In the mid 1990s, if you wanted to understand what Nissan could actually do when freed from the constraints of a production budget and a sales target, the answer was the Nismo 400R. Not the R32, the car that earned the "Godzilla" nickname winning Australian touring car races. Not the R34, which became the poster car of a generation through Gran Turismo and Fast and Furious. The 400R. The one almost nobody outside Japan knew existed. The one built in such small numbers that its rarity was not a marketing decision but simply a consequence of time running out.
Broad Arrow Auctions, the house owned by classic car publisher and insurer Hagerty, has a 1996 example entered in its Amelia Island sale with a pre-sale estimate of $900,000 to $1.1 million. This is the eighth car built, with 10,136 miles on the odometer, imported to Canada in July 2023 and subsequently to the United States. It is almost certainly one of only a handful of 400Rs outside Japan.
What Nismo Actually Built
The 400R began, as all significant Skylines do, with a question about how much further the RB26DETT engine could be pushed. In this case Nismo handed that question to REINIK, the motorsport engine division of Nissan Kohki, the company's in-house drivetrain department. REINIK had previous form: they were responsible for the engines in the Calsonic R32 GT-Rs that dominated Group A racing across Japan and Australia, and for the powerplants Nissan used in its 1995 and 1996 Le Mans campaigns.
What REINIK produced for the 400R was the RBX GT2, a bored and stroked version of the RB26 taken out to 2,771cc by widening the bore from 86mm to 87mm and extending the stroke from 73.7mm to 77.7mm. The block was reinforced to handle the extra displacement. Forged pistons, upgraded connecting rods, a stronger crankshaft, polished ports, high lift camshafts, a revised engine management system, and a pair of N1 spec turbochargers completed the rebuild. Nismo then fitted a larger intercooler, a titanium exhaust from the catalytic converters back, and a twin plate clutch matched to a carbon fibre propeller shaft.
The result was 395bhp at 6,800rpm and 347lb-ft at 4,400rpm, delivered through a character quite different from the standard RB26DETT. The throttle response was cleaner even before the turbos fully engaged, and from around 3,500rpm to over 8,000rpm it accelerated through each gear with what evo magazine described as "a delicious roar overlaid with the hissing of the big cold-air intake system and the whistle and chirrups of the turbocharger plumbing."
Zero to 60mph took four seconds flat. Top speed was over 186mph. In 1996, those were supercar numbers on a Japanese domestic car that wore a Nissan badge and carried a Skyline body.
The rest of the car received the same treatment. The R33's already capable chassis was stiffened with titanium strut braces and reinforced bushings. Bilstein dampers were fitted alongside Nismo Type D springs, dropping ride height 30mm compared to the standard car. The track was widened by 50mm, accommodated by carbon fibre over-fenders. The front bumper was resculpted with additional cooling channels. The bonnet, rear spoiler, and driveshaft were all carbon fibre. The three-piece Nismo LM GT1 wheels measured 18 by 10 inches and were wrapped in 275 section rubber.
Every body panel and aerodynamic component specific to the 400R was exclusive to it and never sold separately, making a genuine 400R essentially impossible to replicate from parts. As Brian Jannusch of Toprank Importers noted in a 2021 Hagerty feature, the over-fenders, front bumper, double-wing rear spoiler, and LM carbon fibre hood exist nowhere else.
Each car was individually dyno tested and road tested at Nismo's Omori factory in Tokyo before handover. The engineers doing that testing were some of the same people who had built the Group A championship engines.
Why Only 44 Exist
Nissan originally planned to produce 100 examples. That target was never met. As production of the R33 generation came to an end in 1998, the program was cut short, leaving just 44 completed cars. Unlike modern limited editions engineered for marketing impact, the 400R was built in extremely small numbers because of timing and cost, not artificial scarcity.
Of the 44 cars confirmed by the GTR Registry, which lists 41 known examples, all were sold new in Japan as right-hand-drive domestic market cars. They cost approximately 12 million yen at the time, roughly three times the price of a standard R33 GT-R. At that price, with that level of engineering, for a production run that short, the 400R was always going to age differently from every other Skyline.
The Road to Seven Figures
The price trajectory of serious Japanese domestic market performance cars over the past decade has been one of the more dramatic stories in the collector car world. The R34 GT-R has traded at over $1 million at major auctions. An example described as the last Nismo 400R was listed by UK dealer Harlow Jap Autos for $2.2 million, though that figure likely reflects the significance of being the final car produced. The broader market for 1990s Japanese performance cars, the R34, the Toyota Supra Mk IV, the Mazda RX-7, has been reshaped by a generation of buyers whose emotional connection to these cars was formed through racing games and circuit posters in adolescent bedrooms, and who now have the financial capacity to act on that connection.
The Nismo 400R stands above most of its peers due to its factory-built status and extreme rarity. Collectors place increasing emphasis on authenticity, and a car built and engineered by Nismo itself carries a level of legitimacy that aftermarket-modified vehicles cannot replicate. You can build a 400R replica. Plenty of people have. But the parts specific to the genuine article exist on exactly 44 cars. That number is only going down.
The Amelia Island car is the eighth built and represents one of the rare opportunities to acquire a 400R outside Japan at a public auction with documented chain of title. Whether it reaches $1.1 million will tell the market something useful about where the ceiling currently sits. Whether it exceeds it will tell the market something more interesting still.
Like this? Get more MotorBuzz delivered to your browser. Click here to add MotorBuzz as a preferred news source on Google.
Most of the world only ever encountered the 400R in Gran Turismo, which is a reasonable approximation of how most people will continue to experience it. The forty-four that exist will continue moving between the hands of the few people who can find them and afford them, getting more expensive each time.
The car was never built to chase headlines. It was built because a group of Nismo engineers wanted to know what happened if you took an R33 and replaced everything they were not satisfied with.
Forty four cars later, the answer is apparently worth a million dollars.