How The VQ/VR Became Nissan’s Best Engine Family Ever

We know that declaring that Nissan has produced their best engine ever is a bold statement. But if you really take an objective look at the latest iterations of the VR engine family, it’s hard to make any other argument. Versatile, powerful, and fun to drive, the VRs are just as comfortable in the Nissan GT-R supercar as they are in luxury SUVs. Nissan has produced some amazing performance engines, but it’s the adaptability of this engine range that makes it so special. And now that Nissan is officially done with ICE, it will be the last of its kind.

If we include the VQ engines, the engine family dates back to 1994, and it’s found a home in dozens of Nissans and Infinitis since then. It would take tens of thousands of words to cover the whole history of the engine, and we’re betting you don’t have that kind of time on your hands today. Rather than lay out a full history lesson, we’re going to be looking at some of our favorite applications of the Nissan VQ/VR engine over the years and where you can find them in 2024 in order to lay out a broad overview of how these engines have changed over the years.

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1994 Nissan Cefiro/Maxima

The very first iteration of the VQ/VR engine family was the VQ20DE, an aluminum block, aluminum head 2.0-liter DOHC engine with six cylinders, which made its debut to the public in the 1994 Nissan Cefiro. A front-wheel-drive sedan, the 2.0-liter Cefiro delivered 188 horsepower and averaged around 21 miles to the gallon. The car was marketed internationally as the Maxima, the Maxima QX, the Infiniti I30, and the Renault Samsung SM5, with the last one debuting in 1998 for the Korean market.

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The car went under the Maxima nameplate in the US, where it was available with the base VQ20DE, or a larger VQ30DE, with the 3.0-liter version hitting 60 mph in just 6.6 seconds with a manual transmission. The base model is estimated at a slower 8.7-second sprint, which wouldn’t exactly qualify it as sporty, but it was a perfectly acceptable number in the mid-90s. The Maxima was finally discontinued in 2023, more than twenty years after the Cefiro nameplate was retired.

2024 Nissan Pathfinder

The VQ engine family may have been superseded by the VR lineup, but it wasn’t entirely replaced. The 2024 Nissan Pathfinder packs a VQ35DD, the same engine that powers the new Infiniti QX50. Launching in 2017, the VQ35DD is a bigger, fuel-injected version of the VQ30DD, the engine that powered the Nissan Skyline in the early 2000s.

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Under the Pathfinder’s hood, the VQ35DD offers muscular V6 performance and confident acceleration. It may not be an off-road beast, and fuel economy is average at best, but the fact that a VQ-powered SUV is selling more than 70,000 units a year, more than two decades after its debut, is proof enough that Nissan has always been ahead of its time with this lineup.

2016 Infiniti Q50

The 2016 Infiniti Q50 marks the public launch of the VR30DDTT. When we reviewed the 2016 Infiniti Q50 when it launched, we noted that the new engine lineup couldn’t have come to the Q50 a moment too soon, offering big horsepower boosts over previous model years and making the flagging sedan a true competitor for the first time in a long time.

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The specs listed here are taken from the 3.0-liter 6-cylinder model. There was also a 2.0-liter turbo with a 4-cylinder Mercedes engine and a Red Sport edition with an upgraded 400 hp version of the same engine and a higher top speed of 183 mph. The 2.0-liter model produced a respectable 208 hp, but it was the 6-cylinder 2016 Infiniti Q50 that announced the engine to the world.

2007-Present Nissan GT-R

The current GT-R is built around a handcrafted VR38DETT engine, a 3.8-liter, 231 cubic inch direct-injection 6-cylinder. Nissan favors the VR for the GT-R supercar in part because of its shorter length, which makes for better weight distribution in a performance model. This engine comes with a number of tricks up its sleeve, including a feedback control system that adjusts the air/fuel ratio on the fly according to the engine load. This makes for a more efficient car, which means you’re getting the most propulsion out of every combustion. By and large, the current GT-R is the same as last year’s model.

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The NISMO edition GT-R offers an impressive 35 hp boost over the Premium model and a shorter 0-60 at the expense of just a few MPG of fuel economy. This is owed to special sports tuning and performance-enhancing features like spoilers and diffusers, alloy wheels, mufflers, engine parts, and tighter suspension. The future of the GT-R is currently up in the air, but we’re willing to bet that the next one will be powered by a VR, as well.

2025 Infiniti QX80

The 2025 edition Infiniti QX80 marked the launch of the third generation, dropping the 8-cylinder VK56VD engine for a VR35DDTT twin-turbo 6-cylinder paired with a 9-speed automatic transmission. This would be the debut of the newest member of the VQ/VR family, with the VR35DDTT intended to power Nissan’s heavier vehicles in the coming years, including the Nissan Patrol, an off-road-oriented variant of the QX80/Armada, manufactured in Japan and sold in Australia.

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The VR35 series was only announced to the public in early 2024, so it’s yet to be seen what this engine is really capable of. The aluminum-cast, plasma-sprayed VR38DETT found in the GT-R can withstand more than 2,000 hp, so we’ve got high hopes for the new one should NISMO ever get their hands on it. Reviewing the outgoing model, we found the QX80’s 8-cylinder engine to feel out of date and sluggish. This new model can hit 60 mph in under 6 seconds despite a massive three-ton curb weight, with previous models typically hitting the mark in around 6.5 seconds or so. Just as a VR engine saved the Q50 from irrelevancy back in 2017, the VR family seems ready to pull the QX80 into the future, as well.