Is Nissan’s GT-R the next supercar slated for a hybrid powertrain transplant?

By Stephen Edelstein Published September 30, 2013

Image used with permission by copyright holder

From the Ferrari LaFerrari to the McLaren P1, supercars are going green. Could the Nissan GT-R be next?

A future GT-R could get a power boost from a flywheel hybrid system developed by the Williams Formula One team, Australia’s Car Sales reports.

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The current GT-R sports a twin-turbocharged 3.8-liter V6, with 540 horsepower and 463 pound-feet of torque. It can do 0-60 mph in 2.8 seconds and reach a top speed of 190 mph. With a starting price of $99,950, that makes the GT-R one of the biggest bargains in automobiledom; the competition costs significantly more and wears badges with prancing horses.

Thanks to its all-wheel drive system, the GT-R is also ideal for setting speed records on a frozen Russian lake. So where will Nissan go from there?

Williams and Nismo, Nissan’s performance and racing division, announced a partnership in June. You may remember Williams’ last road car project, the aborted 850 hp Jaguar C-X75 hybrid.

A hybrid GT-R wouldn’t be too surprising, given that many of the car’s competitors are going the same way.

The Acura NSX will return next year as a hybrid, and if Nissan wants to retake its Nurburgring lap record from the Porsche 918 Spyder, it may have to significantly boost the GT-R’s power output. Hybrid power would be one way to do that.

So this story has many plausible elements, but so do the best conspiracy theories and tall tales. What we know for sure is that the GT-R is due for a redesign – probably for the 2016 model year – and major changes of some kind can be expected.

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Stephen Edelstein

Contributing Editor

Stephen is a freelance automotive journalist covering all things cars. He likes anything with four wheels, from classic cars…

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