And it’s essentially a rebadged Infinity Q50. For years in Japan, the Skyline has been a badge-engineered Infiniti. The previous Nissan Skyline still had the Infiniti badges left on, for some reason.
There are some other differences beyond the badges. It has new quad-ring taillights like on the older Skyline’s, which is a nice touch. The front-end has been restyled to resemble the GTR and includes the V shape on the grille.
Also included in the grille is the sensor for ProPilot Assist, Nissan’s semi-autonomous driving technology. Nissan says that you can set a destination on the navigation system, and it’ll assist the driver on the roads included on the predefined route. When you’re in a single lane, it allows you to take your hands off the wheel, but it monitors you to make sure you’re paying attention. After all, these semi-autonomous systems are best thought of as adaptive cruise control combined with lane keep assist and a few extra functions- they can’t safely drive themselves. When the car approaches a road divide, or a slower moving vehicle, it makes noises to prompt the driver to put their hands back on the wheel and deal with these things. If the driver doesn’t respond, the car will put on the hazard lights and stop, and send an SOS call.
The new Skyline has the same powertrains as the Q50- its available with either the VQ35HR V6 engine in the hybrid version, or with the VR30DDTT V6, which has 400 hp and 350 lb ft in the range-topping 400R. It also comes with Direct Active Steering, the widely-loathed steer-by-wire system found in the Q50.
It seems unusual to base the new Skyline on the Infiniti Q50, which was launched in 2014, and is due a replacement soon. It means that this new Skyline will either have a short production run, or will be outdated for most of its time on sale. Nissan is reportedly launching 20 cars over the next few years, so hopefully it’ll be the former.
And somewhere in those 20 cars, there will hopefully be a small sports car to rival the Subaru BRZ.
