Nissan Skyline PGC10 2000GT-R 

The S20: a race engine with numberplates

Under the bonnet sits the S20, a 2.0-litre twin-cam straight-six with four valves per cylinder and three side-draught Solex carburettors, good for about 160 horses at a screaming 7,000rpm. That was extraordinary for a road car in 1969. It was a lightly detuned version of the engine from the Prince R380 works racer, so the very first GT-R quite literally dropped a race motor into a family sedan. Do not go looking for an RB in here: the RB26 the R32 made famous was still two decades away, and this little twin-cam owes nothing to it.

The win that started a legend

The GT-R took its first race victory on the 3rd of May 1969, and then it simply kept winning. Over the next couple of years the Skyline GT-R piled up around fifty touring-car wins, including a celebrated run of forty-nine straight, and that dominance is the whole reason the badge carries the weight it does. The four-door did the early heavy lifting on the track before the lighter coupe took over the job.

What it is today

Only around 832 PGC10 sedans were built, which makes the four-door the rarest way into the original GT-R and a blue-chip collector car now. Values sit alongside the other founding Japanese classics, and a genuine, matching-numbers car with real history is worth chasing hard, because plenty of “GT-Rs” from this era are tribute cars built on ordinary Skyline shells. If you are looking at a real one, you are looking at the beginning of everything. The build data and the cars we have logged are below.