A new report out of Japan says that the Nissan Skyline is about to change forms and become — you guessed it — an electric SUV. The popular tuning platform has been a sedan since 1957 (years before Nissan) when it was still a Prince model. After the merger with Nissan coupe versions existed in every generation as well.
You might recall that back in 2021 a Nissan executive issued a strongly worded statement about the value and importance of the Skyline nameplate. However, according to Best Car magazine, the plan to continue the Skyline as a traditional sedan has been “frozen”. Instead, it will be reborn as an electric SUV starting in 2025.
The article says that the Skyline SUV will be based on the Nissan Ariya, and is expected to take the shape of a “coupe SUV” like the Infiniti QX55. It also says that Nissan will give it a 450ps dual-motor powertrain and rebadge it for sale int he US as an Infiniti.
It wouldn’t be the first time Nissan has built a Skyline crossover. In Japan, the Infiniti EX was sold as just that from 2009 to 2016. However, if the report turns out to be true it would be the first time Nissan has sold a Skyline crossover without selling a Skyline sedan alongside it.
Perhaps Nissan is taking a page from Toyota and its makeover of the Crown, or even the Ford and the Mustang Mach-E. The main difference, though, would be that Toyota and Ford still sell a traditional Crown sedan and Mustang coupe concurrently with their EV counterparts. This development would be a sad day for Japanese car enthusiasts, but perhaps we can hold out hope that this will be one of the times when Best Car is wrong.
Since the launch of the GTR, the hype has been about the GTR and not Skyline no matter how legendary that name is in Japan. Skylines were relegated to be a Sedan / SUV in Japan and were badged Infiniti’s. So I think its not the GTR that they are replacing but the former Skyline given that they have to go Electric in the near future. The GTR will have best of both worlds.
Paul Walker is spinning in his grave at this news … AAAAAAaaaarrrrrrggggghhhh!!!!
At least he was already used to spin in a Carrera GT… Honestly who cares about him ? If not for the GT, GTT and GT-R through the years, Skylines have always been beige and common sedans, not more extraordinary than a Cresta. Turning them into electric SUVs is just the beige and boring future for automobiles, no choice as this is what sells. Badge engineering into Infiniti is just the continuation of what’s been done since the early 2000s for the Skyline.
We’re continuing to reach further past the level of badge-engineering into the world of name-engineering and it’s getting out of hand. On the one side, I understand the idealized marketing concept: Sell the name to the older generation, sell the hardware to the younger. The real problem is that this is god-aweful lazy marketing. Instead of building a new identity for the model, we’re force-fed this inauthentic nostalgia, that to me, only damages the car, the name, and the company. This is a completely out-of-touch approach for any manufacturer and I keep hoping that the market rejects these nothingburgers.
we lost another
This was inevitable after the GT-R was made separate from the Skyline. I think Nissan is likely going to be very similar to Ford with exclusively SUVs and a Z. If we’re really unlucky Nissan will make a top-line trim of the Z called the GT-R so they could say they brought back the GT-R, figuring that there are enough idiots ok with it that turning their back on 50 years of heritage will be the money-making move.