Nissan confirms Nismo GT-R

Tellingly, there is no word yet on performance gains or power gains or aerodynamic gains. Not even a whiff about different coloured stitching on the leather or a new electronic nanny that makes you tea while cornering at 100mph.

But, Nissan has confirmed that its most bonkers and most powerful and most iconic model – the GT-R – will be handed over to the ladies and gentlemen at Nismo to create a halo car for the performance range.

So yes, the mutterings in your head at this moment are entirely correct: Nissan is asking some other people at Nissan to make its most-powerful model, the GT-R, erm, the most-powerful GT-R.

See pics of the standard Nissan GT-R

Well, we assume so anyway. They’ve left the guessing game wide open, saying only that the Nismo GT-R which is currently in development as we speak, will have it’s overall performance “dramatically increased, high speed stability improved and ride quality vastly more refined”. God help us all.

It’s an announcement that caps a Big Day for Nissan: today, in Yokohama, Japan, the company officially opened its new global HQ, thus making the tuners a very integral part of the company, while it also announced plans to re-enter Le Mans in 2014, returning as the special 'Garage 56' entrant (ahead of a potential LMP1 entry in the future).

Carlos Ghosn, Nissan CEO, said: “It would be unthinkable for us to develop a range of Nismo road cars without including the GT-R. The GT-R Nismo will be special and I can’t wait to drive it.”

Neither can we, actually. Because the standard car marries intermittent feelings of intense terror with supernatural speed. And then some more terror. The standard GT-R currently gets a 3.8-litre twin-turbo V6 producing 545bhp and 465lb ft of torque, which helps it go from 0-62mph (once you’ve stopped screaming) in three seconds dead, and on to a top speed of 196mph.

We’ve already seen the Juke Nismo and the 370Z Nismo, but what on earth can Nissan’s engineers do to the GT-R to make it “special”? Strap a rocket on the back and a pre-recorded message of good luck to whoever buys one?

Let us know what your ultimate GT-R will look like below, dot.commers, because we won’t see this Nismo version until next year.

James is a big convert to the GT-R: look what happened when he had a play with the launch control during the filming for series 18...