Nissan Crossing

The first ‘car’ specific place we hit up in Japan was Nissan Crossing, it is located in Ginza, a swanky area of Tokyo with loads of high end department stores and retail outlets. It is not a dealership as such, you can’t buy cars here but it is more of a educational tool, it lets Nissan show off some some new concept cars, as well as current production vehicles.

I Googled how Nissan themselves explain Nissan Crossing and off their website this is what I got: “Nissan Crossing will act as a new informative center that functions as a base for communicating Nissan Intelligent Mobility, offering exciting future driving experiences to customers”, so there you go!

There’s always an intersting car in the front window you can see from street level, in this case the ‘2020 Vision Gran Turismo’ car.

Once you come in from the streets past the front display you enter a display room with various cars on display, different areas have different names such as ‘Centre Stage, ‘ Cylinder Top’, etc. In this case the new ‘400R’ was in the Centre Stage, it is a car strongly looking at the future but in a more practical sense – available as a 4wd hybrid according to Nissan’s website.

The new 400R Skyline, not quite what you think of when you hear 400R!

There was also the IMs on display, an electric all wheel drive car – I would peg it as a electric urban 4wd but if you ask Nissan it has “created a segment of its own…”.

If you have read this far you’re probably wondering if there is much to be seen for any petrol heads, yes there is but before I take you onto the 2nd floor I wanted to talk about the building some more.

The building changes its displays/colours depending on what the situation is, the actual Nissan Crossing centre takes up the first two floors.

Being located in such a prominent location the building has to match! It has been in this location for over 50 years! Its first iteration was in the 60s with a few redesigns since then. Again I am going to quote the Nissan website, this is their take on the building: “Nissan Crossing was designed under the theme of ‘Spiral.’ The design symbolically expresses customers’ emotions and experiences as well as their journey from the past, present, and to the future. The Spiral design can change color in accordance with the season, time, and the particular event to create a dynamic space.”

This blurry photo shows some various looks over the years.

The second story is much less hectic than the ground floor as there aren’t so many people everywhere. Heading up the escalator you are greeted by various cars, for us it just happened to be the 2020 GTR…

Heading up the escalator to level 2 and we were greeted by this…

Hard to believe 35s are well and truly over a decade old, to put that into context Nissan produced the R32, R33 and R34 GTR all in the same length of time that we have had only the R35!

Of course, there are benefits of this evolution rather than constant revolutions. The 2020 Nismo car has a huge range of enhancements, I could probably do an article on them alone! In this case we are looking at the pressure relieving vents that help increase down force (& shave a tiny bit of weight).

Of course the R35 was the main attraction for me but it wasn’t the only car on the second floor and there were some other attractions. I imagine a lot of people would be interested in the merchandise area, some items you can only purchase at Nissan Crossing. There is also a cafe where you can upload a picture of your car and they will add it on the top of your coffee! As well as a few other areas with interactive screens where you can colour in some of Nissan’s race cars, etc.

This is the Nissan IMx Kuro – Kuro being the Japanese word for black but of course you already know that because the name of this blog is Kuro Sora ; ) anyway back to the car! It was released at the Geneva motor show in 2018 and is another electric cross over concept car!

The gift area was quite well stocked, it would be very easy to burn some Yen here, trust me…

I did in fact make a purchase, I had to right! A little GTR V Spec II in TV2 Bayside Blue now resides with me… and yes I asked whether they make black ones and no is the answer!

The ‘Crossing Cafe’ on the second floor.

This wall allowed people to paint cars and presumably race them electronically.

Back past the 35, this time with a little souvenir!

You could actually sit in the 35, it was a nice mix of Alcantara and Carbon over the various surfaces, apologies for having to see my pins ha!

Notice anything unusual? Yep, it is a left hand drive… there are quite a few left hand drive cars in Japan. A long time ago when high end imports came in to Japan they were left hand drive only, even though now you can get them in right hand drive a lot of people consider left hand drive to be a show of status… many manufactures offer the option of right or left hand drive, those who still think it is a sign of superiority take left! Which is fine until you get to a parking machine and it is on the right hand side of the car! Don’t worry fancy hotels will have a machine on each side, honestly classic Japanese! Anyway back to the 35, I don’t think Nissan actually offer it as a left hand drive to the local Japanese market but this was one of the early promotional/media cars.

That wraps up our visit to Nissan Crossing, nothing too crazy but definitely something I would recommend for any Nissan die hard! Other manufactures have similar buildings, experiences, etc. as well so it is worth checking them out if you’re into other types of cars. One last titbit I will leave you is what we did after Nissan Crossing, head over the road to the cafe that goes up a few levels, grab something to eat and drink then do some people/car spotting. Being Ginza you’re always sure of some action! Little bits of advice like that from locals or frequent visitors are worth their weight in gold! I will leave you with a few extra pics from Nissan Crossing and some car spotting we did, enjoy.