In its 32 years of history, the famed Nissan Motorsports sub-brand has never had a proper presence in Australia, selling factory-tuned cars to racing enthusiasts. That’s set to change from next year, with the hyperbonkers Nissan GT-R Nismo on sale in the country from February. More track-tuned, performance-focused Nismo cars are planned for the rest of next year, too.
Nissan will introduce Nismo to Australia in February during the Bathurst 12 Hour by running not one but two GT-R Nismo GT3 cars, hoping to repeat its 2015 victory. The GT-R Nismo that the company sells here to road-going customers will be surprisingly close under the hood, though, with the same turbo setup as the GT-3 and a bunch of weight-reducing carbon fibre performance goodies.
From the tweaked VR38DETT powerplant Nissan can extract 441kW and 652Nm from the 2017 GT-R Nismo, and at $299,000 it’s not going to be cheap — but the first cars in a limited yearly production run will be offered to already-loyal Nissan GT-R customers. So, the quickest way to buy a 2017 GT-R Nismo might just be to buy one or two regular GT-Rs. You know, one for the commute and one for the weekend, so you can save the Nismo-spec car for carving up the race track. [Nissan]
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