Somewhere between computer fantasy and tyre-smoking reality, Andrew English
gets to grips with the new Nissan GT-R
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If the GT-R's
background is a fascinating glimpse of car-making realpolitik and a weird
mix of virtuality and reality, then its shape is
bang up to date and unmistakably Japanese. It's slippery, too, as its 0.27Cd
drag coefficient proves. The GT-R is Japan's supercar,
borrowing little from the established grandees of Germany, Italy and Britain.
From its faux-cantilevered roof to its slab sides and raked
cabin, the 15ft 2in GT-R has many admirers and even plagiarists.
The Toyota hybrid FT-HS concept that appeared at Detroit this year is a direct crib of the roofline at least.
The twin-turbo
V6 engines are built at the Yokohama plant near Tokyo, which also turns out
a million donkeys a year for the Micras
and Qashqais driven by the mums of Gran Turismo warriors. Fourteen specially
trained craftsmen assemble 25 VR38DETT V6s
per shift in a clean room in the middle of the plant; the plan is eventually
to make 10,000 a year. Warranty claims on engines produced
in the rest of the plant, outside the GT-R's clean room, are hardly parlous,
so the precautions seem superfluous, but they do help to
build the celebration of general whizziness that the GT-R is meant to engender.
It's an interesting
engine, but not altogether radical. For a V6, it's a tall unit, with the front
differential sitting alongside the tiny sump,
which supplies oil to the dry-sump system. As with all modern engines, it
is covered in valves, delivery pipes and "dressing", which
is a shame as the bare cam covers and sculpted aluminium cylinder heads bear
a close similarity to the famous Triumph two-litre
racing engine known as "Sabrina" because of its passing resemblance to the
1950s actress's décolletage.
The bores are
finished with a plasma coating, effectively welded to the surface of the aluminium.
It's a race-car technology that
makes a thin, lightweight and durable surface for the pistons to run in,
but is expensive and time-consuming to effect.
The block has a closed deck for strength, but the connecting rods are conventionally
I-shaped and the pistons look quite
long-skirted by the standards of the German competition. Sadly, the incredible
ceramic IHI turbos have been dropped in
favour of more conventional blowers. Those ceramic units were able to withstand
some of the outrageous super-tuning done
by some owners and Nissan admits this new 473bhp engine is not as tuneable,
although this might partly be the company
backing away from any warranty commitments to fire-breathing, 1,000bhp lumps
that go pop. There is even a memory in the
engine's software to register if a car has been tuned, and we understand these
"no-tuning" electronics are a sop to the
supercar-sized hole that the GT-R has driven through Japan's voluntary agreement
to restrict engine power to about 280bhp.
With turbos and inlet-charge coolers attached, the engine weighs 551lb (250kg).
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GT-Rs were originally
built at Nissan's Murayama factory in Tokyo, which was closed (by Ghosn) in
2001. The new model is built
at Nissan's front-engine, rear-drive plant at Tochigi some 60 miles (and
three hours of rush-hour driving) north of the capital.
Every minute and 50 seconds, a Nissan Infiniti, President, Maxima, Skyline
or GT-R rolls off the end of the production line
(the new GT-R has dropped the Skyline badge). Although the GT-R is a more
complicated car than the others, Nissan has cleverly
packed any time-consuming complexity into sub-assemblies, so it can be built
largely by machine. The only additional work required
is an accurate alignment of the rear suspension and front tracking and a
longer and more brutal post-production test route to burnish
and bed in the many friction linings in the six-speed semi-automatic transmission,
which is the size of a small horse, weighs 265lb
(120kg) and sits in unit with the rear axle.
Driving on an
unfamiliar and horribly bendy circuit while wearing outsized fireproof overalls
and a helmet several sizes too big is
hardly the best introduction to the latest rocket car, but hey, you've got
to, haven't you?
There's just time
to notice that the cabin doesn't match the exterior's radical lines but seems
well made, that the front seats hug
you closer than a lover's embrace and have plenty of adjustment, that there's
more than enough head-room and that the facia isn't
the garish computer-game horror we had been led to believe; then the light
turns green and we're off.
Jumping Jehosaphat,
this car is quick. With an industrial humming roar from under the bonnet,
it sprints away from the line allowing
barely a couple of seconds before you need to flip the right-hand gearchange
paddle to change up.
The change is
simply fantastic:
fast, but with none of the semi-automatic brutality of rival machines. You
do lose the fixed-position paddles behind the steering wheel
when turning into a corner, but with a bit of practice you learn to extend
a pinkie, tea-with-the-vicar style, to flip in a new ratio if you've
got some lock on.
The steering feels
slightly inert but meaty as you turn in on the brakes to a horrible series
of downhill bends. The GT-R grips well,
but at 1.7 tonnes (1,740kg) there's plenty of work for the tyres to do; eventually
it starts to slide at one end or the other and then it
reveals its party trick. Too fast, barely in control, you stamp on the loud
pedal and deep inside that huge transmission, computers
send signals to close and open clutches to apportion torque to the wheel
that will do the least harm and pull the car straight.
It's a bizarre feeling, knowing the car is saving you from your worst excesses,
but pretty soon you learn to exploit it.
It takes
a lot of blind faith to stand on it half-way through a corner when the car
is already sliding perilously close to a hungry-looking
wall, but I glued my courage to the sticking spot on a couple of occasions
and the GT-R did exactly as predicted. The transmission
poured torque into the turning front wheels, held the slide and gradually
straightened up the slithering beast, hurling it out of the bend
and up the road with minimal countersteering input from its sweating driver.
Of course there's
understeer, but you need to go looking for it with a big net and a gun. You
feel it most turning into downhill bends,
when the car's weight makes its presence felt, but on flatter corners the
GT-R responds well to the helm, a bit antiseptically, perhaps,
but fast and sure. The Brembo brakes are good too, although they did feel
rather "leant on" after four laps, with much-increased
pedal travel. For the track, the GT-R could do with a fruitier exhaust note
and perhaps the slightly more benign Dunlop tyres rather
than the twitchy Bridgestones.
So then it was
out on to Japanese roads, which are rigidly speed-enforced. Just as well,
really, for within two miles it was clear
that the GT-R rides like a trolley car and follows road seams and truck-tyre
indentations like a bloodhound. At one point the
steering was so heavily into an invisible rut I thought we'd developed a
flat, until reminded that we were riding on run-flat tyres
and there was a tyre-pressure warning indicator on the dashboard in any case.
Even with the
adjustable Bilstein dampers in their comfort setting, road seams, expansion
joints and drain covers reverberated
through the bodyshell like someone was shooting at us. Get into the groove,
drive with enthusiasm and the Nissan is almost
ethereally rewarding, but clattering along a British B-road you could probably
learn to hate it. Driven hard on some roads, it would
be in the air for much of the time. Even a Porsche 911 GT3 rides better.
All supercar transmissions
have their foibles and on the road the Nissan's is no exception. The twin-clutch
unit grates and moans
at low speeds and while you can shift on the fly or engage reverse while
gently rolling forward, it doesn't like it much and lets you
know. But again, once moving at speed, the 'box is a delight.
There's a fair
bit of road noise from the tyres and from the rear of the car. The shell feels
so stiff it's almost like a carbon-fibre
monocoque (actually it's steel, aluminium-alloy and carbon fibre), which
is great for handling, not so good for comfort given the
harshness of the suspension.
So it's a truly
great track car but a highly compromised road car. The GT-R will also be expensive.
Nissan is thinking of setting
up barriers to stop anyone who plans to import Japanese models personally.
As a sales proposition,
"911 performance at Jaguar money" could make some sense, but not without
a lot of work to mitigate
the on-road harshness. As it stands, the GT-R will appeal to previous owners
and track-day aficionados but, for the rest of us,
the only gran turismo this car suits is on a computer screen.
Nissan G-TR [tech/spec]
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Price/availability: Expected to be about C$120,000
Engine/transmission: 3,799cc, 60-degree V6 twin-turbocharged petrol; 473bhp at 6,400rpm, 433lb ft of torque at 3,200rpm. Six-speed twin-clutch semi-automatic transaxle, with paddle shift; electronically adjustable four-wheel drive with front/rear varying torque split.
Performance: top speed 192.6mph, 0-60mph in 3.4sec, Combined average fuel consumption on Japanese cycle 34.45mpg (tank capacity 15.6 gallons), CO2 emissions N/A.
We like: It's faster than a Porsche 911 Turbo, understated but different, and it flatters the driver.
We don't like: It's heavy, it rides like a trolley car, it will cost about 120 grand and only very small people will fit in the back seats.
Alternatives:
Audi RS4 quattro, Audi R8, BMW M3. Corvette Z06, Jaguar XKR, Lexus IS-F,
Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG.
Porsche 911 3.8S, Subaru WRX STI. Sony PlayStation 3 and Gran Turismo 4.
