Eagers Nissan in Brisbane, Australia, caused quite a stir on September 15 when it posted a picture of a man holding a set of keys standing behind a Nissan Leaf with a bow on it. The controversy wasn’t about the car, or the man, but rather what he allegedly traded in for the electric vehicle.
“With rising fuel prices, Barry couldn’t justify keeping his R34 GT-R V Spec II any longer,” the dealership wrote in the post. “Luckily for him, we were able to do a straight swap into a brand new fully electric Nissan LEAF.”
Naturally, this raised many eyebrows and, within 12 hours, the post has been shared 11,000 times and has received 8,100 comments, most of them in disbelief. Eventually, the post appears to have been a gag on the dealership‘s part.
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That’s good news for the Barry in question, because even though a new Nissan Leaf isn’t exactly cheap, starting at $53,515 AUD ($35,844 USD at current exchange rates), a Skyline R34 GT-R is worth considerably more.
The car in question, which Tire Meets Road identified as a Skyline R34 GT-R Spec II Nur, is one of just 718 in existence, and low mileage examples can go for as much as $485,000 USD, or over 10 times more than the Leaf.
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The car appears to actually be at the dealership on loan from Street FX Motorsport. There “for a limited time only,” according to an Eagers Nissan Instagram post from four months ago, the car is a regular fixture of the tuning shop’s social media feeds, including a video telling people to check the car out at the dealership.
Indeed, Street FX responded to the Eagers Nissan Facebook post six hours after it was posted, saying that “this has been the worst trade deal in the history of trade dealer, maybe ever… Seriously Barry.”