2010 Nissan GT-R

Nissan's bad boy. Is this really from the same folks who make the Versa?

2010 Nissan GT-R As flagships go, this is a flagship, fully twice as expensive and at least twice as audacious as anything else Nissan makes. Let's light the fuse on the 2010 GTR and check the tech. It's almost impossible to see this car for all the hype that surrounds it. It's too expensive for most of the boys who lust for it and too juvenile looking for the grownups who can afford it. But for this kind of performance, it's a steal, and they sell all they can make. Now, the inside of a GTR is kind of a retro Japanese work of art. Taking cues from both modern technology, the heyday of 35-millimeter SLR cameras and the days of quadraphonic stereo receivers. All those cues are in here in terms of shapes, finishes and the way things just have a vintage look, but not too old. What is too old is this damn head unit. That's an insult to buy an $80,000.00 Nissan and get a head unit from a two-year old Murano. Horrible resolution, crappy-looking thing, almost impossible to read some street names, they're so poorly rendered. That said the system is hard-drive based, so at least the underpinnings are more modern. And these things move along pretty quickly as you press the on-screen buttons. It is a touchscreen, as you can see, what, is that 7-inch LCD. You've also got voice command, but for navigation functions only. Not for the media, HVAC or anything else. But the real crowd pleaser going on in this head unit and there's no other car that has anything like this is under the function button right there. That brings you the wacky, multifunction display. Here's what you've got. If you turn this knob—and again, you're not going to find this really anywhere else, you've got four custom views of virtual gauges, and the lettered ones are preset panels for acceleration, braking, steering, gear position, fuel economy—yeah, right. Stop watch for your track day, and driver's notes. Is it overkill? Absolutely. Is it cool? Absolutely. This was developed, by the way, between the folks at Clarion who make this head unit, tsk, tsk, on your crappy graphics. And Sony's Polyphonic Digital games development unit. So if it looks like a game, that's where it came from. The last bit of irrelevance in the cabin I want to talk about is of course, the entertainment system. You've got AM/FM, check. XM Radio, check. A2DP Streaming Bluetooth, nope. USB, no. CompactFlash, check. iPod, sort of-kind of. That's a dealer-installed option, only with a car with a 6-disk changer, but we have a single slot CD that also does MP3. And as I mentioned, there's a hard drive in there for the NAV system. You also have access to that hard drive, which they call a music box, to put music on. On the output side, it is a Bose-branded system. That old plate down here tells you that. Eleven speakers around the cabin, two of those are subwoofers. Yeah, like I didn't notice. They're both staring at me like a couple of short-barreled canons behind you. Beyond that, it's not a surround system with any fancy DSPs, it's just a Bose stereo. And frankly, if you tore out the NAV and the audio system out of this car with a crowbar and threw them on the side of the road, you wouldn't reduce its real meaning on this earth by one bit, and that is to go fast. One of those things that start to make you crazy about this car is things like this, the keyless entry deal. In a car like this? Really? So you've got this brawny track machine with keyless entry with dual zone, HVAC, with air condition of course, power racing seats. I mean, the oxymoronic stuff just falls on you from every direction. Now, when you buy an $80,000.00 Nissan, a big part of what you're paying for lives up here. 3.8 liter, twin-turbo V6, 485 horsepower, 434 foot pounds of torque, coo-coo stuff, great stuff. And yet, 1621.MPG, as if you care. And even the emissions numbers aren't egregious. Well, the greenhouse gases are kind of filthy, but we'll leave that aside for this kind of car. 0 to 60 in the hands of most testers who have access to a track is in the mid- 3s. This car is a barnburner. Also, when you're under the hood you can see a lot of the other reasons that this car gets up out of its own way so well. For example, this radiator cross support up here is carbon fiber. They remind you of that very loudly. Your sack towers are cast aluminum, not some stamp sheet metal that does this in a corner. Let's go prove that. Power's delivered through a 6-speed, dual clutch automated manual that lives in the back of the car, with the differential and all-wheel drive transfer case all integrated. Paddle shifters? Where they should be, on the steering column, not flying around on the wheel. Engage all the R mode buttons for the maximum of thrill ride, in terms of suspension aggression, power delivery, and slip control, or a lack thereof. Makes a punishing ride even more so, but at this point you're already committed. The handling on a GTR is remarkably light, not too light, but it's not a heavy driving car by any stretch. The stiffness is absolutely present from all those components I’ve showed you. And it also goes a little too far in that direction, because this thing rides like a truck. No, that's insulting to trucks. Let's price the most iconic of all Nissans. A GTR is $84,000.00 out the door with destination charge. By the way, no gas guzzler charge on this guy because of that 1621.MPG. Very few supercars can escape that tax. Options? Very few. This super silver paint job which is 8 stages and hand-rubbed factory, that's $3,000.00. Looks good, not sure it looks that good. And the tech option, there's really only one, is that mythical iPod adapter. Whether it can be installed or not remains a question mark to me, but only your dealer can tell you. They install it. Beyond that, the GTR is what it is and that is, fast.