Nissan Skyline

The Skyline is the longest-running performance bloodline Japan has built — it predates almost everything filed under “JDM legend,” and it never stopped. The gallery above walks the whole thing: a 1957 Prince saloon at one end, the R32 GT-R that revived a dormant badge at the other. Read it as one continuous line, because that’s exactly how the people who chase these cars read it.

The bloodline, 1957 to Godzilla

It starts as a Prince — a genteel luxury car from a company that would only become part of Nissan in 1966. Racing gave it a spine: at the 1964 Japan GP a Skyline GT ran with the Porsches, and the fallout from that day (see below) built the first GT-R, the 1968–72 C10 “Hakosuka”. The C110 “Kenmeri” that followed gave the badge its rarest, strangest chapter, then the badge went quiet for sixteen years while the DR30 “Iron Mask” and R31 GTS-R kept the performance flame alight on turbo power. In 1989 the R32 brought the GT-R back — and this time it didn’t just win races, it ended them. Each era’s numbers are in the spec tabs; what matters is that it’s one unbroken thread, not a badge revived for nostalgia.

The RB26, and why it built an industry

The R32’s RB26DETT wasn’t engineered for the road — it was engineered to win Group A, then fitted with a road tune. That’s why it’s a tuner’s favourite: a closed-deck iron block and a fuel-and-turbo package that were conservative from the factory, so the engine has enormous headroom before anything structural complains. The whole modern GT-R aftermarket — HKS, Nismo, Mine’s, Top Secret — was built in that headroom. The classic cars sit at the opposite pole: the hand-built S20 in a Hakosuka is restored and cherished, not boosted. Two completely different relationships with the same badge, sixty years apart.

Owning one in South Africa

This is the honest part, and for the Skyline it’s blunt: you probably can’t have one. South Africa broadly prohibits importing used passenger cars — every second-hand vehicle needs an ITAC import permit, granted only in narrow cases (returning residents bringing a car already in their name, racing cars, inherited vehicles, specially-adapted vehicles, and genuine vintage/collector cars). A modern JDM grey import — an R32, let alone an R34 — does not qualify for an ordinary buyer, and a grey import without the right ITAC paperwork can’t be registered on eNaTIS and is liable to be confiscated and crushed. The one door that’s genuinely open is a true vintage example — a properly old Hakosuka-era car could qualify under the collector exception with an ITAC permit — but that’s a collector’s route, not a way to put a Godzilla on your driveway. Verify the current ITAC position before you spend a cent chasing one.