$84,060 Nissan GT-R Beats Pants Off Most Supercars
You may not care very much when U.S. News ranks the $84,060 Nissan GT-R “2 out of 8 Super Luxury Sports Cars.” The thought might cross your mind that with a paltry $84K price, it can hardly qualify as a Super Luxury Sports Car. But you will take note when Top Gear runs the car around its airport-cum-testtrack and …
… the rice racer leaves the Murcielago, the Ferrari 599, the Audi R8 V10, the Lamborghini LP840, even the Veyron in the dust.
The shame! The embarrassment! The utter mortification!
The Nissan did the track in 1 minute 17.8 seconds. That’s right up there with the Noble M600 (1 minute 17.7) – and try to get your hands on one of those.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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LP840??? And what about the Porsche?????
I still prefer Ferraris. Nothing beats a Italian BBQ Mobile!
The GT-R is such a source of internal conflict for me. On one hand, it's a technological tour de force and a masterful achievement for Nissan. You can't deny its capabilities. On the other hand though, to me at least, a lot of its attributes are antithetical to what I define as a sports car. It's incredibly complex- the automotive equivalent of the toilet flush reverser from the Simpsons in Australia episode. From that it's heavy. It's huge, but it really only seats two. It sounds like a vacuum cleaner. And while I've warmed up a bit to its looks, it's much more "Klingon G35" than the classic Japanese shapes of the GT-Rs of the past. Everything about it off-paper is off-putting. $84K just gets you in the door of a seriously better looking + sounding, 800+ lb lighter 911. Or puts you in a not much less practical Cayman S, w/money for options and a turbocharger should you be insane. And that is just talking new. I wish Nissan had focused this much energy in sorting out the Z. It has much of the GT-R's flaws (bad stock sound, needless bloat/heft, strange looks) with not too many of the GT-R's strengths (precise handling, class blistering performance). Seems like the permutation of an affordable, well-sorted HIGH PERFORMANCE sports car will never come to fruition. The closest we came to it was the "Speed 4: Keep It In VTEC" S2000...
I also just remembered the Evora S "2+2". Obv not as quick as the GT-R, but I prefer a drive that is as engaging as humanely possible than a drive that sacrifices that in the pursuit of track times. And I don't care what anyone says- the GT-R might not be soulless, but at 3900 or so LB w/heavy computer intervention, it just doesn't scream "driver's car" to me like something engineered for driving.