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It's really a much higher level issue
What it is that's happening.
The GTR rose to fame by essentially offering levels of performance previously reserved for much higher price levels and by few manufacturers. The same is happening to it. The era of the automobile being defined by relatively significant differences in performance, reliability and utility is rapidly drawing to a close. Consumers can no longer use (relatively speaking) additional advances in these areas. These attributes are commodities available to every manufacturer. It happens in every product category unless the environment offers an opportunity to change the whole field.
Use the product category of wristwatches as an analogy. Quite a while ago there became no intrinsic reason left to purchase a mechanical watch....a better timing device is essentially free to everyone. That industry now uses much different attributes to garner market position.
In the not too distant future some of us will pay a very hefty premium to drive a car with an internal combustion engine and manual transmission that offers less outright performance than their mainstream counterparts. Because we can and want to. But many will not.
Personally, I think I've experienced a pretty good era. I've gotten to experience the emergence of the everyday super car and the last true sports cars ('70 era)
The manufacturers all know this. Cool thing is the number of car "manufacturers" will actually rise (albeit the volume supplied by these newcomers will be low). How deftly they all navigate this phase of their industry life cycle....
I'll enjoy my new M3 immensely even though it'll likely get smoked by the new cheaper whatever before the lease is up....or at this rate before I start my lease
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