Price cheque for Nissan GT-R

Nissan Australia yesterday publicly locked in details on pricing, specification and availability for its long-awaited hero car, the R35 GT-R.

The GT-R goes on sale through less than a dozen hand-picked Nissan dealers in April, priced from $148,800, making it the most expensive Nissan ever sold in Australia and almost double the price of the current Nissan flagship - the $76,990 Nissan Patrol Ti.

Even though Nissan has been taking expressions of interest on its website for months, the company will only begin to take committed orders (what it describes as a ‘pre-sell program’) from next week when it unveils the GT-R at the Australian International Motor show in Sydney on October 9.

The GT-R will be sold through 11 selected Nissan dealers, each annotated with the name a “Nissan High Performance Centre”.

Nissan says that each GT-R dealer will make available one salesperson and one technician exclusively to handle the GT-R and that the dealer will commit to specific technical service monitors to communicate with the GT-R data recorder, and to stock nitrogen to maintain tyres.

Of the 11 dealers, three are in Queensland (Moorooka, Southport and Mackay) two in New South Wales (Campbelltown and Brookvale), two in Western Australia (Melville and Wangara), two in Victoria (Ferntree Gully and Werribee) and one each in South Australia (Nailsworth) and Tasmania (Hobart).

As reported by Go Auto in August, Nissan was beaten by local low-volume import garages that obtained federal approval to import up to 25 GT-Rs each, eight months ahead of the official Nissan imports.

The right to import these ‘grey’ imports ceases once Nissan begins to certify its GT-Rs. Nissan’s marketing manager, Ross Booth, told GoAuto he believed that the number of grey imports already landed is “a very small volume” of up to seven cars. Mr Booth said he did not believe that the grey imports would take anything away from the official imports.

“Grey imports are not really a concern,” he said, adding that as soon as Nissan can homologate its GT-R, which it expects to do with weeks, the grey imports will cease.

Nissan boss Dan Thompson was also at pains to point out that Nissan Australia will not allow the grey imports to darken the doorsteps of Nissan dealers locally.

“Our policy remains the same, that we will not be supporting grey imports with either warranty or servicing. These cars remain outside our scope and therefore outside our legal scope or customer responsibility.”

Two grades will be offered - the $148,800 GT-R and the $152,800 GT-R Premium, but Nissan quashed the notion of bringing in the rumoured racetrack-only version dubbed the GT-R V-spec.

Availability for Australia will be limited to 200 GT-Rs in the first year.

The GT-R Premium, which Mr Booth believes will take the bulk of the sales, adds to the standard model’s specification black leather seats with red Alcantara inserts, Bose audio with 11 speakers and a 30GB hard drive, smoke/grey forged 20-inch alloy wheels and Bridgestone Potenza run-flat tyres, (instead of the standard model’s Dunlop SP Sport tyres).

Six exterior colours will be available: Super Silver, Vibrant Red, Gun Metallic, Black Obsidian, Titanium and Ivory Pearl.

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