheels via a six-speed manual.
Nissan Skyline Nismo R-Tune – interior
This one’s been further enhanced with a subtle body kit from the even more hardcore Z-Tune version, including a carbon fibre bonnet, and of course, has the iconic R-Tune livery.
It’s thought that Nismo only converted somewhere between 25 and 30 R34s to R-Tune spec, and by our reckoning, this is one of maybe three to find their way to the UK. Since rolling out of Nismo’s Omori factory in 2002, it’s covered just 38,215km – around 23,750 miles.
Nissan Skyline Nismo R-Tune – rear
The astronomical rise in Skyline GT-R prices over the last few years has been well-documented, especially as early R34s – arguably the most sought-after of all – finally became legal for US import this year.
That sort of meant that all bets were off when it came to the figure this auction on Collecting Cars would fetch. A quarter of a million pounds is obviously an enormous sum of money, but we wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see it go for more – it is, after all, an incredibly rare Nismo-tuned version of one of the hottest collector cars going right now.
It’s far from the silliest figure we’ve seen a Skyline go for in recent years: last year, an R33 Nismo 400R fetched just over £700k, while in 2022 an R34 Z-Tune – an even rarer Nismo model – became the most expensive Skyline sale on record when it went for $1.985 million (around £1.56 million).
