The Ultimate Gathering of Godzillas
By John Pearley Huffman, Contributor Email


Date posted: 12-04-2007


In about a minute, Inside Line will be the first media outlet to drive the 2009 Nissan GT-R on American soil.

Well, sort of. We'll be hitting speeds approaching 4 mph.

Two Nissan GT-Rs, one red and one silver, are stowed behind the TBWA/Chiat/Day building here just north of the Los Angeles International Airport. Paul Hawson, Nissan's product planner for the GT-R, will drive the red one to the crowd waiting out front, and we will pilot the silver one behind him. We aren't going to be driving at more than walking speed, but we're planning to rev the cars a bit to show off their voices.

"Just don't forget to shift into neutral when you blip the throttle," Hawson tells us, accurately predicting that we haven't thought that far ahead. "And just leave the key in your pocket. I'll get it from you when the cars are parked."

Nissan agreed to bring the two GT-R preproduction vehicles out for an exclusive public showing sponsored by Inside Line. We wanted to give the Nissan nuts of Los Angeles a chance to see, hear, smell and even touch the car of their dreams on this overcast Saturday in November.

Seventy-two hours before showtime we tossed the time and place on a few forums and invited anyone and everyone to the Inside Line Nissan GT-R Party. We told them to be at Chiat/Day on Saturday at 3 p.m. And so they came. In packs. A sea of hard-core GT-R fanatics flooded the parking lot of Nissan's longtime advertising agency. Some 200 rabid Nissan enthusiasts eager to probe and experience the GT-R in ways the velvet ropes at the Los Angeles auto show (taking place 20 miles to the east) just wouldn't allow.

The Fever
The crowd even includes well-known Nissan enthusiasts, including Steve Mitchell, an R32 Skyline owner who is the proprietor of M-WORKZ in Gardena, California; and ex-Nissan engineer Mike Kojima and the crew from RB Motorsports in City of Industry, California, a company that helps make the Nissan Skyline GT-R more available to U.S. drivers. Dave Coleman, ex-engineering editor at Sport Compact Car, even made an appearance.

And they brought their cars. There are Skyline GT-Rs from way deep into the early 1970s, 240SXs wearing JDM "Silvia" badges, wicked Zs and ancient 510s powered by everything except cold fusion. If there is one word to describe the crowd at Chiat/Day, that word is frenzied.

"I'm on a couple of lists already," explains Justin Sykes, 27, who worked for now-defunct MotoRex when that company was importing GT-Rs into North America, and now works at a Lexus dealer. "Literally, I wake up in the morning and this is what gets me through the day — looking forward to this car. It's like the one thing I'm keeping up on and, you know, reading up on."

"I'm kind of emotionally involved in the excitement of seeing it in person," says Chad Glass, 37, who draws movie storyboards for a living and moderates Internet message boards for the North American GT-R Owners' Club.

There isn't a soul in the crowd who hasn't already seen the GT-R orbiting the Nürburgring in 7 minutes, 38 seconds on YouTube. They all know the new twin-turbocharged, 3.8-liter VR38 V6 will be rated at 473 horsepower, that the dual-clutch six-speed transaxle is mounted between the rear wheels, and that the 20-inch wheels are wrapped in run-flat tires.

Obsession, it turns out, has found a new poster car.

The Sound of the Future
The GT-R is not small. At 183.1 inches long, it's 7.5 inches longer than a 2008 Chevrolet Corvette and about 2 inches wider and almost 5 inches taller. Not only is this car supposed to outperform the Porsche 911 Turbo, but it'll do it while casting a much larger shadow. Heck, the driver-side door feels about the same size as an entire 911 by itself.

Like so many cars today, the GT-R starts with the push of a button — in this case, a red button just below the console-mounted shift lever. This button doesn't have to be held down, just pressed once and the engine control computer runs the routine embedded in some ROM chip that assesses the conditions and starts the car appropriately. The GT-R's engine doesn't so much roar to life as it purrs into consciousness.

The idle of the GT-R's twin-turbo V6 is subdued; there's no crackling, spitting or induction wheeze, and the exhaust burbles only slightly through its four outlet pipes. This is an engine, after all, that blows directly into two large turbochargers that muffle much of the low-speed noise all by themselves.

We could have blipped the throttle a million times, but there was just no way to make the GT-R loud. As this is a production car, Nissan obviously had to be mindful of noise regulations when designing the exhaust system, but did it have to make it this quiet? At least what noise the GT-R does make is powerful and satisfying.

The seats themselves are mostly leather, but the center section is finished with artificial suede to add some grip and comfort in hot weather. How will the seats grip a driver during hard cornering? Don't know. But in the rocket blast from zero to 4 mph, they feel fine.

Driving Into the Crowd
It used to be that when something exciting happened, flashbulbs would go off. Now what happens is a bunch of people hold up their cell phones to snap photos or record video. It may not be as dramatic, but it's still pretty neat.

At first the crowd is a bit awestruck — almost scared to approach something they've dreamed about for so long. But once that moment passes, six heads wedge their way through the car's open passenger-side window.

"Run through the menus," one indistinct face says, as arms reach for the multifunction display atop the dash. "I hear you can vote for American Idol through the screen," some other voice jokes. "To hell with that, I just want to watch porn," adds another.

"The full bulk, breadth and muscularity of the car is not quite transmitted in a photograph," says Chad Glass upon seeing the beast up close. "It's much thicker, muscular and beefier than I can see in a photograph. It has a real presence. It's a gorgeous car."

Alongside the upright R32, R33 and R34 Skylines on display, the angular and sleek R35 GT-R looks like a starship among boxcars: not just another evolutionary development of the GT-R tradition, but a leap forward. "It's a muscle," says Kevin Nealy. "It makes a statement like none of the GT-Rs have made before. When you drove up in it, my mouth dropped to the ground. The pictures do not do this car justice. You must see it in person — it looks totally different."

Feel and Touch
At first, Nissan would not agree to let anybody sit in the cars.

"We can leave the windows down, but that's it," was the line drawn by Tim Gallagher, Nissan's West Coast public relations machine, and product-planner Hawson supported him. "These cars will need to be photographed soon, so we can't risk any damage." But we knew there was a chance if the crowd was cool.

About an hour in, we made our move. Hawson agreed, but with three rules. One: He would be in the passenger seat. Two: Gallagher would stand at the driver's door to control the crowd. Three: Nobody goes in the red car, which has an easily soiled light-tan interior.

Done. And so for the next three hours, more than 100 people took their turn behind the wheel of the silver GT-R, with Hawson in the passenger seat giving them a tour of the car's controls.

They pushed the buttons, scrolled through the various screens of the car's multifunction display and adjusted the driver seat to their individual preference. It may be a stretch to call it the thrill of a lifetime, but sitting in the GT-R proved to be certainly more than anybody expected.

"That was cool," says Coleman, who owns an R32 GT-R, two S13 Silvias and a 510 rally car. "You can't do that at the auto show," he adds as he climbs out of the GT-R.

Never Enough
The GT-R heritage only starts with what comes from the factory. Owners almost invariably twist these cars into something both faster and, well, scarier. In fact, every Skyline, Silvia, Z and 510 that made an appearance at our party had been modified in some way.

"Nissan obviously doesn't want anyone to play with them," says Sean Morris, who is one of the foremost GT-R tuners in America. "But I see that as a challenge. They say the ECU is 'unhackable.' I say, 'That's just a couple words.'"

One mechanical feature virtually every prospective GT-R tuner is eager to change is the exhaust system. "The exhaust is a cluster," says Morris. "The stupid four-exhaust-tip thing is ugly. It goes two-into-one and then splits out and crosses over and there are two mufflers and then it splits into four. I'd cut it all off and just do, like, one single 4-inch pipe straight out."

Chad Glass, on the other hand, isn't quite so ready to hack apart the exhaust system. "I think some people are going to want a single-exit exhaust," he says over the hum of the crowd. "I personally don't think that will look good. I think the way Nissan designed it, with dual outlets on each side, is a totally harmonious design. But some people are more into performance than they are aesthetics. And I want to have both."

Internet GT-R forums are already overloaded with illustrations of proposed body kits for the new car and rampant speculation about how to turn a car that's already a rocket sled into a time-warping thrill machine.

Nissan is going to sell the GT-R essentially one way. The buyers are going to rip it apart and rebuild it a million different ways. If, that is, Nissan sells a million GT-Rs.

The Frustration Station
With most of the pizza gone and darkness falling early, by 6 p.m. the event is winding down. Nissan starts passing out GT-R T-shirts that honor the machine's now infamous Nürburgring performance, and a final few get their chance to sit behind the wheel.

As the assembled older Skyline GT-Rs head for the exits, the night air fills with the high-rpm sounds of multiple RB26DETTs finding their rev limiters. This doesn't exactly ingratiate us with the neighbors. Neither do the subsequent four-gear burnouts down Grovsenor Boulevard, but who could blame these guys for wanting to let off some steam?

Sure, we gave them a closer look at the new GT-R than ever before, but only we got to drive the car. And that means they're in for six more months of frustration.

Godzilla Takes on the 480-hp Yardstick
By Bill Thomas, Contributor Email


Date posted: 12-12-2007


Kazutoshi Mizuno, the chief vehicle engineer for the 2009 Nissan GT-R, describes his car as a "new kind of supercar, one with no competitors," and I thought of Mizuno-san as I nailed the GT-R's alloy throttle pedal right to the floor in 2nd gear coming onto a quiet section of derestricted autobahn near Koblenz. I'd nailed that throttle pedal right to the floor a number of times already on this day — difficult to resist — but somehow the big Nissan seemed to lunge forward with even more intensity than usual.

In my imagination, it was sniffing the long, gently curving, slightly uphill stretch of 'bahn and contemplating the lack of legal restriction on ultimate speed. The only limit would be the power of the car to overcome resistance, and the driver's ability to negotiate traffic. Long may the derestricted autobahn continue: in dry, crisp, sunny conditions, this magnificent car would be safe and composed at any speed.

A bellow from the GT-R's engine, a rush of revs, a gigantic accelerative force on my neck, 2nd is gone, a flick of the right-hand leather-trimmed shift paddle, bang, 3rd gear slammed home and the mighty rush intensified still. My god, this car is fast, one of the fastest production cars ever made.

Twin-Clutch Semi-Auto Gearbox
And so's the gearchange. Fast, that is. I could never describe the new GT-R without giving a nod to its incredible transmission right away. Mounted on a transaxle at the rear of the car for better weight balance, it's the technical highlight here. In Normal mode, the shifts from the twin-clutch semi-auto gearbox are rapid, with each preselected gear engaging in an instant, but in R mode they're even quicker. We're in R now, and we've hit 100 mph in about 10 heartbeats.

No official performance figure exists for that increment, but expect an 8-second 0-100-mph time. It's fast, alright. Nissan says 60 mph comes up in 3.5 seconds, the standing quarter-mile in 11.7 seconds and it goes on to 197 mph.

The GT-R's all-new VR38 engine, a 473-horsepower 3.8-liter V6 with twin IHI turbochargers, makes a fine noise, like a deeper, more muscular 350Z V6 howl overlaid with a harsh, white-noise static blast from the turbos. It is quieter and gentler in character than the classic RB26 2.6-liter straight-6 fitted to Skyline GT-Rs of old, and will probably never be as fondly regarded as a result, but there can be no arguing with its ability to rev, and no criticism of its power delivery. It is entirely linear, with no lag.

Slam it into 4th. What a monstrous gear this is, a killing gear if ever there was one. There's no let-up in G pressure forcing my spine rearward as the tach needle climbs to the 7,000-rpm redline. I have no idea what speed we're doing now, probably upward of 150 mph — I daren't take my eyes off the road. Up to 5th. Speed still piling on, the two-lane 'bahn taking on an alarming narrowness that multiplies exponentially for every 10 mph you do over 170 mph, the barriers closing in, the view beginning to blur to an extent you're not familiar with. A truck flits by on the inside lane, speed difference about 120 mph.

Bang into 6th. Getting hairy now. It wasn't until we hit an indicated 190 mph that the canary yellow Porsche 911 Turbo glued to my tail flashed his lights impatiently, sick of waiting. Mizuno-san reckons such a thing doesn't exist, but we thought we'd try to find a competitor anyway.

Godzilla's Details
More on the mighty Porsche later. Let's look at the star of the show first, Nissan's new flagship, the brand-halo supercar designed to be sold globally and showcase Nissan's technical skill. Brand-new purpose-built chassis, brand-new engine, brand-new transmission, brand-new body and design. The GT-R is all aggression on the outside. To my eye, it is a phenomenal-looking machine, distinct from anything else. Very Japanese and very hard. The overall stance is all wide shoulders and slashing arcs, a ground-hugging, flat-sided brute.

The aerodynamic performance of the car is astonishing. It has a drag coefficient to match that of a Prius at 0.27, so the shape is exceptionally slippery. Part of that is down to careful underbody design — a rear diffuser helps generate downforce at speed, too.

Step inside and you're instantly reminded of older Skylines. The design is functional rather than beautiful, quite old-fashioned and not trying too hard, with a large center console angled toward the driver and a high instrument binnacle across from a large multifunction screen. It all seems superbly well screwed together, as you'd expect of a Nissan, and the quality of the materials is high. It won't win design awards, but I really like the cockpit of this car.

Climb Inside
Slot in behind the steering wheel and immediately you feel comfortable and relaxed — this isn't a strange, wide, low supercar; it isn't daunting in that way. It's much more like a normal saloon in feel. As we'll see, this easy-to-drive nature is a key component of the new GT-R.

Keyless entry means you only punch the red metal starter button behind the gearlever to fire up the big V6. With the engine ticking over with a deep burble, you bring the stubby lever back to A-M — it is a normal gate for an auto. Flick it to the right and you have manual, but I want to trundle out of here in automatic first.

The transmission clunks and clacks a bit, but you soon get used to it. Its low-speed maneuvering isn't on par with the auto-clutch unit on the 430 Scuderia, being slightly jerky in the uptake, but it's usable. On the move in auto mode, the gearbox is sublime, changing up early in the style of an Audi DSG and using the engine's torque to the full. We burble out of Nissan's testing facility at the Nürburgring to meet the Porsche, bound for some of the best A-roads in the area, followed by the 'bahn.

Meet the 911 Turbo
I'm the one who brought the Porsche 911 Turbo. Good yardstick, this. As we dispatched the low countries at an easy gait, driving overnight across deserted highways, it seemed inconceivable that Nissan could design anything to get even close to this car. It is ancient. By "ancient" I don't mean old-fashioned, other than in its strangely narrow cockpit and upright windscreen — it's ancient in its utter solidity and feeling of being honed for decades.

The gearchange, for instance, is a masterwork in solid fluidity, without a trace of excess movement in its short action. The driving position is perfect, the large wheel placed just where you want it. And then there's the engine out the back, that mighty 480-hp horizontally opposed six, utterly unburstable and awesome in its power, slamming the car forward with indomitable force, all four wheels clawing the road.

The 911 Turbo is still a player, vast in its all-round ability, docile when it needs to be, fast as well. But driving these two cars back to back, it's not long before you realize that the Nissan makes it seem old-fashioned.

Meet the New Boss
Balance and body control of the GT-R are extraordinary through faster, bumpy bends that will have the 911 unsettled enough to make the driver lose confidence. I had a number of heart-in-mouth moments in the Turbo trying to keep up with the GT-R, even with the Porsche's suspension set to its harder Sport setting. It still seems soft, and there's a bouncy lack of balance in the way the suspension controls the body, and the way the big engine slung out the back threatens to swing round. By contrast, I never felt anything but natural solidity in the Nissan, adjustable and fluid.

Turn-in for the GT-R is beautiful, whether neutral or under brakes, and it grips forever — slippery surfaces seem to bring out the best in it. Time after time I left the Porsche behind as my four-wheel-drive system and traction control worked better out of wet corners — it wasn't just the fact that I could get on the power earlier. It was about confidence.

The Nissan really is something special, and you get the impression that while a master driver could wring every last ounce of performance out of the 911, your mother could do the same in the GT-R, all the while making lightning-fast up and down changes in milliseconds while the Porsche driver messes with manual.

Is It Too Good?
Which begs the question: Does the Nissan's ability reduce the driving pleasure?

Not at all. You can turn all the systems off if you so choose, and it's still supremely well balanced, no doubt a delight for a racing driver on a track. It doesn't feel as heavy as it is — it weighs a chunky 3,800 pounds, 170 or so more than the Porsche. But its supreme Nürburgring lap time of 7:38, a full 2 seconds faster than the Turbo (and on a partly wet track) is solely down to its completely planted feel, its awesome grip and traction, and the natural way it goes about maintaining speed through corners.

It feels high, almost on tiptoe in comparison to the 911, but that's because it is. It's a big car. But it's not slow. Our 'bahn tests proved that. From medium revs in 4th gear, with me driving the Nissan and with a passenger on board, the radio countdown allowed us to nail the throttles simultaneously with the cars side by side. The Porsche crawled forward, and I mean crawled, v-e-r-y slowly. It only highlights the supernatural performance of the GT-R.

The Best of the Best
For all-round ability, I have no doubt the Nissan is the best car I've ever driven. It is almost as fast as the Porsche — which means it's almost as fast as any car on earth — and inspires more confidence through corners, yet it's also more roomy and practical and has a proper modern gearbox. It's a big, solid car you can rely on when the going gets tricky, that you can thrash around a track, then set the suspension to soft, the transmission to auto, the Bose audio to full bass and putter into town without a trace of angst.

Oh, I nearly forgot — price. The 911 Turbo comes in at about $100,000, which is a good value for such a stupendous car, but the GT-R will cost about $40,000 less.

Mizuno-san is right. This car has no competitors. Not at any price. But that won't prevent one of the first GT-Rs in Europe from being bought by an anonymous man and taken to Porsche AG in Stuttgart for a thorough examination. With an even more powerful and lighter V-Spec GT-R on the way, Porsche can't afford to lag behind for long.

All Horsepower, No Hype

We're 20 feet from a production-spec 2009 Nissan GT-R at Sendai Highland Circuit, a raceway north of Tokyo. After years of staring at various concepts, prototypes and Nürburgring test mules of the GT-R, it's finally time to drive the finished product.

An engineer waves us over after making his final checks, then hands us the keys with a smile so big you'd think he'd been knocking back Kirins since sunrise. We suspect he already knows what we came here to find out.

Does the 2009 Nissan GT-R really deliver the performance of the Porsche 911 Turbo for half the price? Time to find out for ourselves.

Getting Acquainted With Godzilla
Unlike most supercars, the GT-R doesn't sit only 2 inches off the ground, so it's easy to slide into the driver seat. This is a Japanese-market car, so we're on the right-hand side, which makes everything feel awkward. The seat is firm and narrow, and the high center console gives the cabin a tight, cockpit-style feel.

Start buttons aren't the novelty they used to be, but the GT-R's big red igniter just below the central shift lever does make us stop and think for a second. There will be 473 horsepower and 434 pound-feet of torque on tap once this sucker is running. It's also about 40 degrees F outside and we're on an unfamiliar track that packs 16 turns into just 2.5 miles of asphalt.

Gran Turismo this is not.

Push the button and the twin-turbo 3.8-liter V6 fires up with a low, uninspiring hum. We had heard it was quiet, but this is almost too quiet. Aftermarket exhaust manufacturers might as well start taking orders now.

The Nissan engineer leans in the window and sets all the adjustment buttons for the transmission, damper settings and VDC system to their "R" positions for maximum performance. He gives us a thumbs-up and another big smile. Yeah, he definitely knows something.

We slide the shift lever down into Drive and select manual shift mode by tapping it to the side. Left foot off the brake, a little gas with the right foot and the GT-R eases out of the pits slowly and smoothly. No SMG-style clunkiness here.

When the light at the end of pit road goes from red to green, we floor it in 2nd gear and promptly get drop-kicked onto the straightaway at nearly 70 mph. So much for turbo lag.

Pulling the right-side shift paddle snaps the GT-R into 3rd in one seamless motion that no stick jockey could match for speed or smoothness. Turn 1, a tight, slightly downhill right-hander is coming up quick, so we back off and get on the brakes. They scrub off so much speed that we hit the apex at all of 25 mph.

So far, this GT-R is all motor and brakes. Better take it easy for a lap to recalibrate.

Ram Air, Japanese Style
We get settled on the short straight before Turn 3. Although visibility is generally good, the GT-R's high cowl makes it feel especially big. And like a late-1960s Mopar, the twin intakes on the hood are visible from the driver seat. The bulky feel is no illusion, as the GT-R is 7 inches longer and 2 inches wider than a Porsche 911.

Turn 3 is a hairpin left that heads back uphill, so we swing wide, stay in 2nd and get on the gas at the apex. The GT-R turns in quickly — very quickly. Maybe it's our low speed, but there's not a hint of wasted motion in the steering. The slightest nudge of the wheel right or left delivers a response, so there's no need to muscle this car through corners.

As we crest Turn 4, which bends slightly right and onto the back straight, we're already in 3rd and back into the throttle. The GT-R is piling on huge chunks of speed now. If the speedometer were digital it would be skipping numbers, lots of them. Unlike our 2nd-gear slingshot out of the pits, this run to the redline is so smooth we hardly realize we're traveling at nearly triple-digit speed.

There's not much of a power curve. If you want power, it's there. It comes on heavy at nearly any engine speed, and you never feel the turbos spooling up either. This is a different kind of thrust than a big American V8. Not better or worse, just different.

Ignore the Numbers
Into 4th gear and the cabin remains calm right up to 120 mph. There's no valvetrain clatter like a Corvette and the engine doesn't wail in your ear like a 911.

Back on the Brembo brakes at the end of the straight and again they bite hard. The pedal is stiff and easy to modulate and you don't have to press all that hard to generate big negative Gs. We call up a couple downshifts with the shift paddles, and the dual-clutch transmission pulls off each one with a precise throttle blip that keeps the car steady on the pavement.

A quick left-right-left through a chicane and the GT-R starts barreling back up a hill through a long, sweeping left-hander. It's the last thing we expected, but the GT-R feels surprisingly light and maneuverable despite its curb weight of 3,836 pounds. That's 342 pounds more than a Porsche 911 Turbo and nearly 700 pounds more than a Corvette Z06.

The GT-R should feel like a big, lifeless brick, yet here we are, barely finished with our first lap and already we're tossing the car from one corner to the next with confidence. The precise steering and nearly total lack of body roll make it easy to place on the road, and there's little dive when the big six-piston front calipers are clamping down on the 15-inch drilled rotors.

The ultra-stiff chassis gives the adjustable Bilstein dampers a good platform with which to work, and the fact that we barely notice them working is a sign they're dialed in just right. Even when we misjudge a few of the final corners, our last-second corrections don't turn into frightening wobbles or twitches. Trust us: The 911 Turbo is not so forgiving in comparison.

Don't Doubt Mizuno
A few more laps and the GT-R now feels familiar and predictable. We're going through corners with enough speed to sense the all-wheel-drive system moving the power around from one corner to another. During the pre-drive briefing, Chief Engineer Kazutoshi Mizuno explained that the GT-R is more fun to drive through corners because you can get on the throttle earlier than with a conventional rear-wheel-drive car. It's an overly simplified way of explaining the GT-R's complicated ATTESA ET-S all-wheel-drive system.

Testing his theory is uncomfortable at first, since the car feels on the verge of understeer through some of the tighter turns. Adding more power seems like the last thing that's going to help, but, sure enough, a little midcorner throttle rotates the nose right toward the apex. Staying on the gas drifts the tail out a bit on exit as the power gets redirected to the rear tires. VDC is still activated in "R" mode, but if it's making any adjustments, we're not feeling them.

Getting so much movement out of an unfamiliar car makes us feel like Sendai regulars. The car needs only the smallest inputs to put it on the edge and keep it there. From the steering to the brakes to the transmission, it's all precise, quick movements. Sure, the car is heavy, but after you throw it through a few turns with nothing more than a few flicks of your fingers, the numbers become meaningless.

The World's Most Famous Porsche 911 Turbo
Pulling into the pits, we're exhilarated, not exhausted. It took just seven laps to go from pedal-stabbing rookie to calm, drift-happy veteran. Supercars are rarely so friendly.

Chief engineer Mizuno asks what we think. We tell him that it is rock solid and easy to drive, but we're not sure if it's as fast as the 911 Turbo. "Why don't you drive it for a few laps to compare," Mizuno says as he points to Nissan's own Porsche 911 Turbo test mule sitting at the end of pit lane. "Just two laps," Mizuno says.

Other than its roll cage and a competition seat, this 997-series Turbo is a stock model with a six-speed manual transmission. There are roughly 10,000 hard miles on it, but a thoroughly broken-in Turbo is still better than 99 percent of the cars on the road.

The Porsche is dead cold, so we take the first lap easy. Even at half speed, the 911 already feels surprisingly loose. It requires more steering input to get a response. Get on the brakes and it dives. Bend into a turn and it rolls. They're small movements, but compared to the GT-R they feel wildly exaggerated.

As we finish the first lap, we step it up a notch. In terms of pure power, the two cars feel very, very close. The Porsche's turbos come on a little more abruptly, but both cars are equal-size hammers at full boost. We dig hard on the 911's brakes at the end of the front straight and again we find more similarities than differences. The Turbo has a firm pedal that's easy to modulate, much like the GT-R.

Diving into the first turn is the real eye-opener, as the Turbo quickly gets a little unsettled. Like the GT-R, the 911 much prefers a steady throttle through the corner, but even when it settles down, we're still guessing where it wants to go. Steering corrections require far more input than the GT-R and the amount of body movement we get from the 911 is a stark reminder of just how buttoned down the Nissan is at speed.

If anything, the Turbo reminds us how much we like to do the shifting ourselves. The GT-R's dual-clutch setup is certainly faster and more efficient, but there's no substitute for the mechanical feel and driver involvement of a true manual linkage.

Keep Left
With the track work finished, we switch cars and head for a short loop on public roads. Mizuno has been quick to emphasize that the GT-R has a dual nature; he says the GT-R is "a supercar you can drive every day." We switch the Nissan's adjustable dampers to their softest setting, leave the transmission in automatic mode and recalibrate once again, this time to driving on the left side of the road.

For an engine that thrives at 6,000 rpm, this 3.8-liter V6 feels just fine at 1,500 rpm, too. That's good, since the transmission's automatic mode heads for fuel-sipping 6th gear as soon as possible. Of course, the slightest nudge of the throttle kicks the gearbox down to 4th. Ask for more and we're met with a slight delay before all the clutch plates and gears get lined up. Then it's wham, and we're off at full boost, wondering what the local speed limit might be.

The softer damping filters out some of the bumpier surfaces but it's still a stiff ride. Owners won't mind, but anybody in the passenger seat will. We expected the quick steering would feel twitchy on less-than-perfect pavement, but instead it's just a little on the high-maintenance side. In other words, no elbow-on-the-window-sill driving, but this car doesn't dive for the shoulder at every pothole, either.

Our only moment of "oh yeah, this is an all-wheel-drive supercar" comes when we pull a three-point turn in a parking lot. We hear what sounds like a couple of loose crescent wrenches fumbling around in the drivetrain when turning at full lock. Nothing is broken; it's just a little reminder that there are several differentials and driveshafts underneath the floor and they're not designed for slow, tight turns on dry pavement.

As we head back to the track, we confirm the usefulness of the navigation system as it manages to lead us in the right direction despite the Japanese voice commands. The rest of the interior isn't particularly impressive, since it's all about function instead of a style contest with other coupes in the $70,000 price bracket.

The Real Deal
Rolling back into the pits at Sendai, there's not much mystery left in the 2009 Nissan GT-R for us. Its world-beating lap time at the Nürburgring suggests this is one of the fastest production cars in the world. We wouldn't bet against it.

Then again, all-out capability doesn't mean much if you have to be a former Formula 1 driver to tap into it. That's not the case with the GT-R. It's well-balanced, forgiving and predictable in a way that allowed us to creep up to its limits without threatening to be the first ones to put a GT-R in a ditch.

The Porsche 911 Turbo puts it into perspective. The Nissan GT-R lives up to its billing as an affordable supercar that can go heads up with the world's best. The smiling engineer knew it and now we do, too.