The Nissan Skyline GT-R is one of those ‘90s tuner cars that doesn’t really exist in stock form anymore. And if they do, they’re usually really hard to find and expensive. One guy in Australia chanced upon a stock one in pristine condition recently, and it just might be one of the last ones out there like that.
Steve Wood, who lives in the suburbs of Melbourne, is currently in the process of buying this R33 GT-R that has no modifications on it whatsoever. The listing reports that the car has about 6,000 miles on the clock with a five-speed manual. It has a price of $70,000 AUD, or approximately $50,000 American. It’ll also cost about $5,000 AUD ($3,537) to get it back on the road again.
Wood, who reached out to Jalopnik via email to boast of this rare conquest, said that R33 GT-Rs themselves aren’t particularly rare around where he lives—the Skyline has been a wildly popular import in Australia for decades—but ones in pristine condition such as this one sure are. Most people, when they get their hands on a Skyline, will modify it one way or another. They’ll add an aftermarket exhaust or some aftermarket aero. This car, supposedly, dodged all of that.
It was dyno’d and found to produce a maximum horsepower output of 177 kW, which is about 237 HP at the wheels. Factor in drivetrain loss and you can figure that it makes about 320 HP at the crank.
That’s not surprising, even though the R33 would have been produced during the time of the “gentleman’s agreement,” where all Japanese automakers would limit their advertised horsepower to 276 on domestic vehicles. But as soon as you dyno’d the higher-performance cars, you’d see that they actually made more than 276 HP. Doug DeMuro, who once had an R32 Skyline GT-R, dyno’d his and found that it made 281 HP at the crank.
There are also differences in dynos to contend with, but for the purposes of Wood’s soon-to-be car, it looks as though its performance hasn’t been modified at all. Funny enough, this isn’t Wood’s first brush with that particular silver R33 Skyline, either.
“This car first caught my attention two years ago when it popped up on the Skylines Australia forum,” he wrote. “The poster claimed that it had been imported by his father in 1999 (two years after the car was produced). This in itself was enough to make me pay attention.”
Wood didn’t have the funds to buy the car in 2016. He made a few comments about what he thought it would be worth and forgot about it. The car disappeared and he assumed that someone else had bought it or it had gone back into storage.
Fast-forward two years and Wood was looking for a cheap R34. The cars at his price point were all garbage: Crashed, terribly treated or repainted. And then, unbelievably, the silver R33 showed up for sale again. Wood immediately contacted the seller to find out more about it.
He learned that the car had been fixed at a local GT-R shop called RacePace Motorsport that he already had a relationship with. RacePace confirmed that the car truly appeared un-modded and was in good condition.
Wood then called V-Spec Performance in Melbourne, which had completed a pre-purchase inspection on the R33 when it was sold from Melbourne to Sydney. V-Spec Performance also told him that when they saw the car, it was in nearly mint-condition.
The seller also had the R33 inspected at a well-known tuner in Sydney, Croydon Racing Developments. “The line from all of the people I spoke to,” Wood continued, “was that they had not seen a GTR in this kind of condition in 10 years, and weren’t expecting to see another anytime soon.”
Besides some minor touch-ups on the body and paint to remove some scratches from a car cover, the car seems to be in perfect condition. It even has the original factory tires on the original wheels. It seems legitimate. “This is rare to impossible,” Wood said.
He finds the R33 to be a bit of a time capsule. Not only does it have extremely low miles, but the interior is also in incredible shape. Getting into and driving it would be like sliding back into 1997.
About a year ago, Jalopnik went to check out a 1997 Nissan 240SX with only 676 miles on the clock. It, too, was in perfect condition, its interior holding onto that perfect, ‘90s upholstery smell. It was like returning some lost time where everyone sported mood rings and you couldn’t escape that one Celine Dion song from Titanic.
If Wood does indeed go home with this car—which it seems like he will—he’ll surely be the star of any ‘90s-era car show. I think it might be time to bring Radwood to the Land Down Under.