A Nissan? An ultra-high-tech, brutally fast, and rabidly driver-focused Nissan? Unless they're keyed into Japanese console driving simulators, most Americans will regard the GT-R as a car that comes straight out of nowhere. Nissan's a sporty company for sure. But turning out Sentra SE-Rs and Z-cars is one thing; being a fully credentialed member of the Porsche-baiting supercar club is quite another.
In Japan, though, things couldn't be more different. Over there, successive generations of fast, high-performance Nissan GT-Rs, dating back more than three decades, have been carried shoulder-high on the imaginations of the gearhead populace. So the 2008 Nissan GT-R has a complex set of roles. On the home front, it must honor and perpetuate a noble tradition. Globally, it needs newness and impact for instant kudos among the high-power elite.
This is the design that'll do it. It was revealed by CEO Carlos Ghosn as the GT-R Proto at last fall's Tokyo auto show, but has since gone back more or less into hiding--even its official Web site has gone black. It was a six-month negotiation to secure this photo session, and still no one in the company will go on the record with even the most vague of technical specs. Word is the engineers are being left to work their voodoo in peace, and little more will be officially said until the 2007 Tokyo show.
But there's a lot we can be sure of, because even now heavily disguised prototypes are pounding around Germany's famed Nuerburgring Nordschleife, the toughest test track anywhere--a place where you could bottle the tire-and-clutch-perfumed air as essence of Porsche. For the last three generations of GT-R, a Porsche-beating 'Ring lap time has meant more to the Nissan engineers than any zero-to-60 or top-speed numbers.
The technology to do it has been remarkable. A turbo straight-six engine to provide brutal out-of-a-bend kick. An electronically modulated four-wheel-drive system to keep torque away from the front wheels to sharpen turn-in--with helping countersteer from an electronically controlled rear-wheel-steering system--and then channel effort frontward to prevent oversteer on exit, assisted at that point by stabilizing same-phase rear steer.
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