Nissan R35 GT-R: The Supercar Killer That Became a Modern Classic

Every era of performance motoring has one car that rewrites the price of speed. For the past decade and a half, that car has worn a Nissan badge. The R35 GT-R arrived in Australia in 2009 with supercar numbers and a luxury-sedan price, spent sixteen years embarrassing machinery costing three times as much, and quietly ended production in 2025. Now something is happening that early GT-R buyers were told would never happen to a Nissan: values are climbing.

Godzilla Is an Australian Nickname

Before the numbers, a point of national pride. The GT-R’s famous nickname was not coined in Tokyo or on an American forum. It was the Australian motoring press that first called Nissan’s all-conquering coupe Godzilla, back when the R32 GT-R was tearing through local touring car racing in the early 1990s. The name followed the badge around the world and never let go. When the R35 landed here, it was less a new model launch and more a homecoming.

The $155,800 Supercar Killer

Australian deliveries began in April 2009 at $155,800 before on-road costs, with the better-equipped Premium at $159,900. For context, that was luxury-SUV money for a car with a 3.8-litre twin-turbo V6, all-wheel drive and a launch-control party trick that could humiliate almost anything with a prancing horse on the nose. The value equation was so lopsided that the R35 became the default answer to a whole class of question. Want supercar pace without supercar spend? One car. For sixteen years.

Sixteen Years, One Shape

Nissan never replaced the R35. It refined it, repriced it, and released editions. The MY13 Premium moved to $172,000. By MY17, the range ran from the $189,000 Premium through the $227,000 Track Edition to the $299,000 Nismo. The 50th Anniversary Edition marked the badge’s birthday at $209,300 in 2019. The final Australian model year, MY22, spanned $193,800 to the $393,800 Nismo SV, with the $256,700 T-Spec in between.

The end came on paper, not on track. From 1 November 2021, a new side-impact design rule meant the R35 could no longer be sold here, and fewer than 50 of those final cars reached Australia, including roughly 28 T-Specs. Global production wound up in 2025. There is no next GT-R to cross-shop, and the market has noticed.

The Market Right Now

At the time of writing there are around 46 R35s openly for sale across Australia, and they split into three distinct markets.

At the entry point, early cars advertised between roughly $94,000 and $140,000. Nearly all of these are Japanese imports, for reasons explained below. Trade prices are sharper again: a 2008 import with 68,000 kilometres hammered for $65,900 at auction in March 2025.

In the middle sit the Australian-delivered cars. An MY13 asks around $155,000, MY15 and MY17 Premiums run from about $160,000 to $235,000, a Track Edition sits at $234,490, and a 2020 Premium with delivery kilometres is offered at $258,888. Note the shape of that curve: a mid-life R35 now asks close to its original sticker, and late cars ask more than theirs.

Then there is the collectible tail. A Nismo is currently advertised at $389,999, well above its $299,000 MY17 list price. And the T-Spec, one of the 28 Australian cars, is offered at $389,990 against a $256,700 RRP. That is actually the sober end of T-Spec pricing: in the frenzy after deliveries ended, asks ran from $550,000 to $1 million. The froth has come off, but the floor has not returned to sticker, and recorded auction results back it up, with Nismos trading at $300,000 as far back as 2022.

Australian-Delivered or Import: The First Question to Ask

Here is the single most useful fact in this article. Australian deliveries began in April 2009. Any R35 with a 2007 or 2008 build date is therefore a Japanese import by definition, no matter what the advertisement says. Only cars built between November 2007 and early 2009 have ever been eligible for second-hand import, through a scheme window that opened in December 2019, and everything built after February 2009 is Australian-delivered because it could not legally arrive any other way.

The distinction matters because it prices the car. An import typically costs meaningfully less than an equivalent local car, and for consistent reasons. Japanese service history is difficult to verify from here. An Australian PPSR check is blind to anything that happened in Japan, so a wound-back odometer can present as clean. Fewer than ten insurers will cover an imported vehicle, generally at higher premiums. Lenders are more reluctant to write secured finance on them. And factory recall support does not follow the car across the water.

Verification is cheap, so do it before you fall in love. A free search of the government’s Register of Approved Vehicles reveals exactly how any car entered the country: full-volume type approval means Australian-delivered, a concessional entry means import. For an import, ask the seller for the Japanese auction sheet and export certificate, and check the odometer readings on both against the dashboard. A seller who cannot produce them is telling you something.

None of this makes imports bad buying. It makes them different buying. The early import at $110,000 and the Australian-delivered MY17 at $220,000 are not the same product wearing different prices, and the market is efficient about the gap. Pay import money for an import. Just never pay local-delivery money for one.

What to Check Before You Buy

Whichever side of that line you buy on, the R35 has one known weak point: the early cars’ dual-clutch transmission, which did not enjoy repeated launch-control starts, particularly in the first years of production. The car records its own history here, because launch activations and stability-control settings are stored in the gearbox and engine control units and can be read with diagnostic tools. Make that readout part of any pre-purchase inspection, because a replacement transmission can run to $30,000. On an import, ask the broker for the readout before the car ships, not after.

Verdict

The R35 spent its whole life being the affordable giant-killer, and its retirement has begun converting it into something else: the last of the analogue-era heroes with a twin-clutch heart, built in one long, stubborn production run that nobody will repeat. The cheap ones are imports, and they are honest cars if you buy them with your eyes open. The Australian-delivered cars are tracking their original stickers or better. And the final editions have already left the realm of transport entirely.

Godzilla was named here. Sixteen years after it landed, it turns out Australia never really let it go either.