The inescapably cool “Godzilla” nickname so closely associated with modern-day Skylines is owed to the sheer dominance of the R32-generation model in Group A competition. So much so, the Australian Touring Car Championship rulebook was rewritten to prohibit four-wheel drive and turbocharging, thus bringing its commanding reign to an end. For the R33 successor, Nissan opted to take on the grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans. However, the GT-R would find itself comprehensively outgunned in 1995 by the arrival of the McLaren F1 GTR, finishing a subdued 10th overall. Then came the Porsche 911 GT1, which rocked up on the grid at the Circuit de la Sarthe the following year to push the Japanese effort down to 15th.

Nevertheless, Nissan saw fit to celebrate its French endurance racing foray by allowing the NISMO (Nissan Motorsports International) tuning arm to thoroughly rework the R33 GT-R. The result was the 400R. At a time when the cordial agreement between manufacturers in Japan was for their cars not to exceed 280 PS, this hand-built, race-derived special produced 400 PS, hence the 400R’s name. By way of comparison, the one-off GT-R LM road car built and retained ever since by Nissan delivered 305 PS.

The immense increase came courtesy of the 2.6-liter twin-turbocharged inline-six engine being bored and stroked to 2,771 cubic centimeters. The blueprint for this came not from the Le Mans racer itself, but from a privately entered GT-R that plied its trade in the All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship—renamed and now better known as Super GT. With the boost wound up to 1.1 bar for the RB-X GT2 motor, the brawn was managed by an ATTESA four-wheel-drive system, torque vectoring, and sophisticated Super-HICAS four-wheel steering.

Boasting a carbon fiber rear wing, bonnet, and driveshaft, plus a titanium strut brace, Bilstein dampers, a 30-millimeter drop in ride height, and gorgeous three-piece 18-inch wheels from the LM GT1 racecar, the 400R was cited for a limited production run of 100 units. But, with this track-focused edition arriving during the financially uncertain Lost Decades for Japan and costing three times as much as a standard GT-R, NISMO claimed that just 44 were ever made. Of those, only 40 chassis have been confirmed. This phenomenal scarcity left the 400R to find enormous popularity in another way, for it starred in the original Gran Turismo videogame, of which nearly 11 million copies were sold for the Sony PlayStation.

Ranking as one of the most collectable Skylines from a lineage dating back to the 1950s, the 400R offered here was first registered in Japan in September 1996. While the car’s complete history is not definitively known, it is believed that the Nissan was registered in Hong Kong from approximately 2012. Accompanying paperwork indicates that it was purchased by a new owner in the Gunma Prefecture in October 2021. They retained possession for a little over three years, prior to the car leaving its homeland to be exported and registered in the United States.

Showing 7,093 kilometers (~4,408 miles) on the odometer at the time of cataloguing, this NISMO 400R would make for a standout addition to any collection. Adding to the lore enveloping the Skyline bloodline, here is a car sure to draw an appreciative crowd at any event it attends.