Driving Godzilla
The GT-R is just silly fast, by far the fastest and most capable thing I’ve ever driven in my life. I’ve never experienced such acceleration before in something I drove (it rips 0-60 in sub 3.5 seconds) and, in R-modes, the handling and how fast the DSG switched gears (blipping perfectly of course) was really incredible. Steering inputs were insanely sharp, and it was just so predictable how each input (throttle, steering, gearbox, brakes) was completely separate and did not affect at all the others when you gave it some of any of them.
Example: I blasted off of a highway going like 80 in 5th and downshifted to 2nd by the end of the offramp (blipping the throttle perfectly the whole time) while doing a sweeper to the right and braking, and it was like, YAWN. No oversteer. No drama.
See a break in traffic where you want to be? YAWN. Squirt, you’re there.
Want to merge onto the highway and there’s a car parallel to your left in the slow lane? WHATEVER. depress your right foot a slight amount and, oh, he’s not there anymore. (instead, he’s now staring in front of him freaked the fuck out).
Actually, driving on public non-highway roads was really an exercise for me in not scaring the shit too much out of the other people on the road because you can gain and scrub off speed and give steering inputs and change gears at such a different quantum level from anything else on the road.
For example, I had people shoving on their brakes because I would be coming up to them just through normal acceleration for Godzilla at such a different pace — it was like they were standing still.
I drove like this and never probably hit any of its limits — never once did the tires even chirp (they are 285/35s I think in the rear). Even using launch control doesn’t chirp the tires from a standing start.
Whenever you were at a light or anywhere, you had to be careful because any petrolhead was staring at you instead of the road. We had a schmowhawk on a speedbike nearly crash because he was looking at Godzilla (the liquid silver paint color I was driving is an extra $3,000 option)… (Schmowhawk: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmohawk )
But all of this being said on one level of “holy shit this car is so insane”, I thought on another level, it was sort of not satisfying because it did this with just so little effort and drama.
You just KNEW you could do all of these things.
I’m just not sure how to describe it but it was just so much more capable than anything on a normal public road you either couldn’t enjoy it without getting arrested (and I really should have been arrested BTW), or you were just frustrated about driving around a supercar in the middle of people like Snoooki (yes I was driving in New Jersey) who didn’t know how to GET OUT OF MY WAY.
When at normal speeds, the thing didn’t feel fun enough to me (even on empty back roads). It felt like it was saying, “I’m frekin bored, DRIVE FASTER”
The exhaust note was not pleasant at any speed, BTW. Too buzzy, no passion. They need an italian dude to help out in tuning the exhaust.
It’s really another realm of servicing the car too. Need a brake job? (which you absolutely will at some point — the brakes are insane and beg you to use them) That costs thousands to replace the rotors and ceramic pads (I read $6k at the dealer).
If you have enough money to do this, this is probably a fun track car.
But for public roads …. I could see buying a 370Z Nissmo or a Porsche Cayman S and saving $30-50k, and wind up having a more satisfying experience driving the thing around town than I would rolling in Godzilla.
