![\"Nissan](\"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/embracing-impermanence-why-the-nissan-gt-rs-legacy-deserves-time-to-breathe.jpg\" "\\"Nissan")
<\/a><\/p>\nTime between generations of cars like the Nissan GT-R helped us appreciate them all the more<\/p>\n
The Japanese concept of wabi-sabi is difficult, or impossible if you ask some Japanese people, to precisely define. But I have Google and all the false confidence of a mediocre, middle-aged, Western white man, so here we go.<\/p>\n
Loosely, it\u2019s an aesthetic that values imperfection and transience. Andrew Juniper, a furniture maker and author of the book Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence, says \u201cit\u2019s an aesthetic that finds beauty in things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete\u201d.<\/p>\n
Tanehisa Otabe, professor at Tokyo University\u2019s Institute of Aesthetics, told the BBC in 2020 that \u201cwabi-sabi leaves something unfinished or incomplete for the play of imagination\u201d.<\/p>\n
It is, then, one of a number of Japanese\u00a0idioms that references an appreciation for or wistfulness towards impermanence. Not dissimilarly, the concept of mono no aware translates to \u201cthe pathos of things\u201d or \u201ca sensitivity to ephemera\u201d.<\/p>\n
This brings me to the current and soon to be not-current Nissan GT-R, the R35 generation<\/a>, which is about to end a fairly astonishing\u00a018-year production run. That\u2019s a timeline\u00a0which is anything but fleeting by automotive standards: cherry blossom, blooming\u00a0and dying quickly, it is not.<\/p>\n But in its more recent years, there can only have been an awareness of the R35\u2019s mortality. At the start of its life, we called it \u201cthe world\u2019s cleverest car\u201d and Japanese engineers told us it was comparable to a craftsperson-made Swiss watch.<\/p>\n But as time has gone on and its annual model-year revisions have slowed, its once-spectacular power outputs have been dwarfed and its N\u00fcrburgring lap times<\/a> eclipsed.<\/p>\n Already it\u2019s off sale in many markets, including the UK, where it no longer meets the latest safety or emissions regulations, and within months\u00a0it will go out of production entirely. There is\u00a0no imminent replacement.<\/p>\n And that, I get the impression, is fine by the Japanese. I could be wrong, of course. They could be more cross than a teacher after you\u2019ve knocked on the staffroom door at breaktime.\u00a0<\/p>\n But I don\u2019t think so. Two-thirds of Japanese identify as Buddhists and that doctrine says that all existence is \u201ctransient, evanescent, inconstant\u201d. There is an appreciation that\u00a0things come and go.<\/p>\n So while there\u2019s existential angst here that Jaguar doesn\u2019t currently build sports cars and the idea of Ford<\/a> without a Mustang<\/a> or Porsche<\/a> without a 911<\/a> is basically unthinkable, some time without a new GT-R should almost be expected. Appreciated.<\/p>\n Similarly, you could consider the Honda NSX<\/a>, which spent years out of production between generations and has been deliberately unusual in all its forms. Rotary-engined Mazdas<\/a> likewise.<\/p>\n Or even the Lexus LFA, which perhaps was a successor to the Toyota<\/a> 2000GT, spiritually if not literally. All came, all went. Will we see replacements? Probably. But who knows?<\/p>\n Nissan promises it will make a new GT-R<\/a>, it should be said. \u201cI want to have four or five cars at the top of our portfolio that are really brand-oriented, cars that really represent what Nissan is about and show what the heartbeat of Nissan is,\u201d incoming CEO Ivan Espinosa told us recently.<\/p>\n And there are practical reasons too for the absence of an immediate GT-R replacement: Nissan isn\u2019t actually run by people who treat managing a business like a seasonal hobby.<\/p>\n There are, or were, honchos there, Westerners typically, who found very clever budgetary ways to make sure the Z<\/a> made it into production as a direct, immediate replacement for the 370Z<\/a>\u00a0(by underneath being an awful lot like it).<\/p>\n If Nissan were to make a petrol replacement for the GT-R now, it could end up unable to sell\u00a0it in all the places it would like to \u2013 especially\u00a0if its life cycle approaches two decades again.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd these cars should go everywhere in the world,\u201d says Espinosa. Yet if it were electric,\u00a0 as previewed in 2023\u2019s Hyper Force concept, today\u2019s batteries would place limits on both how many laps of the Nordschleife it could do and how many people would buy one. Consumers,\u00a0as I understand it, are not beating down doors\u00a0to get hold of electric driver\u2019s cars.<\/p>\n What the new GT-R will become, then, is still to be decided. The current one is out of place,\u00a0out of time and about to be out of production. And that, we should appreciate, is fine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62356,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,291],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-featured","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Nissan](\"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/embracing-impermanence-why-the-nissan-gt-rs-legacy-deserves-time-to-breathe-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"2009](\"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/embracing-impermanence-why-the-nissan-gt-rs-legacy-deserves-time-to-breathe-2.jpg\")
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