2012 GT-R in the Rain 4 your viewing pleasures : )
#1
06-30-2011, 10:39 AM
2012 GT-R in the Rain 4 your viewing pleasures : )
If You're Not Laughing, You're Not Going Fast Enough
Rain, racetrack, 530-hp Nissan GT-R: fun on a bun.
* The more I read about the GT-R, the more I want to test drive one.
0-60 MPH in 2.9 sec
WoW
Posted by Sam Smith Wednesday, June 29, 2011 8:47:58 AM
I've driven a lot of weird cars in the rain. I've crashed in the rain, had moments of sheer panic in the rain, had a lot of fun in the rain. All of these moments came on a track, usually while racing; they occurred under controlled conditions, with little at risk and a lot of wide-open space. In the right circumstances, rain makes you feel invincible -- you slide around a lot at low speed, battling the elements, and live to tell the tale. You walk away thinking you're all Fangio Solberg Mud-Slide King, your world-class rally career just around the corner.
Fine, yes, whatever. As of now, all that experience goes out the window. It's irrelevant. I have never, ever felt as invincible as I did last week. In a 530-hp 2012 Nissan GT-R. On a race track. In a thunderstorm.
What we have here isn't so much a machine as an enormous, unstoppable speed explosion. Call it the all-weather critical mass, or maybe the only thing you'd drive to the apocalypse and back. If you can't make this computer-laden whizmachine do ridiculous wet things with your eyes closed, you officially have no pulse. <!--EndofExcerptMarker-->
The GT-R was revamped for 2012; in addition to a substantial power bump (2009–2011 models made a mere 485 hp), the car gained revised engine management and a few chassis tweaks. The aim was increased durability, more feedback and steering feel, and quicker acceleration.
I can't speak to the former, but on the latter three, the changes worked. The GT-R's steering is a bit better than it once was, its chassis is a bit more talkative, and the car whacks out of the hole at such an astonishing rate that your spine feels compressed for days.
Car and Driver steamed out a whopping 2.9 seconds to 60 mph using the standard "launch control" feature. The previous-generation car could only...
ONLY! HA! ONLY! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
(Ahem.)
...manage a time in the low three-second range. Feh. Amateur stuff.
So it rained on my track day. This was big-time Midwestern rain, the kind of thunderstorm that makes house pets hide in the cupboards and blows branches from trees. A window-rattler. I was at Gingerman Raceway, a small club track in southwest Michigan. I went there on my day off, with a fresh GT-R media loan and Nissan's permission to probe the car's handling limits. The reasoning was simple: I live in the city of Chicago. You screw around in a car like this on city streets, you kill people or lose your license. Or both. Doesn't sound like fun.
There was no lightning, only nonexistent visibility. The rain came, the track stayed open. And I started laughing. I'm still laughing. I don't remember stopping.
The trick to driving the GT-R fast in the wet is that there is no trick. If you are hackish and lazy, you can point it wherever you want it to go, and it will go there. If you leave the car's standard electronic stability control on, this magic happens regardless of speed or chassis loading. Turn it off, you occasionally have to deal with a tiny bit of understeer -- front-end slippage -- or back-end looseness under trail braking and rough throttle applications. Big throttle will kick the car's rear out over shifting, lumpy pavement, but big throttle also fixes it, shifting torque and yanking things back in line. It's a quick and businesslike shuffling, a shoop-shoop of the trunk lid that's there and gone before you have time to think much about it. Here, the only difference between hack driving and talent is the edges -- whether or not you lose small bits of speed here and there, on the fringes.
Chassis tuning is a funny thing. Some cars are fun in the dry but a handful in the wet, the result of too sharp a suspension setup or demanding, tread-free rubber. Others are great in the wet but slow in the dry, easy to drive but ultimately not making the most of their tires or engine output. The GT-R is neither. It works in any condition, and it remains entertaining and hugely capable no matter the weather. It weighs 3,859 pounds and costs a whopping $90,950 as I tested it (Premium trim and all), but those numbers are irrelevant. The Nissan would be a bargain at 150 percent of the price, and the curb weight, while substantial, never gets in the way of the chassis magic.
There are, naturally, drawbacks. Like previous GT-Rs, the '12 suffers a bit from computerization syndrome -- it's big and heavy and you know it, and it isn't a single-minded emotion-delivery device like a lot of smaller sports cars. But these are quibbles; people point to the Nissan's massive price tag and relatively low sales (just 877 cars in America last year, down from 1,730 in 2008) and blame the lack of blood-curdling feeling, but again, that's irrelevant. This is an intensely focused machine, and cars like that only speak to so many people. Hyperanalyzing things misses the point.
Regardless, the Nissan is pretty impressive. It wants to get the job done, and that job is almost always hauling the mail to the next time zone before you can so much as blink. No matter how you slice it, that's admirable stuff.
* MCF Member's post your thoughts...Do you like it ? Would you like to have one ? Would you like to test drive one ?
I know I would 4-Sure : )
Rain, racetrack, 530-hp Nissan GT-R: fun on a bun.
* The more I read about the GT-R, the more I want to test drive one.
0-60 MPH in 2.9 sec
WoWPosted by Sam Smith Wednesday, June 29, 2011 8:47:58 AM
I've driven a lot of weird cars in the rain. I've crashed in the rain, had moments of sheer panic in the rain, had a lot of fun in the rain. All of these moments came on a track, usually while racing; they occurred under controlled conditions, with little at risk and a lot of wide-open space. In the right circumstances, rain makes you feel invincible -- you slide around a lot at low speed, battling the elements, and live to tell the tale. You walk away thinking you're all Fangio Solberg Mud-Slide King, your world-class rally career just around the corner. Fine, yes, whatever. As of now, all that experience goes out the window. It's irrelevant. I have never, ever felt as invincible as I did last week. In a 530-hp 2012 Nissan GT-R. On a race track. In a thunderstorm.
What we have here isn't so much a machine as an enormous, unstoppable speed explosion. Call it the all-weather critical mass, or maybe the only thing you'd drive to the apocalypse and back. If you can't make this computer-laden whizmachine do ridiculous wet things with your eyes closed, you officially have no pulse. <!--EndofExcerptMarker-->
The GT-R was revamped for 2012; in addition to a substantial power bump (2009–2011 models made a mere 485 hp), the car gained revised engine management and a few chassis tweaks. The aim was increased durability, more feedback and steering feel, and quicker acceleration. I can't speak to the former, but on the latter three, the changes worked. The GT-R's steering is a bit better than it once was, its chassis is a bit more talkative, and the car whacks out of the hole at such an astonishing rate that your spine feels compressed for days.
Car and Driver steamed out a whopping 2.9 seconds to 60 mph using the standard "launch control" feature. The previous-generation car could only...
ONLY! HA! ONLY! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
(Ahem.)
...manage a time in the low three-second range. Feh. Amateur stuff.
So it rained on my track day. This was big-time Midwestern rain, the kind of thunderstorm that makes house pets hide in the cupboards and blows branches from trees. A window-rattler. I was at Gingerman Raceway, a small club track in southwest Michigan. I went there on my day off, with a fresh GT-R media loan and Nissan's permission to probe the car's handling limits. The reasoning was simple: I live in the city of Chicago. You screw around in a car like this on city streets, you kill people or lose your license. Or both. Doesn't sound like fun. There was no lightning, only nonexistent visibility. The rain came, the track stayed open. And I started laughing. I'm still laughing. I don't remember stopping.
The trick to driving the GT-R fast in the wet is that there is no trick. If you are hackish and lazy, you can point it wherever you want it to go, and it will go there. If you leave the car's standard electronic stability control on, this magic happens regardless of speed or chassis loading. Turn it off, you occasionally have to deal with a tiny bit of understeer -- front-end slippage -- or back-end looseness under trail braking and rough throttle applications. Big throttle will kick the car's rear out over shifting, lumpy pavement, but big throttle also fixes it, shifting torque and yanking things back in line. It's a quick and businesslike shuffling, a shoop-shoop of the trunk lid that's there and gone before you have time to think much about it. Here, the only difference between hack driving and talent is the edges -- whether or not you lose small bits of speed here and there, on the fringes. Chassis tuning is a funny thing. Some cars are fun in the dry but a handful in the wet, the result of too sharp a suspension setup or demanding, tread-free rubber. Others are great in the wet but slow in the dry, easy to drive but ultimately not making the most of their tires or engine output. The GT-R is neither. It works in any condition, and it remains entertaining and hugely capable no matter the weather. It weighs 3,859 pounds and costs a whopping $90,950 as I tested it (Premium trim and all), but those numbers are irrelevant. The Nissan would be a bargain at 150 percent of the price, and the curb weight, while substantial, never gets in the way of the chassis magic.There are, naturally, drawbacks. Like previous GT-Rs, the '12 suffers a bit from computerization syndrome -- it's big and heavy and you know it, and it isn't a single-minded emotion-delivery device like a lot of smaller sports cars. But these are quibbles; people point to the Nissan's massive price tag and relatively low sales (just 877 cars in America last year, down from 1,730 in 2008) and blame the lack of blood-curdling feeling, but again, that's irrelevant. This is an intensely focused machine, and cars like that only speak to so many people. Hyperanalyzing things misses the point.Regardless, the Nissan is pretty impressive. It wants to get the job done, and that job is almost always hauling the mail to the next time zone before you can so much as blink. No matter how you slice it, that's admirable stuff.
* MCF Member's post your thoughts...Do you like it ? Would you like to have one ? Would you like to test drive one ?
I know I would 4-Sure : )
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post