In the ’90s, Nissan gave us three iterations of its limited Midnight Purple color. But the reasons for its fame go beyond the color itself.
Let’s be real. Most colors on cars are pretty boring. You get out on the highway, and you are going to see a sea of whites, blacks, and grays. Plus, there’s the occasional red car out there, which is just the white, black, or gray version of a “cool” color. Every so often, though, you see a car out on the street that is a color you have rarely seen before. For some people, that’s because the color can be so garish and unpleasant that they want to divert their eyes from it. For others, that eye-popping nature makes it such an enticing proposition for car owners, and the desire to have that color only grows with how rare it is.
Few colors represent this niche desire in car coloration better than Nissan’s Midnight Purple, which had a brief lifespan from the mid-1990s until 2002 when it was discontinued. Well, it was discontinued until fairly recently, as the unveiling of the 2024 Nissan GT-R T-Spec revealed the limited return of the long-coveted color. Granted, the 2024 version of Midnight Purple is quite a bit different than the classic color, looking more like a dark blue-green than a true purple, but it shows Nissan still has a connection to its past.
Midnight Purple was always a specialty color for Nissan, and very few models sporting it were ever manufactured. Over its brief run, three different versions of Midnight Purple made their way onto Nissan vehicles before the 20+ year hiatus, making the subtle variations even rarer than they already were.
