By Stephan Wilkinson
May 7, 2008 -
The GT-R is the blind date everybody’s been telling you about for months: incredible body, second in her class at Harvard, fabulous conversationalist, star athlete. Then you meet her. Yes, she has obvious “assets,” but nobody mentioned the halitosis. She graduated with a B.A. in accounting. She’s a great conversationalist, but her voice sounds like run-flat tires with three-inch sidewalls running over a concrete-aggregate rumble and tar-strip slap. She's an athlete, but a grunting shot-putter, not a Sharapova. In short, the GT-R is SO not a supermodel.
I spent 1,450 miles inside a Nissan GT-R in early April, flying through the deserts of Nevada and central California. I didn't notch 193mph, the GT-R's top speed. But I (or you) could have done so with ease. I decided not to approach this limit to preserve my license. In fact, the Nissan coupe plants itself on the road better than any car I've ever driven.
Stretching the GT-R’s legs on an open Nevada two-lane road was so simple that my 28-year-old daughter could repeat the process a few minutes later while I lazed in the right seat. When we passed opposite-direction tandem tractor-trailers on these empty highways, it was as though the GT-R slipped by a Smart. With a Cd of .27 and just enough downforce in all the right places, aerodynamics are apparently a lot of what allows this car to go so fast so easily.
If there's anything to criticize about the GT-R's handling— I also spent an afternoon with the car lapping the mickey mouse Reno-Fernley Raceway— it's the steering. While the helm’s quick and precise, it’s strangely numb and electric-feeling. The Japanese still have a lot to learn from Porsche here, but the GT-R is ridiculously nimble for a two-tonner (with driver and gas).
Two of the car's most highly touted features baffle me, though. One is the endlessly configurable instrument display, called-up via the nav screen. Nissan readily admits that it “was inspired by videogames.” It’s not what you’d call useful– unless you're intent on studying steering-wheel deflection, slip angle, transmission-oil pressure and brake-pedal position while late-apexing an off-ramp. It's the geek equivalent of the complex chronographs of the 19th century: pocket watches that read out everything from the tides to your mistress's menstrual cycle.
The GT-R’s fiddly “launch mode” for maximum acceleration (meaning turbo spool-up) is also a curiosity. It will amuse those who haven't an ounce of mechanical sensibility who don't mind abusing machinery. Actual GT-R owners will use it a few times to amuse the neighbors, and then will realize that they're still making payments on the $70,000+ appliance they're brutalizing. Even Nissan told me to only use it "once or twice."
For me, the car's tires are the biggest turnoff. Quick! Name a single benefit to run-flats. They're noisy, expensive, difficult to repair and can only dismount with special machinery. I don't have a spare in my 911 either, since a fuel cell fills the trunk, but I use Ride-On to seal its tires permanently. (No, Ride-On has nothing in common with Slime or Fix-a-Flat.) The Bridgestones on the GT-R are so loud they negate the Bose sound system; a Costco Kenwood would have sufficed amid the din.
Obviously, this car's numbers– whether we're talking racetrack lap times, zero to sixty or MSRP– are stunning. We all know that GT-Rs are lapping the Nordschleife faster and faster, that they out-accelerate Porsche Turbos and ZO6s and cost $69,850 (plus “market adjustment fees…”). There's a lot to like about this car, but is it the ultimate, the Godzilla, the Nurburgring killa?
Who cares? Acquiring a supercar, rather than fantasizing about one, faces the buyer with a decision with vastly more to do with real-world attributes than with video games, bad movies and teen fetishes. (Admittedly, the last video game I played was Space Invaders.) It fascinated me that nobody in Nevada or California noticed the GT-R, other than carwash attendants, 14-year-olds with mullets and every parking valet in Vegas. The rest of the world walked on by, assuming they’d encountered a new Toyota Supra.
Seventeen years ago, the first Japanese supercar arrived in the States: the Acura NSX. Fabulous numbers, a half-price Ferrari, buff-book craziness, slavering car writers, rumored to be the benchmark for the McLaren F1, development work by Ayrton Senna… So where did the NSX go? Ultimately, it became the orthodontist's car, when the world went back to buying Porsches and real Ferraris. Care to take bets on what will happen to the GT-R?
Bottom line: the car world may have gone cuckoo for Coco Puffs over the GT-R but it’s ultimately a pointless, nerdy, twin-turbo, electronics-laden technological curiosity.
4 / 5 Stars | 2009 Nissan GT-R rating summary and performance review
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May 7th, 2008 at 7:16 am
I agree…
The GTR has a lot of appeal right now but I doubt it will age well, as it is an unmistakbly Japanese design. A lot of the appeal is in the technological prowess, but that will soon be outdone again by other cars with more appealing looks and brand names.
One thing though…it’s McLaren, not MacLaren.
May 7th, 2008 at 7:24 am
JJ:
One thing though…it’s McLaren, not MacLaren.
My bad. Text amended.
I’m kind disappointed. I drove the first (R34) Skyline. And while it was the hardest riding car ever created (128i excepted), it was FUN! I think the range was just over 100 miles, but WTH.
May 7th, 2008 at 7:25 am
Also read (and watch) Dan Neil’s review, where he elaborates a bit more on what makes a Porsche GT2 special to drive and the GT-R a bit, well, boring.
The GT-R inspires no lust from me. It’s just too ugly to be desirable. Nissan should spend their time by putting a V8 in the G coupe and going M3 hunting; at least the G37 looks the part.
May 7th, 2008 at 7:37 am
Sounds exactly like my kind of car:
I don’t listen to the radio nor music much at all. Radio not needed.
The run-flats are easily replaceable, no?
I’m a computer geek.
Now if only it was actually purchasable….
May 7th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Nissan is Pretty Fast Now A Days with this
GT-RRRRRRR.
But they sacrifice something?
The way it LOOK.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:33 am
Shame… I had higher hopes for it.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Not the review we’ve been reading everywhere else.
Great job, Stephan.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:51 am
I don’t usually like to sign on with the hype, and the GT-R has had nothing but hype for months and months, but I still kinda love it. Mostly because I think it’ll do the same thing for upper-end performance cars that the WRX did for the $25,000 set - force supercar manufacturers to rethink their products in order to compete with this bargain basement speed demon. Regardless of whether it has the cachet of a Porsche or Ferrari, it’s sure as hell faster than almost any car out there so them snobby big boys better start scrambling to turn oup the heat.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:52 am
Interesting. To me, this reads like a pretty scathing write up yet you still have it 4 out of 5 stars.
I am wondering, is it that the performance is just that undenialble or did you really enjoy the car and are just being polemic in your review?
And I believe the parallel you’ve drawn to the NSX is flawed. Just because both are pricey sports cars from Japan does not mean they are similar. You might as well compare a DB9 to a Exige. They are both from the UK, so why not?
Here is what I mean. Say what you will about the NSX. It was a fabulous car and I am big fan of it, but you really had to love a $100k exotic that could have barely beaten a 300ZX Twin-turbo from a stop. The GT-R is not this. The MSRP at most is $76k (before the dealers decide to assault your check book), and it will consistently embarrass owners of cars 3 times its price almost anywhere and anytime.
Looks? I like it, a lot. And I am not 14 years old. I am 27. You want a car that attracts the attention of Goldiggers and sycophants? That’s what Porsches and Ferraris and Lamborghinis are for. I’ve known people like that and I don’t care for them. I think there is something to be said for anonymonity in car that is so effortless.
I find it amusing when a Japanese automaker puts out a design that is unmistakenly Japanese and then is chastised for it, but then offers a design that is more in keeping with American and European conventions and then is accused of plagiarism.
I’m glad you don’t care for it. Which is what I love most about its looks. Japan’s automakers will never achieve the “prestige” of the European premium brands and I don’t think they have to. To me the GT-R is Japan and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Gee, I didn’t think it was a _scathing_ writeup, I was mainly commenting on its chances for market success. The car’s pure performance is so stunning that it would be ridiculous to fault it by giving it three stars, say.
Nor did I mean to draw a parallel to the NSX in terms of the machinery–just the concept.