2025 GT-R Debuts in Japan With New Blue Interior, Collectible Flourishes

Nissan has announced mild updates for its aging R35 GT-R sports car in Japan, likely previewing what we’ll see for the 2025 model year here in the States. The biggest change: a new Blue Heaven interior color for the GT-R Premium Edition. It is very blue, and somehow very good-looking.

Nissan noted two other changes for the Japanese-market car, one aiming at performance and the other at future collectibility.

The 2025 GT-R Premium Edition T-Spec and the GT-R Track Edition will both utilize weight-balanced piston rings, connecting rods, and crankshafts—engine tech previously only offered on the full-fat GT-R NISMO—to produce snappier engine revs and quicker spooling for the two turbos. Though the announcement doesn’t indicate that these upgrades will allow the GT-R’s VR38DETT V-6 to produce more power, we know that the GT-R NISMO, from which these upgrades are sourced, makes 600 horsepower while the lesser editions make just 565 ponies (here in the States, at least).

Both the GT-R Premium Edition T-Spec and the GT-R Track Edition will also now get a special aluminum badge detailing which of the handful of Takumi master craftsmen (as of 2019, the most recent year we could get information on, there were just five) hand-built that car’s engine. There’s also a new gold-colored model number plate detailing the specifics of the given car: chassis number, the engine it received, the transaxle it has, and the color/trim configuration.

In the North American market, the T-Spec is already your magic ticket to two very nostalgic exterior colors: Millenium Jade and Midnight Purple—both colors made famous on previous generations of the GT-R. If the gold number plate edition announced for the Japanese market GT-R does indeed come to the States, you can connect the dots and imagine a Millenium Jade T-Spec with the gold number plate quickly rising to the top of collectible R35 models.

The R35-generation GT-R debuted in 2007, which means that the 2025 model year will mark its 18th year in existence. As the company begins to shift towards electrification, it’s hard not to surmise that these updates could be among the last that we see for the R35 before it bows out. If that is true, focusing the updates toward collectibility is probably a smart move. We’ll be sad to see the R35 depart, but what a run it has already been.

Our own Steven Cole Smith recently reviewed the 2023 Nissan GT-R, calling it “a supercar time capsule.” Be sure to read that review here.

Orders for the 2025 Nissan GT-R are open now in the Japanese market. Expect to hear word on which of these updates will arrive for the North American model in the coming months.

***

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.