We thrash the Nissan GT-R, let our readers drive, and meet its maker

Nissan Middle East debuted the 2013 Nissan GT-R “For Track Pack” in Dubai last week at the Dubai Autodrome. The new model isn’t a big change, aside from a retuned suspension and further weight loss, and we didn’t get to drive it either. But Nissan had two 2012 GT-R test cars lined up on the track, with pro instructors in the passenger seat. With Nissan GT-R creator Kazutoshi Mizuno and his team hanging around. And we were told to bring in a couple of our Facebook fans as well for a drive!

“Mizuno-san” started off the afternoon with a presentation on the latest iteration of the GT-R, in broken English no less. He introduced us to the other three top people in his project crew, one of them a woman who only crunches computer data!

He spoke about how a car should have the “right weight” instead of just being lightweight with a big engine. He claims that the GT-R has the right weight for its size and power, based on his team’s calculations. He said lightweight cars like the McLaren MP4-12C and the Porsche GT3 RS are great for cornering, but can’t put the power down on the straights because they’re too light. And that the Bugatti Veyron is only good for straight lines. Judging by what he’s making a “heavy” car do, we can’t argue with that.

He also mentioned that they will keep chasing the Nurburgring record publicly, and with completely showroom-stock cars. He claims that certain other carmakers set their own lap records using special tyres that are only installed on a limited number of showroom cars in the early days of production, before switching to cheaper tyres for the rest of the customer cars. Either way, the latest ‘Ring time for the standard 2013 GT-R now stands at 7 minutes 18.6 seconds, shaving 3 seconds off the 2012 model’s run, without an increase in power; using aerodynamics, engine-response tuning, body-strengthening and suspension-tuning alone. And it can now do the 0-100 kph run in 2.7 seconds, in ideal conditions of course. It is apparently now the second-fastest production car around that German track on stock tyres.

After the detailed presentation, we headed onto the track to drive last year’s models, since we couldn’t tell the difference anyway. I’m no expert at track driving, but with a competent instructor in the passenger seat, it was the first time that I managed to push the GT-R to its ultimate limits.

With Mizuno’s presentation still in my head, and the instructor telling me when to floor either the throttle or the brake pedal, I had the confidence to explore the edges of the GT-R’s dynamics. The car is just too damn easy to drive fast, as long as you know what you’re doing and are brave enough to trust it. In fact, the instructor later told me he was making me brake too early, which I noticed, because I was going into corners slower than I would’ve expected.

Still, flooring it on sweeping corners and jiggling it through “S” curves at speeds I’ve never seen before, I still contend that this car is uncrashable (unless you’re a total moron). The Autodrome is an interesting track with some funky banking turns, and I actually managed to make it understeer for a split-second while coming out of a sharp uphill turn, only for the car’s computers to kill the untoward behaviour and letting me speed away.

Later, the GT-R project’s head test driver, an older Japanese gentleman, gave us hot laps in the new Track Pack model, and he made it understeer in that exact same spot, while the rest of the run didn’t seem whole lot quicker than mine. He even drove with the ESP on (in “R” mode) and off (killing the warranty, of course), and it seemed to be less “perfect” with the ESP fully off, feeling a little squirrelly on some turns. But it shows how easy it is to drive the GT-R fast. With a bit of training, anyone can slay richboy-driven Italian supercars while half-asleep around corners.

After that, some of our top fans got to drive the car. Nissan had asked me to bring along a couple of our Facebook fans for this event, but I wasn’t sure what they’d be allowed to do. Instead of holding a competition and risking potential winners not showing up on a weekday morning, I called some of the regulars from our meets who I knew wouldn’t let me down. There were only two spots and I called in four people. One still dropped out due to work at the last minute, and in the end, it was Rahul, Abdul and Hammad. They all got the chance to drive with an instructor as well as take hot-laps with the test-driver, although one of them didn’t have a licence so he just rode along. Interestingly, we let several more of our readers drive the GT-R last year as well.

Cars like the Nissan GT-R are a rarity nowadays. No other carmaker in the world has managed to create an accessible supercar-beater for the price of a BMW 7-Series. Even the outgoing Lexus LFA and the new Honda NSX are expensive and reserved for the uber-rich, and we’re guessing they still won’t be able to match the GT-R’s capabilities on a twisty track, let alone Ferraris and Lamborghinis. This will likely be Mizuno’s last project before he retires, and he’s going out with a bang.