Nissan first showed us a 21st-century Skyline concept car 20 years ago. That later became the production-ready GT-R in late 2007 and after years of upgrading, we now have the final boss: the GT-R Nismo. £180,000 buys you the most extreme track-ready road car that Nissan has ever made. Does the latest iteration of the giant-killer still live up to its name 14+ years later? Join Top Gear Magazine’s serious car tester, Ollie Kew, to find out…
Welcome to top gear tested welcome to the nissan gt-r nismo what is it nissan first showed a 21st century skyline concept car 20 years ago way off back in 2001 that became the production ready gtr by late 2007 and it’s been steadily upgraded upgraded and upvoted ever since until we get to the final boss the latest gtr nismo the gtr is at heart a big two-door
Coupe with a twin-turbo v6 at the front a six-speed twin clutch gearbox at back and four-wheel drive doing the business on each axle the nismo that’s nissan motorsport removes weight adds power and geeks out on the tiniest details to give us the most extreme track-ready road car nissan has ever made i’m talking details like removing one groove from the dunlop
Tyres to increase rubber contact patch by 11 that is the sort of nerdiness you get for 180 000 pounds what does it look like it’s an absolute unit look it’s big blocky imposing slab sided and then the nismo just underlines all of that with red pinstriping glossy carbon fiber and a snowboard of a rear wing if you want an all-wheel drive supercar with a touch of
Class might i suggest a porsche 911 turbo instead what’s the engine well like every r35 gtr we’ve got a hand built 3.8 liter twin turbo v6 but the nismo has some motorsport fettling these turbos actually from the r35 gtr gt3 racing car they are 14.5 lighter they have one fewer vein in them and they spool up 24 faster apparently i didn’t tell you it was a nerd
There’s no quoted increase in power but you still get just shy of 600 horses and the reduced turbo lag makes the car even quicker through the gears yikes how does the all-wheel drive system work well she has a name you know they call it a tessa ets pro and no i can’t remember what that stands for apparently it’s advanced total traction engineering system for
All terrain with electronic torque splits obviously basically what you’ve got to remember is that the gt-r’s engine makes power that then has to do a u-turn in the middle of the car it comes down one drive shaft to go to the gearbox at the back and then up to 300 horsepower has to turn around and come back down a second driveshaft to the front wheels all over
Again and how much drive that front axle actually gets is adjusted by sensors telling hydraulic clutches what you’re up to so it can be 98 rear wheel drive at launch but still send half of its power frontwards to drag you out of a corner and that means that like a proper racing car the gtr really hates going slowly when you’re parking it’s grinding and chuntering
And shunting about the place this is absolutely not a sports car for posers is it practical for a nurburgring destroying monster not too bad enough room in the front seats for a proper adult just about enough space behind them for a human child although the boot is a real pain to load it’s enormous back here will i get along with the tech well it’s not exactly
Difficult to operate but it just feels dated when this car came along people were saying oh that’s so complicated it feels like i’m sitting in a playstation but now no one would tolerate these graphics on a modern console and the buttons feel like they’ve come out of well a 15 year old car it’s nothing like as slick as what the germans are selling you these days
Look i’ve even got a manual handbrake cleaver but credit where credit’s due everything does feel absolutely bomb proof even though this is the hardcore gtr you never feel like you’ve had the bailiffs in to nick all of the equipment there’s dual zone climate control apple carplay you get automatic lights and wipers and even the lightweight recaro bucket seats
Have electric backrest adjustment surely in a car that’s so obsessed with weight saving they’ve created bespoke alloy wheels that save 100 grams each they should have just put the seat motors in the bin what does it weigh well the gtr has been many things but never a light car and nissan says that’s entirely deliberate because weight gives you stability and
Traction and then you can just engineer your way around the problem with clever differentials and lots of electronics but the nismo that’s got lightweight wheels carbon breaks and plenty of carbon fiber all over the body so let’s investigate it should be 1703 kilos but this one with half a tank of fuel 1732 kilos which makes it slightly heavier than a standard
Car but don’t worry i’m sure next year there’ll be a special edition gtr with a lightweight door mirror package how fast is it some acceleration now in the real world you only get one shot at this so do i we’re gonna put the differential into our mode we’re gonna have comfort on the dampers because i think that might give us a little bit more traction as the
Car settles down at the back where it’s sending 98 of the drive traction control is in r mode and leave the gearbox in automatic so i think you can probably change gear faster than i can pull the paddle then we simply mash the brake mash the throttle foot off the brake oh traction spot on didn’t get any wheel spin i’ve warmed the tyres so expecting it to just
Hold its line nicely that is well over 100 miles an hour which is all the data we need carbon ceramic brakes bringing us down to a stop let’s have a look at the data that we’ve got here on our gps enabled box of acceleration tricks the all-wheel drive gtr nismo accelerated to 60 miles an hour in 3.3 seconds and went from naught to 100 in 7.2 seconds i know i’ve seen
Gtrs go faster too i’ve seen gtrs go sub three seconds but here we are half a tank of petrol only one person on board maybe we’d expect a little bit faster but that’s what we got this is nissan uk’s own gtr nismo as well so we can be pretty confident that it is a perfectly standard and b looked after extremely particularly the gtr nismo completed the quarter-mile
In 11.35 seconds at a top speed of 126.7 miles per hour for an old car you’d have to say in a straight line and nismo’s still got it is it comfy well if there’s one thing we’ve learned about gtrs over the past decade and a half it’s that they tend to be pretty firm they’re stiff there but it’s living up to that tradition this version actually has re-tuned
Dampers but they’ve been retuned for racetracks for that times not for our tame belgian motorway here now i can help out matters by trying to put it in comfort mode let’s see if we can hit the switch yep the green light’s on we’re in comfort problem is that the gtr’s idea of comfort is where every other car in the world is in kind of hyper race sport plus
Mode i’m honestly surprised that the steering wheel hasn’t come off in my hands yet what’s it like on a motorway well it’s a big coupe with an automatic gearbox so it’s going to be tremendously civilized isn’t it no no it’s not gtr is not like all the other coupes and gtr has lots of wind noise lots of tyre noise and the engine is ever present burbling away
But you’ve got to remember that a porsche 911 turbo suffers from pretty similar foibles as well if you’re buying into the gt-r you kind of forgive it the fact that it’s a bit of a rough and ready ride on the motorway i think if i had the choice between driving one of these to the nurburgring or sticking it on a trailer ah leave the tow bar at home just take the
Nismo and that would mean that once i got to germany we could go really fast speed you say yep the gtr has got speed to spare that just feels unstoppable i mean we’re sat at 130 here but we are going around a constant corner on this banked bowl still feels absolutely rock steady a couple of years ago i drove one of these for the laosex ring in germany on the
Autobahn in a straight line it was started at 160. it felt so rock steady so full of momentum you can crash through a brick wall and not even come off boost a gtr it’s just got this unstoppable force about it feels like the love child of a oh i don’t know a bullet train and a sumo wrestler if that’s not too many japanese cliches for you what’s it like in a
Corner the thing is if you just potter about in a gtr it’s ponderous you start to resent it you start to wonder why am i putting up with this dated interior with all these clunks and rattles with the punishing ride the awful fuel economy and why am i paying 180 000 quid for a nissan you see the thing is with a gtr as we’ve come to realize you only really get
The rewards out of them when you get stuck in what about if you’re late for something yep this is when you can start to explore the gtr’s harder mythology what it’s all about feeling the car thinking underneath you clawing grip it has no right to out of the surface monster traction absolutely crackers turning get these carbon ceramic brakes the first ever on
A factory gtr up to temperature and it stops like a bulldozer but if you don’t you probably won’t stop at all you’ve got to work hard to keep the car on boost this is the whole thing about the gtr it is human and machine and quite a lot of computer occasionally arguing but when they learn to get along it’s a complete tonic and an otherworldly experience from
Just about any other fast car all gtrs are basically a collision between heavy duty mechanical engineering and sci-fi technology i guess that’s what makes them such a love-hate car they blend two opposing worlds two ways of doing fast cars into one not always harmonious hole something about the giant killer to the gtr ignore the badge even 14 and a half years
On from its launch it is still completely unique absolutely addictive and it’ll be a dark day for the car world and they don’t make this monster anymore what’s the verdict can i make a confession i’m absolutely exhausted working at gtr hard but it’s hard work i just have no time for those people who used to go on about this thing being a computer game because
They got confused about it having the graphics on the screen developed by the same people who brought you gran turismo for the playstation this thing’s nothing like any computer game i’ve ever played i mean i’ve never stood up for my xbox and needed a sit down in a darkened room and a cold shower which is what i’m gonna want after this i’ve got this far without
Calling it godzilla but it truly is the perfect nickname for a car that’s sort of morphed into an unkillable alien life form now all mutated and grotesque and kind of out of this world this isn’t a car anymore it’s something different it’s a subculture a culture of tuning of changing the way the thing looks of boosting how it drives but of just always remaining
True to the bloody minded japaneseness that makes this thing like no other car i mean it’s outlived what two three generations of porsche 911 turbo now and they’ve got faster and they’ve got comfier and the gtr just kept going its own way i wouldn’t have it any other way i reckon even nissan themselves have got no idea how to replace this thing domi engines
Hybrid electric the gtr has truly become a legend in its own lifetime they just don’t make them like they used to yes ah never die gtr
Transcribed from video
Nissan GT-R Nismo Review: 0-60mph, 1/4 Mile, Ride, Handling & Performance Test | Top Gear Tested By Top Gear
