Meet the Four Craftsmen who Build Nissan GT-R Engines [w/Video]

Did you know that only four people are allowed to build engines for Nissan’s most powerful production car, the GT-R? They are all Japanese and are respectfully called “takumi”, a word that describes a master craftsman who has perfected his skills over many years of hard work and dedication.

Only the absolute best at their game can aspire to be called takumi, and Nissan’s engine factory in Yokohama only has four such master craftsmen. With a combined experience of over 100 years of work in their field, Takumi Kurosawa, Tsunemi Ooyama, Izumi Shioya and Nobumitsu Gozu are the only people who assemble the 545hp twin-turbo V6 engines that power the GT-R by hand.

Each engine has a plaque that displays the name of the takumi craftsman who built it, with Nissan saying that many GT-R owners have travelled to the Yokohama plant to meet their engine’s builder – among these, popular talk show host and car collector Jay Leno.

It’s somehow comforting to know that in the standardized, hi-tech world we live in, there are still some jobs that only a human being can do. You can find out more about the craftsmen’s work in the video below.

By Dan Mihalascu

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