Our page count of exposure for the 21st century Godzilla - so it would seem - is verging on favouritism, with evo dedicating room for a road test in Japan, a group road and track test in the UK - and no less than two front cover appearances. That’s not including the oodles of anticipation within Planet evo over the last year, and of course references whenever we can squeeze them in. And we’d do it all over again without shame - the GT-R is ultimately deserving.
The biggest gripe though, is that all the above was at the fingertips and soles of the UK team. The super Nissan has been bound for our sandy shores, thankfully, but by the time it does reach our very own fingertips and soles we’d surely be lost with what to do with it - dare I say, old news. That said, even if the highly anticipated unveiling in the Middle East was to be in 2012 we’d still be counting down the days. Actually there is not that long to wait at all, with the official arrival date for the jazzy Japanese GT-R scheduled for the first quarter of 2009.
But some people are more impatient than others, unwilling to sweat it out for the first influx of mad Nissan motors. So, if you’re like Mubarak Al-Mansouri (Nissan GTR Club moderator for the Middle East region) on hearing Nissan would be launching a new GT-R you probably hotfooted it down to your local Nissan dealership, 12 months ago, chequebook in hand. ‘It wasn’t officially announced that the GT-R was coming to the Middle East at that time,’ remembers Mubarak, ‘I just had to be the first person to have one.’
The procedure was fairly easy, with the call Mubarak had been waiting patiently for being patched through on July 9th 2008. The car was collected the following day from AL Masood Nissan in Abu Dhabi, registered and then driven by Mubarak to Beach road in Dubai where we eagerly waited the distinctive front-end of the GT-R to arrive. Armed to the teeth with scissors and sun cream we were about to strip this very GT-R of its plastic sheeting - the seats, door trim, carpets, handbrake, gear-shifter and sun visors. Seeing the car for the very first time on the open road is a cherished moment, This was ten birthdays all rolled into one. The engine is left running while we feverishly start to strip the GT-R clean of polythene. There was also an import sticker, shipping tags and official port paperwork taped to all of the windows to tend to as well. It looked like a crime-scene, evidence screened off, the floor dressed with sticky paper to maintain a clinical cleanliness. A note on the temporary white paper flooring states that it is the responsibility of the Nissan dealer to de-robe the car and install the sealed floor mats, found in the huge boot. We’d been granted permission to tackle this somewhat silly but seriously significant exercise. It doesn’t sound like much of an exclusive, but knowing we’d soon be the first people to park our rumps on the rather special seats and grip our hands on the unsheathed steering wheel is worthy of the further eight pages we now bring you, of the fanfare GT-R. And what a steering wheel, what a car and what a surprise to find that we were not in charge of any old Nissan, but a Premium Edition GT-R with unique VVIP Golden Package trim. Unlike the standard GT-R, the VVIP includes special trim and stitching to mark the rather special limited edition pre-delivery models. This particular VVIP GT-R is finished in Super Silver Metallic; a $ 3000 option, this shade featuring extra-fine metallic flakes in the paintwork, an additional spray of clear coat beneath the final colour and - here comes the really expensive bit - an entire body shell that is hand polished not once, but after every single layer of paint and lacquer is applied. This is topped off with a unique ‘cushion coat’ paint on its nose, a finish designed to absorb the impact of a flying stone before it can chip the surface. Mizuno and his team spent their time testing it using a room full of prototype bonnets, an air rifle and a big bag of peanuts. But these sort of thing don't come as cheap as the peanuts used to develop them, but then you do get a letter signed by Nissan GT-R Chief Vehicle Engineer/Chief Product Specialist Kazutoshi Mizuno. The letter reads: 'We congratulate you on your decision to own one of the most anticipated and acclaimed supercars in the world today.
The NISSAN GT-R VVIP PROGRAMME has been designed to provide special customers like you with the opportunity to enjoy the thrill of driving this supercar, months ahead of other customers in your region.
A limited number of vehicles with unique features, such as gold trim parts, have been prepared and will only be available to participants in this program. From this day, you will be one of the few fortunate customers to experience the legendary performance, revolutionary engineering and inspired craftsmanship of the new Nissan GT-R. This vehicle is a unique multi-dimensional performance machine that lives up to the concept of an ultimate supercar for anyone, anywhere, anytime. We are also pleased to inform you that your Nissan GT-R was meticulously inspected after production in Japan. Nissan welcomes you to the GT-R legend.'
Mubarak is proud of this nicely presented letter, he’s proud of the last piece of polythene scrunched up in his hands too. The meticulous fashion he tore the shipping document from the inside of the windscreen a reminder of how special this car is to this particular owner. He is a lucky individual, then again Nissan are lucky to have him as a customer. ‘It’s a keeper, my collectable,’ he says with a big grin.
We don’t blame him either, as there is very little to bore of. It’s early days for sure, crickey the car has only got a handful of test miles under its hood - a specific number to help bed the components in before the key is handed over to the customer. Yes today is a wafer thin excuse to get some early seat time in one of the most talked about cars of recent times. This, after all, is a car that has shamed the 911 GT3, taken the attention away from the Audi R8 and stunned the Corvette Z06 in our most recent test (evo 015).
It would make more sense to wait until we can open up the taps on the twin-turbo V6, as of now only minimal throttle inputs are suggested by the factory until the car is fully run in and accustomed to this market’s demanding climate. Instead of hair-raising tail whips around the tight turns of the Dubai Autodrome, or kamikaze tarmac runs through the desert, we are plodding about like senior citizens down Beach road, hugging Dubai’s 'Venice Beach' coastline and being overtaken by joggers braving the post 50-degree heat.
Ok, a bit pointless in a way, but a whole weekend could be written-off in itself investigating the endless information on the centre console display. And another weekend perving over the design; the B-2 stealth bomber instrumental in inspiration for this style and its execution so says GT-R designer Hiroshi Hasegawa. Remember, the GT-R has a loyal following here in the Middle East, but with previous Skyline-based generations only available in right-hand drive, registering it was snubbed out a while back. There have been a few botched left-hand drive conversions donned with Dubai plates, but by and large the prior editions have been shoehorned into redundancy or tweaked for track-only use. With left-hand drive now an option for the R35 GT-R the Middle East can once again embrace the glorious aura that is the Godzilla. The US will also have a slice of the Skyline; finally, the GT-R being the global product it should have been from the outset. In North America it will actually wear the same Nissan tag it gets in the rest of the world rather than the Infiniti badge. And you just know it is going to be a resounding success, for any time spent pouring over the YouTube on-track postings should have confirmed this already.
Our first turn at the wheel of the Skyline GT-R R35 (as it really should be known) is a million miles away from the supersonic record slaying stabs at the NŸrburgring; check out
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnDx6okrcd4.
But how would this car cope with the intense heat? An equally intense stretch of track time this year at the Dubai's Autodrome answered that one. How would it deal with the rudimentary reality that is Dubai daily nose-to-tail traffic? Well we can answer that one: Flick the Nissan’s dampers into comfort and set the double-clutch transmission to automatic and it’s strangely good at tinkering around in traffic. It’s a little jarry over speed bumps, but the taut chassis and quick steering make mincemeat of the narrow back roads; even the turning circle is impressive. Remarkable indeed, but what really impresses is the way this thing feels as a whole. It’s a digitally controlled car yet at the same time it has a sense of real, hefty analogue engineering to it too. There’s an incredible tautness, a sort of dense feeling of muscle and potency to the GT-R that it’s impossible not to get hooked on. It is clearly straining at the leash though, this much we learn as we roll into a narrow car-lined road that hugs the palm tree beach, padding slowly up and down the main drag looking for somewhere to take pictures, as sun seekers paddle in the shallows of the shore. But it’s only when we finally manage to find a space beside two teams of volleyball players mid-game that we get the first sense of the GT-R’s impact here in the Middle East.
It doesn’t exactly stop the game as I expect, but the ball goes AWOL when we cruise by. We park up next to a yellow FJ Cruiser. ‘The new Skyline, how did you get your hands on one of these so soon?’ says the owner. We get the same response - in a passing expression - from a chap running along the beach in embarrassingly butt-hugging swimming trunks. He’d obviously seen the car before, in our magazine. While we snigger at his Speedos, Godzilla gathers up a greater crowd, creating a buzz. Heads swivel, cars slow up, even the police stop us just to compliment the owner for his impeccable taste in cars. ‘Just waiting for the force to order us some Skyline’s,’ is the translation Mubarak gives me from the Emirati police officer. He laughs as he drives off, replaced by a new wave of passers by, asking permission to take a snap of the silver GT-R, even though admittedly most refer to it as a Skyline. Wiping away another stream of sweat from his eyes, as he lays on the scorching tarmac for a slick new angle of this exclusive car, photographer Alejandro has to request the continued crowd to back away out of the shot. Even the people with no idea of what a GT-R is, or the segment it has broken wide apart, show sizable interest in this magnificent-looking brute of a car, sat glinting in the afternoon sun. Granted, a GT-R, as a one-off here is a sight to behold, a gifted spectacle that was a joy to be a part of. But will the visual impact and excitement wear thin once the first big order of GT-R's hit the region next year?
On the way back to the office we line up next to a 911 Turbo, then at the next lights a Z06. The urge to ignore the trigger-happy speed camera aimed at our rear number plate, the necessity to nurse the car for the next few thousand kms and the fact the owner is sat next to me - and just gun it - was overwhelming. I can just picture the scene now though; the first time an owner in the Middle East ventures beyond the run-in stage in this car, with an army of 911s to dispatch at any given turn. I mean even driving the GT-R at a snail's pace I had an honest understanding of what truly made it tick - and knew that the urge to deploy every bhp at every opportunity would be seriously hard to resist, for any owner.
MAKING A GT-R
Around eighty thousand dollars. That’s about what a GT-R will cost in the Middle East. $ 10K over the base price of a Corvette Z06 but a whole lot less than a 911 Turbo. Which is all the more remarkable when you consider just how complicated and finely detailed its development was.
Most modern cars might spend a few weeks in a physical wind tunnel for aero fine tuning. The GT-R was in there for two years, much of it at Lotus in Norfolk, because it has one of the few facilities with a high-speed rolling road in the floor. Compare the original GT-R concept to the finished car and you can see how aero demands battered the original smooth form into something more functional.
A madly pan-global test programme can’t have come cheap either. Nor can the remarkably lavish way in which this car is built. Each bodyshell is welded together under tension on a rig that ensures absolute precision, then is clamped to a four-post shaker that tests its weld integrity and ultimate stiffness. If it’s not up to micron-precise spec, it gets rejected.
Meanwhile, the axle assemblies are put together on hydraulic jigs that replicate the weight of the finished car so that the basic geometry is bang on. And even this seems sloppy in comparison to the engine line, where pistons are fed into their plasma-lined cylinders with a gnat’s pube’s clearance under strictly centigrade-controlled conditions to avoid variance caused by the metals expanding or contracting with minute differences in temperature.
When the whole lot is brought together, the twin-turbo V6 is canted slightly forwards in the car, because only when it tips back on its mounts under hard acceleration does it form a perfect line from output to transaxle, minimising frictional losses when you least want them.
After final assembly, every single GT-R gets a 27-km shakedown around a track that features sections designed to replicate different road surfaces around the world. Where each car is heading dictates which bits of replica road it’s driven on, and if the car feels out of sorts, the suspension is adjusted to suit.
Despite all of this, Nissan claims the GT-R will make money. Not a lot, but it’s not a loss-leading flagship that needs subsidy from shifting another field full of Sunny’s. Under the tight purse-strings of Carlos Ghosn, no car is allowed to make a loss. All of which makes the estimimated $ 80,000 price tag seem pretty remarkable. Frankly, I reckon it sounds like the bargain of the century.
Engine V6, twin-turbo Location Front, longitudinal Displacement 3799cc Bore x stroke 95.5 x 88.4mm Cylinder block Aluminium alloy Cylinder head Aluminium alloy, dohc per bank,4v per cylinder, variable valve Fuel and ignition Electronic engine management multipoint fuel injection Max power 473bhp @ 6400rpm Max torque 434lb ft @ 3200-5200rpm Transmission Six-speed dual-clutch transmission, ATTESA ET-S four-wheel Front suspension Double wishbones, coil springs, DampTronic dampers, anti-roll Rear suspension Multi-link, coil springs, DampTronic dampers, anti-roll bar Brakes Cross-drilled and vented discs,380mm front and rear, Wheels 9.5 x 20in front, 10.5 x 20in rear, aluminium alloy Tyres 255/40 ZR20 front, 285/35 ZR20 rear, Bridgestone RE070R RFT Weight (kerb) 1740kg Power-to-weight 276bhp/ton 0-100kph 3.8sec Top speed 310kph (claimed) Basic price $ 80,000 (estimate) On sale 2009 EVO Rating *****(5 star)
timing
drive, rear limited-slip differential, VDC-R
bar
ABS, BA, EBD, Preview Braking
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