Nissan GT-R Nismo 2013 Review - International

The current road-going Nissan GT-R is generally ranked in motoring circles at a maximum level 10 in terms of neck-snapping acceleration and hernia-inducing cornering G-forces. The new GT-R Nismo, just unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show, elevates that level to a 12.

According to Nissan, the GT-R Nismo is the fastest ‘volume production car’ on the planet. With a phenomenal lap time of 7:08.679 around the famed Nurburgring, the Nismo only trails the Porsche 918 Spyder plug-in hybrid (by 11 seconds), a car that Nissan insists is not a volume production car. Hence Nissan’s bold claim.

Lap times are a relative thing, so we’ll leave the semantics up to the carmakers to squabble about.

Just to put this time into perspective, the original GT-R clocked a 7:38 while the 2009-spec GT-R posted a 7:27. Then, just one year ago, the current model coupe cut that time to 7:18.

So this latest Nismo time means that some 30 seconds have been sliced off that of the 2007 Nissan GT-R.

And that’s exactly what we expected from the GT-R, having been told at its 2007 debut by recently retired chief engineer Kazutoshi Mizuno, that Nissan would continue to improve the car every year. After seeing what this car is capable of, we can only wonder what Nissan could do to further improve on this.

But with cars like the GT-R Nismo and the Porsche, it’s all about the times. Lap times. Acceleration times. A time, however that Nissan has been so meticulous in promoting from the very beginning – the GT-R’s 0-100km/h sprint time – is strangely missing from the GT-R Nismo’s public relations spiel.

The current GT-R clocked just 2.7 seconds to reach 100km/h from a standing start. An informed source close to Nissan has suggested that the Nismo would “plough through the 100km/h barrier in a mind-boggling 2.5 seconds, meaning that it would now give the Bugatti Veyron a real run for its money. Translated, that means the Nismo could be the fastest-accelerating car ever.

So what has Nissan done to reach this goal?

Firstly, they’ve handed the GT-R over to their highly experienced racing arm Nismo for some high-tech upgrades. Nissan Motorsport, or Nismo for short, has decades of know-how in winning GT races with the GT-R.

In fact German driver Michael Krumm, who clocked the record ‘ring time, was the FIA GT1 champion in 2011 piloting a GT-R GT3. The same spec GT3 machine debuted in the 2013 Nurburgring 24-hours, challenging the front runners for the top grid positions.

Direct feedback from that race car to the GT-R Nismo made all the difference. Thanks to better breathing and larger turbos lifted from the GT-R GT3 race car, as well as a higher-pressure fuel pump and a tweaked ECU, the 3.8-litre V6 gets an extra 37kW, taking maximum power to 441kW at 6800rpm and 650Nm (up 22Nm).

And now, the new GT-R Nismo that’s causing so many headlines, is sitting right in front of us in pitlane at Sodegaura Forest Raceway near Tokyo, with its engine purring. We have four laps, four short laps to try to get near the limits of Japan’s greatest car ever supercar.

As we sling-shot ourselves out of the pits onto track, the torrent of power in the stock GT-R is now a tsunami of acceleration with even beefier mid-range torque. Nismo’s tinkering has not changed the character of this car. The mighty V6 still serves up bucket loads of linear power through the same six gear ratios, they simply do so freer, quicker and with a lot more punch.

The Nismo can generate and maintain obscene speed through corners, as witnessed by the dash-mounted display that read 1.8Gs in one corner. And all the while, the GT-R is coping with anything you throw at it, tempting you to push another five per cent, then another five per cent on your next lap.

The car’s continued resistance to understeer, along with a deliberately liberal attitude to rear wheel slip in Race mode, means that the tricky Atessa all-wheel drive system slides progressively, allowing some rear wheel rotation.

Steering responses are so immediate and reliable, that you simply choose a line, pour on the power and fly out the other side of each bend. This car was so stable at any speed we dared try that it cannot help but instill confidence in its driver, and make you feel like Mr Time Attack himself.

Bilstein DampTronic shocks with new Track, Race, and Race Plus modes are used all around, as are stiffer springs. New front links increase caster trail and improve the Nismo’s straight-line and cornering stability.

Dunlop supplies stickier 255/40-20 front and 285/35-20 rear tyres, and stronger bolts have been incorporated in the wheel-hub attachment area to stiffen the assembly. At the rear end, a hollow 17.3mm anti-roll bar has been fitted and the entire structure of the Nismo version has been stiffened up by a claimed eight per cent.

With all that power at your disposal, and the stability control set to 'Race', you can feel the rear end wanting to break loose, requiring minute inputs of opposite lock to keep the car on track. But on a dry, flat circuit, the GT-R has been designed to stay as neutral as possible so you never feel like it's about to bite back or shunt you off the road.

It’s worth noting though that the GT-R Nismo Nurburgring lap car featured an even more extreme aero pack, a chassis tuned specifically for the Nurburgring and weighs 50kg less than the standard GT-R Nismo you see here. This ‘time attack’ pack should be available as an option on Aussie cars.

On the surface, it is immediately apparent that the GT-R Nismo spec means business. The modifications to the exterior are all about weight reduction (only 20kgs subtracted) and downforce. The carbon-fibre additions are evidence of the lessons learned from the Japanese Super GT race car, and include a new wider front bumper, elongated back bumper and an even more purposeful rear spoiler.

The net result, which doesn’t impact the GT-R’s drag figure, is an additional 100kg of downforce at 300km/h. Red coloured highlighted inside and out also help differentiate the Nismo from its baby brother GT-R.

Wanting to give us a taste of the Nismo version’s potential, to push the envelope, professional racing driver Tetsuya Tanaka took us for two hot laps. Leaving his braking far later than we’d dare, he would dab the brakes on entry to get the weight forward, turn in, and then straight back on the gas earlier than we thought possible. That would induce the rear to rotate predictably creating a four-wheel drift that would require nothing but a flick of the wrist to counter oversteer and keep the progress in check. Mind-boggling stuff.

The GT-R Nismo will go on sale in late 2014. Nissan says that it will only build around 200 cars a year which, from what we here, is not dissimilar to what Porsche plans to do with its 918 Spyder.

The difference is of course, that at around $200,000 the Nismo will end up around one-fifth of the price of the Porsche. Nissan has just redefined the yardstick by which all supercars will be measured on the road, on the stopwatch and in the wallet. And it’s called the GT-R Nismo.

Images by Holiday Auto & Nissan Motors

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