Off the top of my head, I can only think of two vehicles named after people associated with them with certainty: the Mark Donohue-edition AMC Javelin and the Nissan Skyline Paul Newman edition. (There might have been a Rod Hall Dodge truck or a Ivan “Ironman” Stewart Toyota, but right now I’m not certain.) How badass do you have to be to get your name on the car as an exclusive model? In Newman’s case, he was a Datsun/Nissan guy through and through, campaigning in Datsun 510s and Nissan Z-cars in SCCA races. Nissan picked him up as a spokesman, seeing potential in selling Skylines to Japanese via an American racer. There was precedence…the kenmeri Skyline benefitted from a television campaign that showed Ken, a young Japanese man and Mary, a young, seemingly American woman who appeared to be traveling around Japan, enjoying the sights and scenery in a blue 2000GTX coupe. With Newman winning races and his Hollywood good looks helping out, Nissan executives knew they had a hit on their hands.

But what about the car itself? The Skyline range has a bit of legend to it here in the States thanks to it’s forbidden apple appeal and the Gran Turismo tutelage, but just like American cars, there was a period where Skylines weren’t as wicked as initially thought. The GT-R badge had gone silent in 1973 due mostly to the oil crisis and it would stay gone until the 1989 R32 monster. Between 1983 and 1985, the Newman edition was based on the R30 chassis and was a low-production run each year (supposedly something to the tune of 5,000 examples per year). Powered by a 140 horsepower L20ET turbocharged inline-six making 140 horsepower, the Skyline features some typical Japanese techno trickery, including electrically-adjustable Tokico dampers. It’s no mind-bender like an R32/R33/R34, but it’s neat all the same.

Now, the question: is it worthy? The car’s been in the country for a little bit (at least a couple of years, since it did appear on Bring A Trailer in 2017) but other than the wheels, changed from stock items to whatever those cool looking mags are, it appears to have been spared from radical hackery. The RHD deal isn’t too bad (when I visited Roadtrip Motorcars a couple of years back, it came like second nature to me while driving their cars around)  and I’d be willing to bet it’d be like wheeling around a similar-year Nissan Z-car. The dash looks plucked out of one, for sure.

See this 1985 Nissan Skyline (R30) Paul Newman edition at Duncan Imports and Classics by clicking here!