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22 - The Oakville Beaver, Wednesday September 10, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com FAMILY OWNED & OPERATED You'll Love Our Service! 905-335-4080 BURLINGTON LINE The long wait for Nissan's awesome GT-R was worth it By Jim Robinson METROLAND MEDIA GROUP GT-R almighty! If you follow new car introductions, there hasn't been anything quite like the buzz surrounding the 2009 Nissan GT-R supercar. I know the media publicity over the Dodge Challenger is also at a fever pitch, but the GT-R is different. The Challenger is a known quantity. It builds on the Muscle Car era that is now looked back upon with great nostalgia. But for North Americans, few have ever heard about Nissan's string of hyper-strung, hubris-spitting coupes called the Skyline. Outside of Japan, the only time it surfaced was in those lurid road rage video games. With power equal to a Porsche Turbo, getting noticed in a world already well populated with serious performance cars like the Audi R8 and Corvette ZR1 takes some doing. Nissan started the jungle telegraph going two years ago with little snippets here and there along with rumors of fantastic power that the media around the world jumped on. I mean, getting the auto news first is my job, right? Slowly but surely, more info trickled out until the car broke cover at the Los Angeles and Detroit auto shows. I was there and you had to pry people away just to take a photo. Nissan makes a point of calling the GT-R "the ultimate supercar that can be driven by anyone, anytime, anywhere". And that's true ... to a point. You can drive this car to the variety store to get a bag of milk, but just a whiff of throttle and vast amount of power in that engine is like the Genie in the bottle, aching to get out. The GT-R features an all-new, hand-built VR series 3.8litre twin turbo V6 producing 480 hp and 430 lb-ft of torque. The GT-R also features Nissan's ATTESA ET-S AWD system as well as an all new GR6 six-speed dual clutch transmission for optimum performance. While this describes the car in a nutshell, there is so much more that goes into it. Getting 480 hp from just 3.8 litres takes a lot of cooling and a lot of lubrication. There is a a lateral wet and dry sump oiling system. The two turbos get extra oil thanks to a scavenger pump. The engine in the front sends power through an all new, six-speed automatic transaxle that is located at the rear and incorporates a limited slip differential. This transaxle houses a dual clutch system (one for 1,3,5 and the other for 2,4,6). Left in either Drive or shifted sequentially by steering wheel-mounted paddles, shifts are lightning fast and the system even pre-selects the next highest or lowest gear. Hill Start Assist is a handy extra. I drove the car home in Drive and found the gearbox shifted faster than I was comfortable with ... at first. It was so quick, the readout on the dash was the only way I could tell what gear I was in. Coming to a stop, the box clicked down like a metronome. In sequential, and I'm not of fan as most readers know, the car was at its best. With all that power in reserve and the flexibility (especially for turbo), you could really start to motor. Getting the power to the ground is by an all-wheel-drive system specially adapted for the GT-R. Torque split is normally biased 0 to the front and 100 to the rear. Depending on tire slip, road surface, speed, steering angle and lateral acceleration, it can shift up to 50:50 front:rear. This is further fine-tuned with a yaw-rate feedback control specific to the GT-R. The front and rear independent suspensions are each attached to a six-point subframe. A special Bilstein DampTronic driver adjustable shock absorber system utilizes multiple vehicle information systems to provide appropriate damping forces and high level of control for a variety of driving situations. The DampTronic system features three driver selectable settings - Normal; Comfort, for maximum suspension compliance; or "R," for ultimate handling. The same three-stage adjustability is available for the Vehicle Dynamic Control (VDC) system (Nissan's version of pitch and yaw control) and transmission shift operation, which also includes a Snow mode. The brakes are huge. The 15-inch cross-drilled, two-piece rotors with four-piston calipers fit inside 20-inch alloy wheels with nitrogen-filled high performance Bridgestone summer tires. These things are so sticky that, when you get them warmed up, the surface feels almost like warm Mozzarella cheese on a pizza. With the weight distribution of 53:47 thanks to the engine at the front and the transaxle at the rear, the GT-R is not a nervous car. The big thing is the crux of the weight split is right beneath the front seats, so you can actually understeer or oversteer the car depending on your skill and It's been a long time coming, but the Nissan GT-R has the power, technology and aggressive looks to propel the Japanese automaker into the supercar segment. nerve and how you set up the VDC. Besides the sensation of speed, the other is of weight. You feel this through the steering wheel, and with the shocks set to "R" the vehicle rides like a buckboard, but man, does it ever make short work of the twisty bits. I never got a chance to really let the GT-R loose. In a way it's like having a pet cheetah in an apartment. Decked out in blood red, I watched with amusement as I passed through an OPP radar trap at 100 km/h on cruise and saw one constable shaking his head because he was just lusting to pull me over. Top speed, by the way, is 310 km/h. Acceleration from 0-60 mph is 3.4 seconds and fuel consumption is 13.2L/100 km city, 9.4L/100 km. Continued on Page 25