Nissan GT-R 2014 is a supercar

Nissan split its 2014 GT-R into three distinct machines built on one platform: a genuinely comfortable Premium trim, a styling-focused Black Edition, and a 150-unit Track Edition with the back seats deleted entirely. All three shared a hand-built 3.8-liter twin-turbo V6 officially rated at 545 horsepower — though real-world estimates run considerably higher. With a base price near $100,000 and a claimed 2.7-second 0-62 time, the GT-R undercut plenty of pricier rivals. Read on for how the numbers broke down trim by trim.

Nissan built exactly 150 copies of one version for the entire United States market in 2014, stripped the back seats out entirely, and still expected buyers to pay nearly six figures for the privilege of owning it. That’s an unusual sales pitch for a car that could also, in a different trim, comfortably seat a family of four and deliver real-world fuel economy that wouldn’t embarrass a mainstream sedan. The GT-R’s 2014 lineup pulled off that split personality by offering three genuinely different versions of the same platform, and the numbers underneath all three explain exactly why enthusiasts still argue about which one is the “real” GT-R.

Three Trims, Three Different Missions

Nissan split the 2014 GT-R lineup into three distinct personalities built on the same basic platform. The entry-level Premium trim came generously equipped and comfortable enough for genuine daily use, seating four adults without much complaint. The Black Edition leaned harder into aggressive styling and track-ready hardware while staying road-friendly. The Track Edition sat at the sharp end of the range: a stripped-down, rear-seat-delete version with a firmer sport-tuned suspension and cooling ducts feeding the slotted brake rotors, limited to just 150 units sold in the United States for the model year. All three shared the same electronically managed all-wheel-drive foundation, but Nissan clearly built each one with a different owner in mind.

⚑ Featured Gear

Start Car Conversations →

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

A Cockpit Built Around the Driver, Not the Passenger

Every GT-R in the 2014 lineup came loaded with electronic feedback most cars in this price range didn’t offer. A touchscreen readout displayed power distribution to each individual wheel, suspension movement, and body roll in real time, giving the driver a genuine sense of what the chassis was doing underneath them. The Premium trim added 20-inch alloy wheels wrapped in high-performance rubber, an electronically adjustable three-mode damper suspension, and Brembo-controlled braking, alongside a multi-function monitor capable of tracking g-force through corners, steering input, gear selection, and lap times. More mundane conveniences came standard too — navigation, 9.4 gigabytes of onboard audio storage, and real-time weather and traffic data, all wrapped around an eleven-speaker Bose sound system with a CD and USB port.

The Black Edition’s All-In Aesthetic

The Black Edition earned its name honestly, wrapping the exterior in black accented by a carbon-fiber rear spoiler and lightweight wheels mounted with run-flat Dunlop tires. Buyers who wanted a change of pace could option a “super silver” paint finish instead, hand-polished under three clear-coat layers, along with a cold-weather package aimed at northern climates. Inside, the cabin went the opposite direction from the exterior’s monochrome theme: red leather-covered Recaro seats with black highlighting gave the interior a genuinely distinctive look compared to the more conservative Premium trim, making the Black Edition as much a styling statement as a performance one. It’s the kind of interior/exterior contrast that either reads as bold or gratuitous depending entirely on taste — Nissan clearly wasn’t trying to please everyone with it.

The Track Edition Strips It Back

Where the Black Edition added flourishes, the Track Edition subtracted them. Nissan pulled the rear seats out entirely and dropped curb weight below the roughly 3,800-pound figure carried by its two siblings, then fitted a firmer sport-tuned suspension built for lap times rather than comfort. With only 150 examples allocated to the US market for the year, it was never going to be a common sight, and that scarcity, combined with its focused mission, has made it the version enthusiasts tend to point to when arguing about which GT-R trim best represents the car’s original engineering intent.

What’s Actually Under the Hood

Every 2014 GT-R shared the same 3.8-liter twin-turbo V6, hand-assembled under tightly controlled conditions with exacting machining tolerances for each unit produced. Officially, Nissan rated the engine at 545 horsepower, though independent estimates over the years have placed real-world output anywhere from roughly 530 to as high as 700 horsepower depending on tuning and testing conditions — a spread that says as much about how conservatively Nissan rated the factory figure as it does about the engine’s actual ceiling. That gap between claimed and real-world output became a recurring topic among owners and independent dyno operators throughout the car’s production run, few of whom ever fully agreed on a single number. Power reached all four wheels through a crisp-shifting six-speed dual-clutch automatic, a transmission that could feel abrupt in stop-and-go traffic but rewarded the driver everywhere else.

The Numbers That Matter Most

On paper, the 2014 GT-R claimed a 0-62 mph time of 2.7 seconds and a top speed of 200 mph, figures that put it in direct competition with cars carrying substantially higher price tags. Fuel economy came in at 16 mpg city and 23 mpg highway — not remarkable numbers on their own, but genuinely impressive for a car capable of the kind of straight-line and cornering performance the GT-R delivered. Nissan engineered the whole package so that the electronic systems maintained optimal handling characteristics across nearly any driving situation, rather than requiring the driver to manually manage traction and stability the way older performance cars demanded.

A Six-Figure Bargain, Relatively Speaking

With a base price sitting right around $100,000, the 2014 GT-R undercut plenty of European rivals offering similar performance figures, and Nissan wasn’t finished — a more powerful version was already slated for release later in the same year. That combination of everyday usability in the Premium trim, aggressive styling in the Black Edition, and stripped-down focus in the Track Edition gave the GT-R a genuinely broad appeal across very different kinds of buyers, all while keeping the core mechanical package — that hand-built twin-turbo V6 and all-wheel-drive system — consistent across every version sold that year.

A Racing Pedigree Older Than the R35

Share your take on which 2014 GT-R trim got the formula right in the comments below.

The GT-R nameplate carries racing credibility stretching back decades before the R35 generation reviewed here, tracing to the Skyline GT-R models that dominated Japanese touring car racing throughout the 1990s and earned the nickname ‘Godzilla’ for how thoroughly they beat European and American competition. Nissan’s Nismo racing division, already teasing an even more powerful road-going variant for later in 2014, has continually used motorsport development to push street car technology, and the 2014 lineup’s electronic torque-vectoring all-wheel-drive system owes a direct debt to lessons learned on circuits like the Nurburgring, where GT-R development mules have repeatedly set benchmark lap times for production cars.

Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Republished by Blog Post Promoter