I traveled up to Tokyo on October 23rd and met up with Jeff Ash of C-Red Tuning for the Tokyo Motor Show 2007. Jeff had organized some press passes so we got the royal treatment with plenty of handouts and CDs including an excellent, fact packed, picture loaded and video filled one on the new GTR.

Because of the amount of information collected and interesting new releases, not just supercars but also Japanese makers are finally entering back into the domestic market with common rail diesels of their own, I’m going to spread the show over several entries so come back from time to time to get the Auto Insider’s take on the new releases at TMS 2007.

Well of course I’m going to lead off with the star of the show. Yes we saw the unveiling by Carlos of what will be without doubt not just another Japanese icon to follow the previous GTRs but a supercar that will cause every other manufacturer to pause and take note. It is one of those cars that will show up on a timeline. Pre GTR, post GTR, a bit like the release of the 32GTR in 1989 but on a worldscale this time.

Nissan have issued a challenge. Their sales pitch is Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime referring to anyone can drive this car in any location at anytime. However I got the distinct impression from Carlos’ presentation that he was throwing down the gauntlet to other supercars – we’ll take on anyone, anywhere, anytime and judging by the performance more than likely thrash the pants off them. I doubt there is a more complete supercar with such dramatic performance at all let alone for around US$70,000. Couple that with Japanese reliability instead of the usual supercar “personality problems” and you have a formula hard to beat.

I saw on the news last night that Porsche tripled their profits this year to 4.2Bn euros. I suppose all the dorks paying through the nose for Cayennes contributed to that. But make hay while the sunshines because apart from Porsche diehards with more money than sense, the GTR is going to make a big dent in that once it is released in the US in June 2008 and other world markets by the end of 2008. It was rather poignant that the crowd around the Nissan stand was 20 deep to get a glimpse at the new GTR while over at the Porsche, Ferrari etc. stand you could have driven a semi trailer through it and nobody would have blinked. I have a photo somewhere. For further pics of the GTR I have uploaded some to the Gallery under the subname GTR.