GTR

It's a hundred and fifteen degrees Fahrenheit on the shimmering tarmac of Las Vegas Motor Speedway and there's a desert wind coming in from the West that feels like God's hairdryer. In this brutal desert environment any human being exposed to the elements for too long would shrivel up like a banana slug in a microwave oven. Convenient then, that this particular human being is currently sitting in a Monster.

A Monster with air-conditioning. Actually, it's getting a bit nippy in here, I'd better turn it down a little. Brrr.

The Monster in question is “Godzilla”, the nickname carried by Nissan's new supercar GT-R. A car that has garnered more press recently than a Britney Spears haircut. A car that is generating more expectant hype than Brangelina's baby. A car, in short, that has every gearhead either drooling in anticipation or warming up their scoffing muscles.

But perhaps a quick recap is necessary if you've been living in a cave. On Mars. With your eyes shut and your hands over your ears.

The Nissan GT-R's heritage stretches back to the sixties when it dominated Japanese racing series. Then nothing very much exciting happened for a while. Moon landings and fuel crisises mostly.
In 1989 the twin-turbocharged, all-wheel-drive GT-R arrived in its first R32 designation and proceeded to win the Japanese Touring Car Championship title for four consecutive years, was the first production car to lap the Nürburgring in under eight minutes, and was so dominant in racing that it was generally handicapped with weight and power-restriction penalties.

This latest incarnation, chassis designation R35, has been coming our way since being revealed as a concept at the Tokyo Auto Show way back in 2001. Since then, there's been spy shots of heavily camoflauged prototypes being tested, unofficial lap times, leaked technical specifications, an early Japan-only release, and the more recent news that two GT-Rs have been unloaded at Annacis Island in Vancouver and are awaiting customs clearance.

It's still a twin-turbocharged, all-wheel-drive beast, but Nissan is now calling the GT-R an “everyday supercar” and pitting it against the likes of the Corvette Z06 and the Porsche 911 twin turbo.
The new GT-R has destroyed everything in every parameter of every comparison test in every major automotive magazine in the last six months, and now I'm sitting in one at the starting line of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway road course, waiting to see if Godzilla is really a monster, or just a man in a silly rubber suit.

Does it live up to the hype?

Oh yes, yes indeedy.

Sweet sassy molassy, does it ever!

With all three adjustable parameters (suspension, throttle response, traction control) put to their “R” race settings, I pin the drive-by-wire throttle wide open and hang on for dear life as the GT-R rockets to 60 mph in less than four seconds. Then it's hard on those enormous six-piston brakes, each one the size of a smaller car's entire wheel, and into the sharp right-hander. There's so much cornering grip I fully expect the tarmac behind me to be ripped up as though by the claws of some prehistoric beast, but there's no time to check the rear view as the GT-R wriggles through some fast bends without any drama, just pouring on the power like a force of nature.

Gear-changes happen in the blink of an eye (half a blink actually) in a near seamless wave of lag-free acceleration. The brakes can stop you faster than running smack into a block of depleted uranium, but it's so easy to modulate their ferocious bite. The all-wheel-drive system is balanced and free of any understeering tendencies. But the really special thing is how the car works as a whole.

If a Mazda MX-5 Miata is supposed to fit like slipping on a pair of driving gloves, the GT-R is like one of those exoskeletal cargo-loaders from Aliens II, powerful and brutal. Better yet, it's Ironman's power-suit, seemingly invincible and transmitting every input into staggering performance.

Its electronic wizardry doesn't ever feel as though it's interfering, it just enhances your driving experience, making a slight correction here, adding a touch of brakes there. Confidence in my own abilities may not be absolute, but in this car, I'm Michael Schumacher crossed with Juan Michael Fangio, Jackie Stewart crossed with Ayrton Senna, Gilles Villeneuve crossed with... whoopsie...

Yikes, that last chicane was a bit awkward, but where a normal car might have spun, the GT-R stepped in for a split-second and routed some extra power to the front wheels to pull me out of the frying pan
But it's time to pull into the pit-lanes, and step out of air-conditioned comfort into the firey Nevada desert. Is the new Nissan GT-R the most amazing thing I've ever driven? An unequivocal “Yes”.