There are three main reasons that automakers craft special editions: to celebrate a new launch, to boost a model’s flagging sales, or to garner some PR for an older vehicle. We’ll let you figure out which of these apply to the five-year-old Nissan GT-R, 624 of which have been sold this year. A limited-production version of the Nissan supercar was already announced for 2014—that’d be the Track Edition—but now buyers will have the option of a second such model, in the form of the factory-customized (and imaginatively named) 2014 Nissan GT-R Special Edition.
If there can be an elegant purple paint, this GT-R wears it. The color is called Midnight Opal, and it straddles the line between deep blue and eggplant. Nissan claims that the hand-applied finish changes color based on light and angle, but in a totally classy way. The SE is one step up from the base GT-R Premium, and is kitted out with specially finished Rays wheels and a carbon-fiber rear spoiler similar to the one fitted to Track and Black Edition GT-Rs. Owners can flash a serial-numbered gold plaque as a certificate of authenticity at track days. (Or at their climate-controlled, carefully dusted private collections. Either way.)
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No changes are made to the GT-R’s formidable 3.8-liter twin-turbo V-6, which has received constant tweaking since launch and now makes 545 horsepower and 463 lb-ft. (The original 2009 model made do with 480 hp and 430 lb-ft.) Unlike the GT-R Track, which sacrificed its second row on the altar of weight saving, the SE keeps the vestigial rear seats; in any event, both special models are equally well-suited to accommodating four real people.
The SE adds $6000 to the GT-R’s bottom line, coming in at $106,590. Put another way, the cost increase roughly equals one soon-to-be-launched Datsun Go. Just 100 Special Editions will be assembled for worldwide consumption, and half of them will come here. So if you want your Godzilla to be purple, we suggest you get to steppin’ to your local dealer.
Source: CarAndDriver
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