Italdesign creates the ultra-limited Nissan GT-R50 prototype vehicle

 

Nissan and Italdesign have created a new prototype vehicle – the Nissan GT-R50 by Italdesign – in their first-ever collaboration. Based on a production 2018 Nissan GT-R NISMO model, the unique car commemorates the50th anniversaries of both the GT-R and Italdesign and will make its debut in Europe next month.

“How often do you get to ask, ‘What if we created a GT-R without limits,’ and then actually get to build it?” said Alfonso Albaisa, Nissan’s senior vice president for global design. “This is a rare window in time when two bigmoments intersect: 50 years of Italdesign shaping the automotive world and 50 years of Nissan generating excitement through our iconic GT-R. So to celebrate this convergence, Nissan and Italdesign created this custom GT-R to mark 50 years of engineering leadership.”

Italdesign developed, engineered and built the car. The distinctive, crisp exterior and interior designs were created by the teams at Nissan Design Europe in London and Nissan Design America.

Over thirty prototypes and production models have marked the history of Italdesign and, in many cases, also that of mobility.

In May 2010, the Volkswagen Group acquired 90.1% of Italdesign from the Giugiaro family, to then increase itsinterest in the company to 100% in July 2015. Together with Audi, Lamborghini and Ducati (acquired in 2012),Italdesign formed the luxury hub within the Group. After a number of years in which Italdesign worked nearlyexclusively with the Group’s brands, in 2016 it went back to operating on the open market. 2017 saw thecreation of the Italdesign Automobili Speciali brand dedicated to the production of exclusive cars in ultra-limitedproduction. The first of these, the Zerouno, was a carbon-fiber coupé approved for the road but with supercarperformance. The five Zerouno models produced were sold in just a few months.

In the same year, Italdesign presented what can be considered a revolution for future mobility. Developed in collaboration with Airbus, Pop.Up envisaged sustainable and shared mobility for the large cities of 2030: a modular system managed by an app that combines a capsule, a terrestrial module and an aerial module thus moving mass mobility from roads to the city sky to reduce road congestion in the megalopolis of the future.