Nissan UK Sports Car Chief: GT-R Hybrid is the “Obvious Direction”
Nissan UK sport car chief James Olvier told Top Gear that a GT-R Hybrid is the “obvious direction,” indicated that it could look much like the CONCEPT 2020 Vision GT
As I wrote back in September, there are a great many signs indicating that the next-generation GT-R will inevitably carry a lot of the visual hallmarks of the CONCEPT 2020 Vision Gran Turismo from this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed. It’s also been suggested that there could be a 700+-horsepower hybrid version on the table. Both of these tid bits sound like great things, and they sound even better—and even more likely—in light of comments made to Top Gear by Nissan UK sports car division chief James Oliver.
“I think it [a GT-R hybrid] is the obvious direction,” Oliver said in an interview. “There’s been obsessive development of the GT-R over the years, and at some point we will move onto the next generation car. The overall market is looking at different methods of powering cars, and at Nissan we’ve got great expertise and investment of electric.”
So just how plausible is a GT-R hybrid? Oliver says that Nissan “already [has] the capability in terms of battery production and electric vehicle technology,” which suggests that all it’s going to take to make the GT-R hybrid happen is commitment.
Oliver also notes that the CONCEPT 2020 is a design study for the next-gen GT-R, and that Nissan intends to wring every last drop of performance out of the current-gen R35 GT-R up until its last breaths.
On a mostly-unrelated side note: Digital Trends also covered the story of the possible GT-R hybrid and a CONCEPT 2020-inspired face, offering the following headline:
In honor of Joan Rivers (let’s say), Nissan to give GT-R one final facelift
Oh, my. Can we talk? Can we talk?
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