Godzilla Gets a New Suit

• The aging Nissan GT-R gets yet another special edition, this one called the T-Spec, which includes largely cosmetic differences.

• The GT-R T-spec follows a tradition of offering limited-release special editions of small-volume sports cars, to keep the nameplate fresh over a longer product cycle.
  

• Another special-edition GT-R, the NISMO Special Edition, with a lot of speed parts is still available at $217,485, while this T-Spec stickers at $140,285.

At the current-edition Nissan GT-R’s debut at the Nürburgring way back in 2007, chief engineer Kazutoshi Mizuno said he would never stop developing the car. That wasn’t only because of the Japanese notion of Kaizen, or continuous improvement; it was to keep people buying it as it aged gracefully through a long product cycle. To make a business case for a supercar like a GT-R that sells in the range of hundreds per year, you have to spread things out over a longer period of time. So while a vehicle like a Sentra or Rogue may have seen three or even four model changes since 2007, the GT-R has essentially soldiered on in its same basic configuration and in its same basic architecture to spread out development costs over a longer time. It’s how carmakers are able to offer small-volume performance cars like this (and the Mazda Miata, Chevy Corvette, and all of your favorite sports cars). But carmakers also have to give the model line a shot in the swing arm every now and then. That’s we get special editions.

Like this one.

The GT-R has seen its share of those, most recently the GT-R NISMO, NISMO Special Edition, GT-R Premium, and now this, the GT-R T-Spec, in which T may or may not stand for “Track.” You decide.

The special features of this special edition are mostly cosmetic. It gets two unique colors, for instance, Millennium Jade and Midnight Purple. Nissan says that Millennium Jade was previously offered on the R34 GT-R V-Spec II Nür, another special edition it claims is one of the rarest GT-Rs ever. Nür is short for Nürburgring, obvs, and only 718 V-Spec II Nür units were produced—with just 156 carrying the Millennium Jade color, for those keeping track. In what may or may not be cause for excitement based on limited exclusivity, this is the first time this color will be offered on a GT-R in the US market. The other color, Midnight Purple, is “a modern interpretation of the Midnight Purple III from the R34 V-Spec, which was limited to 132 units, and the 2014 special edition Midnight Opal R35 GTR that was limited to only 100 units worldwide (50 in the US).”