Here's a Tour of a USA-Legal R34 Nissan Skyline GT-R

this is a 1999 Nissan Skyline GTR better known to car enthusiasts as the r34 GTR despite endless pleas from car enthusiasts this car was never sold in the United States you can't get them here only a handful were ever imported legally and they can't be imported any more today I'm here in Los Angeles California with one of the handful and I'm gonna show you around it first a little skyline gt-r history for you now you already know about the current GTR which has been sold in the United States for the last decade this is the model right before that and it was sold from 1999 to 2002 now before this there were a couple of others the r33 sold in the mid 90s and the r32 in the late 80s and early 90s I had one of those and there were also a couple of skyline gt-r models in the late 1960s and 1970s but this one the r34 is the one that everybody wants the reason is video games and movies I still remember playing Gran Turismo 2 when I was 12 and this was the coolest car in the game then 2 fast 2 furious came out when I was 15 and there wasn't a kid who went to see that movie who didn't want to own this car I spent all of my birthday and lawn-mowing money to buy a high-quality Auto art scale model of the r34 GTR in Bayside blue this color Nissan eventually acquiesced to the pressure and they brought the next generation GTR to the United States and that was great and we all loved it but we also all still kind of wanted this one the last best GTR we couldn't have and yet here it is in California that's today I'm gonna take you on a tour of this Skyline GTR and I'm gonna show you all of its interesting quarks and cool features and then I'm gonna get it out on the road and drive my childhood fantasy the r34 GTR and then I'm gonna give it a dug score and for more of my thoughts on the r34 GTR and for a full review click the link below to visit autotrader.com slash oversteer I'm gonna start back here with these taillights these are some of the most famous taillights in all of performance cars if you're a car enthusiast at all you know this taillight pattern now there are a couple of unusual things about the taillights in this car one of which is when you press the brakes all four red circles don't light up like I always thought it's just the ones on the outside all four circles do light up however as the taillights when you turn on the headlights now the little orange circle in the inner ring is the turn signal and obviously it lights up when you put on the turn signals or the hazard lights on the bumper there are a couple of other lights you'll notice down there one is red and one is white the white one is the reverse light it comes on when you're in Reverse the weird thing is there's only one reverse light on this car and it's offset on the right you see the red light and that is the rear fog light cars in Europe and Asia often have rear fog lights you're supposed to turn it on in foggy conditions to let other drivers know that you're there and that's it the famous rear end of the r34 GTR next up we move on to the rear wing now an image is this car forever I've always known that it had a rear wing but I never knew that it's adjustable take a look at this you can actually move the wing several degrees in either direction for your optimal track setup you put it up or in the middle or down after you've adjusted the wing you can lock it in place with a little screw as you can see there are a couple of little holes where you can set it and keep it there middle up or down in order to lock the wing where you want it pop off this end cap and you can stick a screw through those holes and into the adjustable flap to keep it in place who knew that the wing on this thing adjusted obviously doesn't pop up or down like in a Porsche but this is an early adjustable wing it's also worth noting that the positioning of this rear wing is absolutely terrible it robs your rear visibility like crazy it's directly in your line of sight modern wings are often higher to get out of your rear visibility and a lot of you see a lot of cars had lower wings too this one is right in the middle something else in the back of this car that I've always loved it has a rear wiper and that's not all that unusual patch back station wagons SUVs have rear wipers but cars with trunks never do the only car in the United States that I can think of the hata rear wiper and a trunk is the Evo so apparently it was a Japanese thing and indeed it was a lot of Japanese cars and then 80 90s had this my r32 GTR had it and this car does too it even has a rear washer Jets so you can wash the rear window at your leisure next up we move on to the trunk now you look inside the trunk it's a fairly normal-sized trunk that looks pretty normal for a Japanese car this era but you'll notice that there's a lot of stuff right here well usually there's a trim panel there but the trim panel is gone so that I can show you there are a lot of ECU's in the trunk they're here for weight distribution there's one in front there's four back here if there is that that helps balance the weight of the car now the ECU's obviously control a lot of things and one of the things is rear-wheel steering because this car has four-wheel steering the form of steering this car is actually quite interesting at low speeds the rear wheels turn opposite the front wheels in order to give you a smaller turning circle and help you get around corners quicker at high speeds they turn at the same angle in order for you to be able to make high-speed lane changes or other moves quicker in order to do this job properly the four-wheel steering system uses among other things this yaw sensor I love the warning on top of this thing don't drop okay little yaw sensor thanks for the advice also interesting is the all-wheel drive system which was a huge deal back when this car came out but cars basically rear-wheel drive until you needed it and then it could send up to 50 percent of the power to the front wheels that's pretty common today maybe more interesting than the function of the all-wheel-drive system was the name it was called a tessa ets pro and this was an acronym it stood for advanced total traction an engineering system for all-terrain with electronic torque split if that's not the most complicated 90s japanese acronym they could have come up with and i don't know what is it's ridiculous next to move on to the front of the gt-r where there are a couple of items worth noting one is the badge in the middle of the grille you'll notice it doesn't say nissan it says gt-r that was the factory badge in fact this car did not come from the factory with any nissan magic this car was not a nissan it was a gt-r that was the most important thing for you to understand as a result you'll find several gt-r badges this one there's one in back on the trunk there are GTR centre caps and the wheels but there is no Nissan badge another interesting thing in the front of this car this is a very famous front end associated with this vehicle but here's something I didn't know these little lights in the bumper I always assume they were fog light they're actually the turn signals who knew that the r34 GTR s turn signals were in the bumpers now you know climbing into this car for the first time the most interesting thing you'll find is definitely the center screen which had me in total awe I promise you'll want to see this and remember this car came out in 1999 which is nearly 20 years ago this is sort of the home screen and it shows all sorts of different measurements you can see some of them change in real time as I rev the engine next up press the mode button and you can change to a screen that shows g-forces again in real time which would have been huge in 1999 press mode again and this screen shows you the last 30 seconds of various different vehicle measurements and it's fully configurable so you can choose what you want to see for instance here's oil pressure and you can see the digital readout changes i rev the engine and you can see the displays showing the last 30 seconds of engine revs oddly it almost lets you see too much for example who would want to see the last 30 seconds of water temperature but you can the next display is called twin display and it lets you see two gauges at once of course those are configurable next you get into my favorite menu it's called red zone and it lets you adjust the levels in the home screen where the green bars turn red I've turned down the one for boost and now you can see the green bar turn red as I violate my newly configured maximum setting then there's the shift up menu you see this little light here next to the screen that's a shift light and it turns on when it's time to up shift but here's the thing in the shift up menu you can adjust where the maximum up shift should be and thus where the shift light turns on and then by far the craziest item is the lap timer function you see this little black button in the center console next to the shifter okay push it and it starts timing your lap like a stopwatch the second lap starts when you push it again like I just did the amazing part is over here to the left of the center console you see this wire that's so you can hook up to your $19.99 laptop and download all of your vehicle data including your lap times and other measurements interestingly one last item I'm zooming in here so you can see oil pressure do you notice that it's about 1.8 or 1.9 well here's the normal oil pressure gauge in the instrument panel and it's reading almost 3 despite all that technology Nissan couldn't make these things give the same reading which is truly hilarious but that center screen isn't the only weird thing about the interior there are a couple of other interesting quirks worth mentioning starting with the gauge cluster and the gauge cluster in this car is a Nismo accessory that's Nissan's in-house tuning company so the gauge cluster would have been dealer installed when the car was purchased now the thing I like most about the gauge cluster is the tachometer the texana in this car goes all the way up to 11,000 rpms although the owner tells me the fuel cutoff is at 8,000 but let's be honest it is cool to see that 11 on there now in order to make it go to 11,000 rpms they had to make 0 through 3,000 rpms especially tiny I guess you shouldn't really care about that why you drive it at 3000 rpm anyway that's nothing another interesting quirk obviously this car is right-hand drive and so that means that the turn signals and the windshield wiper stalks are switched the turn signals are on the right the windshield wiper stock is on the left now that's only tour of right hand drive cars sold in Asia it's worth throwing that right hand drive car sold in Europe and the UK and an Ireland for example I'll have it on the other side like a normal left-hand drive car the turn signal will be on the left and the wiper will be on the right so when automakers make right-hand drive cars it's country specific where the windshield wiper stock and the turn signal strong go it's also worth noting that that can get rather challenging when you go around and drive this car because you've got to put on the turn signal and then you've turned on the windshield library you have to keep in mind that the turn signal is switch and it's on the other side or else you'll be constantly forgetting another interesting item this car has power folding mirrors which is unusual it's usually an item you associate with modern luxury cars but this car has them in order to activate them you flip a little switch on the driver's door panel next to the power window switches and then the mirrors fold in flip the switch the other direction and they fold right back out again that's for all those times you're gonna park your Skyline GTR on a narrow street which may actually be a concern in tight areas in Japan another interesting control on that vicinity worth noting is just to the right of the steering wheel that would be the headlight leveler if you look over there you'll see a little dial labeled zero through three now when they're on zero they're in their highest setting and as you twist the dial they go lower and lower to change what your headlights are illuminating on the road in front of you interesting item inside this car like many cars this car has a reverse lockout so you have to pull up on a little tab in order to get it into reverse that's to make sure that you don't accidentally shift into reverse when you're going for six that makes sense but this car takes it a step further because this car has a first gear lockout as well it's a very unusual feature in order to shift this car into first you also have to pull up on that tab the idea here is to prevent you from accidentally shifting into first when you're going for third which could cause severe damage to the engine and so every time you shift into first you've got to pull up on that tab also worth mentioning is the seat material now this car has these tight little grippy sport seats that really hug you in corners neener tells me they're absolutely great and they're covered in these little rubberized dots which look very odd but the owner tells me they're really functional the dots actually help to keep you in place no it doesn't look as nice as leather or Alcantara but they work interestingly the rear seats are also covered in the rubberized dots which means that your kids can stay in places you take them around hard corners on the racetrack another interesting thing about this car's interior to me is that it's just so normal if you look around the interior this car you might be surprised to find that Godzilla the famed r34 GTR has a lot of stuff that just looks like it comes out of basically every other late 90s and early 2000s Nissan the window switches for example normal Nissan window switches the door locks which same deal the door lock itself and the door handle in fact the entire door panel looks like just from a regular Nissan get into the middle of the interior you'll find that the climate controls look like they're from a regular Nissan same with the climate vents and the hazard light switch the turn signal stalk and the wiper stalk are really pulled out of regular and Nissan models in the middle here there's a center console with a normal amount of center console storage and right ahead of that there's a little cup holder it's small but it fits Japanese sized cups it even has a normal glove box although what's in the glove box is a little less than normal that's where you'll find the owner's manuals which I absolutely love I'm going to start with the navigation system owner's manual which has this ridiculous 90s looking picture of some sort of Japanese city it looks like a phone book now the coolest thing about this honors manual is that when you open it up as all the instructions in Japanese but it also shows little images of the navigation system confused if you go for example under some trees or into a tunnel they show the navigation system as a little character he's this cute little guy and he can't he can't figure out he's not getting any signal that's the navigation system manual in a skyline gt-r the owners manual obviously I can't read any of it except the cover which says on it and this is a direct quote skyline the best driving pleasure that's kind of hilarious also hilarious is the fact that on the back of the two manuals that says life together Nissan which must have been their slogan at the time these are the owner's manuals you get when you get a skyline gt-r and look at the floor mats they see that pattern you may not remember this but everybody was doing stupid patterns like that on fabrics in cars in the 1990s on floor mats on door panels on seats and that even carried on to the famous Nissan Skyline GTR speaking of the floor mats one other interesting thing is the floor mat label there's a little label that tells you how to install the floor mats in the car that's not that unusual the unusual part is that it's on the top of the floor mat so it basically is always visible and it's very ugly I guess you're supposed to pull it off once you learned how to install the floor mat but this one still has its original floor mat label in place good luck fun on another GTR with that Pebble Beach 2057 this floor mat label will be what the judges are looking for next up earlier you may have heard me mentioned that this car has back seats well I think you know what comes next now to get to the back you fold the seats forward and then there's this little seat belt right there and it's gonna make it very difficult to get in back but you can just fold it out of the way and then you can climb in very very easily very simple thing getting back here oh oh oh it's not so bad of course the driver now has no place to sit now there's nothing interesting in the backseat of this car this cart really wasn't designed for people to sit in the back or really enjoy themselves they're back here the only thing interesting is there's another floor mat with that ridiculous pattern that goes all the way across the entire floor the back seats that is it okay so now it's time to drive it but first you're probably wondering how it's possible that this Skyline GTR is here in the United States well I have one word for you motorettes let me back up right now it's very difficult to import a car into the United States unless it's 25 years old but it's not impossible in order to do it you have to go through all sorts of regulatory hoops you have to submit emissions paperwork and certification of the EPA you even have to go through crash testing the cost is massive well over a million dollars but in the early 2000s a company called motor X saw the demand for the Skyline GTR Xand they decided to jump through the hoops and spend the money and yes they even crash tested a skyline to prove that it was Road worthy after a lot of work and a lot of money spent motor X got the US government to agree that they could sell the r33 GTR to customers in the United States after they performed certain modifications to make it legal for us roads now motor X also decided that they wanted to sell the r32 and the r34 GTR but that would have required a lot more work and a lot more money spent getting those cars certified so mona rex decided to import those cars anyway and just tell the government that they were r33 GTR s then motor x decided to just stop performing the work to get the cars u.s. certified in the first place in the end there was a government raid on motor X they ceased operations but a few dozen vehicles had been sold to u.s. buyers who believed they were buying legally imported cars with US government certifications and so showing an unusual amount of generosity for a federal agency the government allowed those buyers to keep their cars those cars were grandfathered in under the theory that those buyers bought the cars thinking they had been properly certified and so those few dozen cars have a letter from the United States Department of Transportation saying that they are legal and that they will be legal forever as a result these are basically the only legal skyline gt-r Xin America that aren't 25 years old and this is one of those cars likely one of just 12 to 14 motor x r34 GTR s in the entire country anyway with that interesting story out of the way time to get the r34 GTR out on the road okay driving the hard 34 seats yeah this is so cool man I'm just remembering as I start driving this car how much I hate driving right here and drive oh it's just very annoying people who drive them frequently say they get used to it but I I never got used to it and I really just hate being on this side of the car it makes visibility very difficult I'm not a family I feel so cool and and the one of the reasons I feel cool is that while I was filming this video on in a secluded elementary school on a Saturday morning in a parking lot in a dead-end several people walked up to us and we're talking us GTI r34 they're so excited you can't escape it when you have this car the attention is unbelievable especially in this color stock with these wheels I mean this is the Gran Turismo car this is the car we all knew about when we were when we were growing up now I had an r32 this car feels tremendously already it just feels tremendously more substantial Nissan rated both vehicles at 276 horsepower which was the power rating that all Japanese car companies gave to their vehicles at the time as part of this agreement that they wouldn't start getting into this power war could lead to people getting hurt so they were all 276 horsepower but this car really was more like 320 it feels like a real car the only 32 felt like an old car this car feels like you know a modern vehicle feels very quick so this car stuck this is how it would have been if you were in Japan back in in 1999 picking one of these up I mean this was a lot of course all of these cars have been modified but this one is still in incident condition and so this is kind of cool day to experience this and not drive one that's 10,000 horsepower or whatever like most oh just a little bit of throttle and and you can start to feel the power this car doesn't feel slow even though this car is 20 years old it doesn't I mean it doesn't feel like a 20 year old car in that sense it doesn't feel like oh this this car is fast for 20 years ago turning the wheel is easy I mean this is an easy car to drive it it actually it feels in a lot of senses it feels like a Nissan except I'm sitting on the other side of the car yeah I thought I always felt my 32 is pretty quick but this car is really oh wow it really gets I'm not at all surprised by that I mean this car this car was the king of every video game throughout mm of course it's quick one thing I'm really taken by is just how modern it feels it doesn't feel uncomfortable it really feels like I'm sitting here in a in a fairly recent car and everybody stares at Japan California's got such a car culture that that's gonna be a part of it and but it's just crazy to me how everybody is everybody knows the car so sitting in a stoplight the car doesn't shake or rattle or make any weird noises or anything like that it feels like you'd expect a modern car the clutch is really easy to operate it actually surprises me it's not notching it it goes in at a normal rate it's very easy to feel already where you know how we're to let it out where the catch point is not looking in the rearview mirror yeah that that wing is really it's unfortunate it's actually funny there's a Prius behind me the wing reminds me of the Priuses situation where the glass is split when you look back there and there's some there's a part of the back that you just can't see that's exactly what this is like except it's bigger it's very easy to shift between gears in this car very easy to push the clutch in this car it's even easy to rev match although I always have problems rev matching and right-hand drive cars because mentally I just used to doing this and not this but eventually I think you get the hang of it the car this car feels tight it still fit still feels really like it's well built and it doesn't feel like it's even coming close to flying apart the ride quality is a little bit margin you can tell I'm struck one of the things I'm struck by is just enormous cards I'm just trying around Burbank and it doesn't feel to me like I'm driving Godzilla that one of the great cars of all time whatever and part of the reason I think that is that it actually ends up being a pretty good just sort of normal car if that's what you want it to I think one of the benefits of this car like portions is that you can drive them crazy fast if you want if I had a track to go on but you can also just sort of drive them it's quick the steering is really quick the steering is modern car quick and that's actually kind of impressive there's a little bit of vagueness on Center you wouldn't find this if this car came out today in the new GTR the steering is a lot more precise the moment you start to turn it in this car it's just a little bit less and that was just how it was done forever until now only now if cars become like you everybody knows this car it's so hilarious there's somebody get a Volvo c70 just gave us a thumbs up in a way [Music] it's really quick and it's fun and it's addicting to kind of Florida and really enjoy it because the sound is amazing and honestly it's not difficult to build power this this is the kind of car where where when you floor it it's just like keep going keep going because it's smooth and it's quick and it sounds good you know I would flip if I saw one of these especially in this color prease takhmina I would lose it I would go crazy but I'm surprised how many other people are but the funny thing is every one of those people is a car person that's kind of cool right this is not if a normal person saw this car they would they wouldn't care except Oh someone's driving on the right that's weird but everyone who's a car everyone who's a car person doesn't matter what you're into it's hard not to appreciate the r34 GTR seeing on the streets in America in California that's a cool feeling and so that's the r34 skyline gt-r I've always idolized this car since I was a kid and I've always wanted to own one and I'm thrilled that I at least got to spend the day with this one now these motor X r34 GTR s because they're basically the only legal r34 s in the country they command a huge price premium they sell for at least $80,000 or more which is too much for me but in seven years this car becomes 25 years old and then the floodgates can open and I might just have to important one so I can finally match that scale model I had when I was a kid anyway on to the dug score starting with the weekend categories and styling look I love the r34 GTR but let's be honest the only reason we think this car looks cool is because we think this car is cool it's not classically beautiful or attractive and it gets only a 6 out of 10 acceleration it does 0 to 60 in 4.5 seconds I told you it's modern car fast and that gives it a 7 out of 10 handling is good at corners flat and the steering is nice but it's an older car it's not small like a Miata and it has some on center of vagueness it gets a 7 out of 10 cool factor is easy 10 out of 10 especially in the United States right now and if you disagree you're crazy importance is also really high this car led the Japanese revolution in the early 2000s where we all told Japanese car companies we wanted their cool performance cars they were saving for Japan and it was interest in this car that paved the way for the WRX the STI the Evo and eventually the r35 gt-r I always say the importance category basically measures whether you would have the car in a museum and my car museum would definitely include an R 34 GTR it gets a 9 out of 10 and it up in the total weekend score is 39 out of 50 which places it up there with some all-time greats including the Lamborghini Countach it deserves it on to the daily category starting with features the skyline is fine but even with it's crazy screen it's not anywhere near as well equipped as modern cars and it gets a 4 out of 10 next up is Comfort it's a little harsh but not punishing and it gets a 5 out of 10 quality is high the skylines injured is known for reliability and until you start trying to get 900 horsepower out of it and the interior is fine but neither are exceptional and it gets a 6 out of 10 practicality is next trunk space is decent but not exceptional however the skyline gets a little boost here for having a back seat and it gets a 4 out of 10 finally there's value which is really hard to rate I always rate the car in front of me and in this case these motor X cars are really expensive for what they are especially considering the r34 GTR will be legal to import in a few years it gets a 6 out of 10 but I'll probably feel differently when Japanese market cars start coming over a lot cheaper and it all up in the total daily score is 25 out of 50 tying it with the e46 m3 add it all up and the total dug score is 64 out of 100 which means it scored higher than any other car it's age I guess that makes sense after all this is Godzilla you

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 5,151,410

Rating: 4.8888655 out of 5

Keywords: nissan skyline gt-r, r34 gt-r, r34 skyline gt-r, nissan gt-r, skyline gt-r, skyline gtr, r34 gtr, nissan r34 gtr, nissan skyline gtr r34, nissan gtr r34, r34 skyline gtr, nissan r34, doug demuro, demuro

Id: 4VQIjYBbawE

Length: 26min 40sec (1600 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 30 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/rbmotoring]

why did he do air quotes when he said R34?

[u/k31advice96]

Already posted in /r/cars, but I figured this might be interesting to discuss. I'm surprised that the Getrag V160 has a first gear lockout, that's a pretty nice feature actually.

I didn't notice that the weird button that keeps the key from falling out on the R32 and R33 is gone on the R34, that's kind of interesting as well.

I wonder if the headlight level switch is there on the R33. That would help a fair bit in LHD countries, run the headlights lower when in traffic but set it back to level when it's dark.