Nissan R35 GT-R v Porsche 911 997 Turbo 2008 Comparison

The Skyline arrived before the Turbo - literally, not figuratively, of course. The weather was set fine, our test roads were empty and there seemed little point in hanging around for the appearance of the Porsche. So, with the owner's permission, I went off for an exploratory outing, a systems check, a familiarisation period.

Above and beyond all the other facts about the Skyline that I learned that day - most of which were hyperbolic - realising that the Nissan requires the shortest familiarisation period of any fast car in my experience was perhaps the most important. Yes, the GT-R, is about to disrupt the comfortable world of the European super-dooper-coupe in a manner that not even its precocious predecessors managed.

Great technological leaps in automotive hardware are a strange phenomenon to judge because all too often their significance is clouded by their seamless introduction into the motoring world. They are so inherently right, so good at what they set out to achieve, that they simply blend into the process of driving, so that the driver very quickly assumes that this is the way the world has always been.

The GT-R is to fast road cars what the mobile phone is to personal communication; you wonder what feckless creatures we must have been to have survived without them. This is the crux of the new GT-R; it is a new type of sports car. It is a baby Veyron.

You climb into the GT-R via a Aston Martin DB9-style extending door lever. The cabin dimensions don't justify the large exterior - this is a big, big car - but shuffled down into the leather seat and having juggled with the wheel, you can select an excellent driving position. There is no key, just an electronic fob that opens the doors and whose presence then sanctions a push on the large red starter button.

That pushed, the 3799cc, twin-turbo V6 fires with no more drama than a 350Z and settles to a burbling idle that sounds very GT-R indeed. Plonk the gearlever back to D, brush the throttle and the car tootles away from rest as the driver familiarises himself with the surroundings.

The scuttle is high, the dash voluminous and imposing with more than a hint of Ferrari 550 about its shape and detail.

You push and prod things, glide a hand over various surfaces and reach the conclusion that time, money and effort have been lavished here like no GT-R before it. You look down and see that the gear indicator in the clock set is displaying the figure '6'. But you only remember one gearchange.

That was from first to second - and as the cogs enmeshed, there was a slight judder through the car's structure. You remember feeling that, but your brain has no recorded information on the subsequent four gearchanges actioned by the double-clutch transmission. Something to investigate later.

At tame speeds, in its base chassis setting, the GT-R is harsh. It crashes into anything deeper than a cereal bowl, fidgets most of the time and turns the humble cat's-eye into a rowdy member of the percussion section. This is very disappointing; you wait all this time to drive a GT-R and then it seems that spring rates taken from an early Mercedes G-Wagen scupper its ride on regular roads.

But then you notice the script 'comfort' winking on the dashboard and pull down on the paddle switch. The change is in no way dramatic, but in the context of what will happen over the coming hours, it is crucial. The ride settles slightly, and even if the boisterous Bridgestone RE070 run-flat tyres still roar, the car is no longer deflected by the road's topography.

So, with comfort setting engaged, you push the throttle towards the front bulkhead. The gearbox accomplishes a sixth-to-second shift whose speed and smoothness is beyond the capability of any mortal being, and the car begins to chew asphalt.

Where do you start with this machine? The 588Nm it produces from 3200rpm that barely feels turbocharged? The steering that has been so expertly developed that it makes it easy to thread this bulky car down narrow roads? The preposterous levels of adhesion achieved at all times? On reflection, we'll start with the bit that matters, with the component that binds these rare talents together into something meaningful: the transmission.

Two large, metal paddles appear from behind the R35's steering wheel like elf's ears. Pull the left one and it shifts down, pull the right one and the car selects a higher gear. That is all you need to know to drive the GT-R.

And whereas the same could be said of a Tiptronic Porsche, the immediacy and smoothness of the R35's gearchanges makes any other hydraulically actuated manual system (or doctored automatic) seem, at once, completely obsolete. It fashions forward momentum from situations that don't seem to offer such an opportunity. With the able assistance of four driven wheels, this gearbox means that were you to plot a graph of available power and torque against the amount actually being deployed, the GT-R would register a flat line. You push, it goes. Accordingly, I now have grave fears for the 911.

Yet once it's travelling over some desolate road at a decent pace, the Porsche soon counters with a very different (and, some might argue, more relevant) take on high performance. Wheel travel and ride comfort are its initial weaponry. The tyres feel semi-inflated after the Nissan, and whereas the GT-R seems to want to beat the road into submission, the Porsche wants to accommodate the surface. It's a small distinction but one that will prove critical later on. It's an amazing thing, the Turbo - a car of confused physics that chews straights, stops with the force of a racing car and scoots through most bends at demon speeds.

Where the Nissan can feel slightly detached, the Porsche pulls you into the process of driving. It yaws and pitches, dives and shimmies. The wheel loads and unloads more obviously and the general feeling, having just driven the GT-R, is that the Turbo is simply too soft and underdamped.

Push harder, however, and it gets better. If it were legal, you'd discover just how capable and enjoyable the Turbo can be.

But how can it be that a car weighing over 150kg more than the Porsche - one with less torque and narrower rear tyres - feels just as agile? Furthermore, how can it feel the quicker point-to-point device? Mostly it's that transmission; all the time spent flailing about with the stick between the 911's two front seats is employed in the business of going forwards in the GT-R.

But despite not feeling as delicate and not dealing with bumps anything like as well as the Porsche, the Nissan isn't slowed by them. The car's suspension has immense control over the bodyshell's movement and this gives the driver great confidence - more confidence than the 911 gives its driver.

Don't confuse this as a simple analogue-versus-digital exchange, either. If the Porsche is the more characterful, the Nissan is still dripping with charisma, partly because anything that can demolish a road the way it does is going to enthral any car lover, but also because it's so interactive.

It's as a static object, as something to see on your driveway, that the Nissan is perhaps the biggest surprise of the year. I was expecting shoddy plastics, horrid carpets and a general feeling of the price tag covering some fine mechanicals and then Nissan subsequently bunging an iffy interior in for free. Not a sign of such tricks; the clock faces are brash and technical, the electronic gauges in the centre console are a source of endless amusement and the leather sections on the dashboard actually look, feel and smell like leather.

By comparison, the Porsche feels no more expensive. Okay, its door trims are smothered in dead cow and this particular car is drowning in carbonfibre, but otherwise it just feels smaller. Not more expensive.

But it's no secret that Nissan pursued the 997 Turbo as its benchmark during the GT-R's development, so it seems entirely fair to place it against that car, regardless of the price differential. Even if they were equally priced, any objective assessment of these vehicles' attributes would have to conclude that the Nissan was the better car. Remarkable, but true.

The few areas in which the Porsche is superior are in ride comfort, straightline braking from very high speeds and steering - and only in the first category is the advantage clear-cut. The Nissan has more available performance, more grip, better stability, a bigger cabin and superior traction.

There is a spooky air of invincibility about the GT-R, and that's what validates the 'baby-Veyron' comparison. The Bugatti is the only other vehicle I've driven that provided such staggering on-demand performance, such a feeling of omnipotence. Somehow it seems unfair to mention that the R35 costs a fair chunk less than half the sum Porsche wants for a new 997 Turbo with ceramic brakes. Progress is thrilling for the consumer but cruel to the competition. The Turbo must respond, and soon, because the GT-R is the undisputed winner here.

Words & photos: Autocar