Per­haps one of the most inter­est­ing rumors of the year has been MT’s rev­e­la­tions that high level Nis­san honcho’s are con­sid­er­ing pro­duc­ing a four door ver­sion of the Nis­san R35 GT-R.The car would appar­ently carry the orig­i­nal equip­ment on the stan­dard GT-​​R, the 480-​​HP V6 VR38DETT, FSG-​​style 6-​​speed auto clutch gear­box, and AWD. How­ever, con­sid­er­able revi­sions to the car body struc­ture in order to fit any decent seats in the rear would mean the car would be con­sid­er­ably more expen­sive, and of course, heav­ier than it’s already heavy brother.

What does this do to the GT-​​R name­sake? Does it dilute the sports coupe into another high pow­ered fam­ily car? It all depends on how much of a purist you are, and how good your knowl­edge of the GT-​​R is. The first GT-​​R — the 1969 PGC10 (later the KPGC10 coupe) Sky­line GT-​​R (known as the “Hako­suka”) — was orig­i­nally a four door car, not to men­tion the Autech and Nismo lim­ited edi­tion 4 door R33 Sky­line GT-R’s of the 90’s.

That said, the GT-​​R is so named to dis­tance itself from the old Sky­line moniker. As Nissan’s pre­mier flag­ship model, per­haps the 4door is bet­ter suited to Nissan’s pre­mium Infiniti brand.

Bring on the Infiniti M38TT. Yeah, we just made that up.

[Source: Motortrend]

Rumors have been fly­ing about a new per­for­mance ori­ented Toy­ota sports car hit­ting the per­for­mance scene for a con­sid­er­able time now, from an AE86 revival to a new Supra, but per­haps no one expected news that these shad­owy rumors would coa­lesce into the for­got­ten Cel­ica GT-​​4.

The last model Cel­ica. Will we see styling cues from this?

But per­haps even more sur­pris­ing is the rumor that the car will be engi­neered to a large degree by Sub­aru. In Novem­ber Toy­ota con­firmed rumours of a new sports car and Cel­ica replace­ment, with the sports car being a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Sub­aru and Toy­ota, and now it seems the car is the per­for­mance model of the Cel­ica line. How­ever, the new car will not come with a Toy­ota bred turbo four in the tra­di­tion of the (some­what) under­pow­ered motor of the old model — instead it’s going to be car­ry­ing a Sub­aru Boxer turbo, most recently seen in the all grown up Sub­aru Impreza WRX STi.

The new model is said to come in two dis­tinct per­for­mance vari­ants. First, the base ‘GT’, pack­ing a front engined, RWD dri­ve­train and nat­u­rally aspi­rated 2.0L 4 cylin­der Boxer (most likely from the Impreza RX), designed to slide in under the $20,000 bracket. Sec­ondly the full fat GT-​​4, which car­ries the new JDM STi’s 224KW (300HP) Boxer turbo and AWD sys­tem stan­dard, with Motor Trend claim­ing the engine will be closer to the cars fire­wall in order to facil­i­tate the instal­la­tion of in-​​wheel elec­tric motors to help with traction.

The GT and GT-​​4 will be built in in coupe and three-​​door hatch vari­ants, but no five door vari­ants because of Toy­ota and Sub­aru not want­ing to com­pete in the Impreza’s arena, which is rather tongue in cheek con­sid­er­ing this new car will inevitably be seen as either a Impreza in Toy­ota cloth­ing, or as direct com­pe­ti­tion by tuners. This begs the ques­tion then; will the new GT-​​4 be a real con­tender in the hotly con­tested price for per­for­mance bracket? Will the Toy­ota be lighter, faster, and more capa­ble than the new STi? Would Sub­aru shoot them­selves in the foot, and does it mat­ter con­sid­er­ing Toyota’s widen­ing stake in Sub­aru?

Does this mean Sub­aru will become more and more the per­for­mance arm of Toy­ota? Time will tell, but we cer­tainly hope not.

Accord­ing to Left­Lane and the Acura TSX Com­mu­nity, there’s some spec­u­la­tion as to wether Acura is going to offer the TSX in a Type-​​S guise.

Known as the Honda Accord in other mar­kets, the TSX is a highly pol­ished, front-​​wheel-​​driven, mid-​​size sedan pow­ered by an i-​​VTEC 2.4L DOHC 4cylinder motor. The new 2009 model is expected to develop between 220-​​230HP, but rumours are abound of a new TSX Type-​​S pro­duc­ing any­where from 260HP from a tur­bocharged i-​​VTEC motor. Cou­pled with Honda’s SH-​​AWD (Super Han­dling All Wheel Drive) and the pos­si­bil­ity of a DSG gear­box or 6 speed, this could be a seri­ous bit of kit.

We’re tak­ing this with a grain of salt. The Acura/Honda’s i-​​VTEC 4cyl is a con­sid­er­ably advanced peice of motor, and is known for tech­ni­cal wiz­ardry in terms of it’s man­age­ment sys­tem. Honda hasn’t pro­duced a tur­bocharged car in quite some time, at least one with a wide adop­tion rate, let alone on a main­stream, pop­u­lar model.

Cou­pled with V-​​TEC tech­nol­ogy, a tur­bocharged motor may be a steep chal­lenge to Honda — but we wouldn’t dis­miss them on this alone. After all, Honda have sur­prised us before with fan­tas­tic tech­ni­cal achieve­ments. We also hope Honda/​Acura con­sid­ers a turbo-​​diesel vari­ant of the 2009 TSX as well to round out a solid model lineup.

We haven’t heard any­thing on the tech­ni­cal side of this rumor from Japan, but we’re watch­ing with inter­est. Fin­gers crossed, we’ll see a boosted Type S in 2009.

[Sources: Left­Lane, Acura TSX Com­mu­nity]
[Cred­its: Thanks for the tip, Kris!]