Nissan never offered an open-top version of any second-generation Skyline GT-R — no R32, R33 or R34 ever left the factory without a roof. That did not stop Autech Shirakawa, a custom shop in Fukushima Prefecture, from building a roofless BNR32. Motor Fan's web option team has now revisited the car with an in-depth feature on how the conversion was engineered.
One thing to clear up before the name causes confusion: nothing in the coverage links this shop to Autech Japan, the Nissan affiliate behind factory specials like the Stagea 260RS, which merged with NISMO in April 2022 to form Nissan Motorsports & Customizing. Motor Fan's coverage does not indicate any connection between the Fukushima shop and Nissan's AUTECH operation — the overlap appears to be in name only.
How you cut the roof off a GT-R
The engineering problem with removing the roof from a unibody coupe is that the roof is structure: cut it away carelessly and the shell loses much of its rigidity. According to Motor Fan, the shop dealt with this by building a network of fixed jigs through the cabin to hold the body in shape before cutting, then adding its own reinforcement bars after the roof came off. The reinforcements were designed with circuit driving in mind, the feature reports — though no torsional-rigidity figures or independent track testing are provided.
The interior was retrimmed in weather-resistant PVC, the honest concession an open car with no factory top engineering has to make. Earlier Motor Fan coverage of the same build noted 19-inch TE37s and air suspension.
The shop's representative summed up the logic in one line: roof cuts are routine in the custom world — "so there's no reason we couldn't do it." What makes people stare is not the technique. It is the donor. R32 GT-R values have spent a decade climbing, and cutting the roof off one is the kind of decision that gets argued about on the internet in several languages simultaneously.
A build that resurfaced for a reason
This is not a fresh project. Motor Fan first showed the car in an earlier feature, framed around the shop's own admission that it had done the conversion "to the one car you're least supposed to do it to." The new article revisits the same machine and adds detail about the fabrication behind the roofless conversion — the jig work and reinforcement that separate a considered build from a car show dare.
For readers outside Japan, it is also a small window into how Japanese custom culture treats even its crown jewels. The R32 GT-R is a hero car in Japan, not a museum piece — and in the hands of a shop with sufficient conviction, it is still raw material. Whatever enthusiasts make of the result, it remains one of the more radical reinterpretations of an R32 GT-R yet published.