When Nissan released the R32 Nissan Skyline in 1989, they built a machine engineered exclusively to conquer international Group A touring car racing. Little did they know that what they were releasing to the world would be the beginning of a racing and cultural phenomenon.
You may not know this but even though it was a Japanese car, the famous moniker, Godzilla, was born thousands of miles away in Australia.
The backstory, quick and fast, is that in the 90s the Australian Touring Car Championship was dominated by the V8 Commodore and Sierra RS500. This would all change when in 1989, Nissan Australia would enter the R32 into the race.
At this time a well known publication, Wheels Magazine (do you even remember what a magazine is?), dubbed the car “Godzilla: The Monster from Japan”. It was said that the writer came up with this name because people in Japan referred to the R32 as an obakermono (“monster” / “shapeshifter”) so they adapted that vision to Japan’s most famous pop-culture monster, Godzilla.
The name stuck and while many people through to today refer to most variants of the Skyline GT-R as Godzilla, it all started with the venerable R32.