Nissan president Ivan Espinosa has confirmed the next generation of the legendary Skyline sports sedan will be launched in December and will become an “icon of the renaissance” of the brand when it gets its first overhaul in 13 years.

Known and loved by Aussies thanks in large part to the R32 GT-R’s touring car heroics in the early 1990s, the upcoming model will be the 14th generation of the Skyline and will be Nissan’s first car to utilise AI in its production.

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Espinosa told Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper that the Skyline is a big part of the brand’s efforts to “change the narrative of the market” as it tries to come back from “many, many months of bad news and negative news cycles” due to the company’s sales struggles. 

“We have great nameplates like the long-awaited, all-new Skyline, which is coming as well and will be one of the icons of the renaissance of Nissan, of a comeback that we have been working on,” he said.

“It’s an icon of speed, it’s an icon of speed as a car, but it’s an icon of the speed of Nissan, because this car is the first that is running under the new accelerated development process.  It’s a car that is proof that our engineering capabilities are not only about making great cars, but also making them with speed. We will be having a launch event in December.”

Espinosa added that the next-generation Skyline will be “completely developed within the next 26 months” as it joins a list of other new products from the brand.

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Nissan has sped up its development cycle through the use of emerging technologies, with Espinosa previously explaining, “A big part of this is built on AI capabilities and the utilisation of new tools, more digital tools in the design phase, in the manufacturing phase.”

The brand announced a major restructure to return to profitability in 2025, pledging to trim average vehicle development timelines from 37 months to 30 months. It has been reported that the 55-month development process for the previous Skyline model has been cut to just 26 months.

Sold in Australia as the Infiniti Q50 (pictured, above) from 2014 to 2019, the outgoing Skyline has now been in production for 12 years. Its replacement has been rumoured to run the Nissan Z coupe’s twin-turbo V6.