Best Beast From the East: Nissan GT-R
I finally understand why gearheads call the most anticipated imported sports car of the year “Godzilla” when the GT-R’s true personality surfaces on a remote southern Vermont freeway on-ramp. The piece of concrete is desolate, straight, and steep enough to handle the GT-R’s gnarly “launch mode,” in which, after I flip a few switches, its twin-turbocharged V-6 revs to 4,500 rpm. I step off the brake, and the car erupts to 60 mph in just over three seconds. Godzilla likes. He lets out a throaty, bassy roar of approval accented with a high-pitched whir, a polyphonic machine noise that’s not unlike sitting wingside on a 737 as it climbs. Then I do it again. And again.
It’s not until my third or fourth on-ramp rally that I stop expecting the GT-R to flip out Transformer-style wings and thrust itself into the air mid-run. But thanks in part to a superstable all -wheel-drive setup, adjustable Bilstein shocks, and sticky nitrogen-filled racing tires, the car never feels out of control. I start to have that misplaced go-kart-track hope that somebody from NASCAR is watching in the shadows, waiting to tap me. I’ve been following the birth of Nissan’s tech-loaded, 911-killing machine for months; I’ve driven a virtual GT-R in the video game Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and watched footage of one jaw-dropping lap on the Nürburgring (YouTube it). In real life the car is even more thrilling, and easier to drive fast than I expected. But most surprising about this monster? It’s got manners. In town the GT-R is stupid-simple to drive, thanks to its smooth paddle-shifted automatic transmission. It doesn’t jerk in traffic; at slow speeds it’s almost as smooth as Ma’s old Maxima. It becomes a sleeper supercar.
As I cruise into a small town to grab a coffee and give the GT-R a break after our madness in the mountains, it catches a girl’s eye. “Nice car. The engine’s so quiet,” she says. An odd thing to say about one of the fastest production cars ever. I look back to the GT-R and hear it cooling, ticking ever so slightly, and think, Would Godzilla take that as a compliment? In its polite Japanese way, yes. But underneath those angles and planes, strange power lurks. The monster awaits another romp.
