scathing

All OEM cars are tuned conservatively. You can always find a little extra by tuning the ECU, especially if you're willing to always run it on a higher octane fuel. Then there's removing inherent restrictions like the intake and exhaust if you're willing to put up with a bit more noise. As for whether its "worth" it, its up to you. You'll still need to spend money on it, and you won't see the gains you would on an FI car. If you have to have more punch and you can afford it, then do it. But I get the feeling you've got better things to spend your money on than getting a handful of fwkW on a $600 outlay with an A'PEXi S-AFC.

It might work. It might not be bad for the engine. However, its some generic off-the-shelf resistor that affects your AFM signal to the ECU and has probably never been tested on a car similar to yours, let alone the same. If it was tuned perfectly for your car then it'd be as good as an A'PEXi SAFC. If it works badly it does nothing at all, or kills power while increasing fuel consumption. If it works really badly it leans out your mixture to a point where it starts to detonate and you break something.

Leaner. Richer make less power on a car that has a stock ECU.

The W427 and Typhoon will both be using either manuals or torque converting autos. Even if all else was equal, they wouldn't keep up on that alone. The 997 Turbo has the same power and less weight than the GT-R (and both are AWD with fat, soft, rubber), but as it doesn't have the instantaneous gearchanges the cars are line ball in a straight line. The two cars' manuals are nowhere near as smooth and easy to use as the Porsche's, so they'll be slower. If you got the autos, they're only marginally quicker than the manual cars. Unfortunately, not all else is equal. The GT-R's aerodynamics are far better than the two sedans', so once you get up to speed the GT-R will still dominate. Only if you're talking about an high-gear roll start at low speeds and the R35 is off-boost will the 7.0L Holden have a chance of winning.

Why would they, when they never got them until now? I used the Z33 (and V35) as an example of what happens when the US does get into a car, and what will happen with the R35 and future models. If you're so short sighted as to not consider whether you'd consider owning an R35 (or R36 or whatever comes next) in the future and the state of the aftermarket at that point, then that's fine and all this has got nothing to do with you. Why don't you just go back and play in your corner then, and let the big boys talk? We'll go find you a sandpit to bury your head into. No, but right now it is the biggest R35-specific forum out there. Of course people will still produce product for it. But most of them don't have time to be reading dozens of forums and so they'll just go to the biggest ones if they want customer feedback. If "everyone" is on board then you're more likely to have your voice heard. It won't make or break the market, but if Nissan and the big JDM tuners see that the Americans can't play nice and just act like little kids all the time then they'll still produce products but they're less likely to post up asking for feedback and directly polling their fanbase on the 'net because they'd have to deal with all that shit.

Even tarmac rallying doesn't have the profile to really make it worthwhile. Targa Tassie has a reasonably high profile, but its only one event a year. I can't even remember the name of the rally Brock killed himself in, which goes to show how famous that event was..... As an aside, do you know what rules Jim Richards is talking about here? It says the rules have hobbled the exotics like his Porsche while benefiting the cheap "Japanese all wheel drive rally cars". I'm wondering if the R35 would fall under the "Japanese all wheel drive" definition and see bolstering from the rules, or fall out of the "rally cars" class and be considered exotica. If its the latter, then the GT-R is screwed at Targa Tasmania too (unless the rules changed again this year).

They won't service the cars. Ignoring the general rule that Nissan stealerships don't touch cars that didn't come through Nissan Australia's head office, they might not even be able to. The cars will have JDM interior spec and tune, which their grease monkeys will not have been trained for and their diagnostic tools may not interface with. With how high-tech the car is, software differences may be enough to "break" the electronics and render the car inoperable. Ask anyone who's ever flashed a piece of electronics with the wrong firmware for that revision or serial range. Even if its for the same make and model of component it can cause it to not boot. I've had customers basically destroy routers by uploading firmware for a "Rev 3" version on their "Rev 2" hardware.

I never said you said the warranty was bad. I said you said you thought a warranty was [/i]irrelevant[/i] compared to getting a car "at a fair price". When you're putting down $130K, I'd beg to differ. You could buy the most immaculate looking grey import that's ever graced our shores, that's only done mileage from the factory to the dealership to the owner's home to the auctions to the boat yard to the compliancing centre to your driveway. It could be driven by a guy so mechanically sympathetic that he cries a little every time a part moves. It could even cost you $120K. But if you got a car with a manufacturing fault and the engine blows up, with the resulting oil leak sprays all over your tyres puts you into a pole.....with your "fair price" grey import you'll be paying for the repairs yourself. And its not a $15K R33 GTS-t you're fixing in a market that's flooded with spare parts.

That's now, due to the fact that there's pretty much been no street legal GT-R ever released in the USA (thanks to Moto Rex's bullshit) so the only ones in the country are race-only or show cars. Of course you're going to get keyboard racers in that environment. What about when the R35 gets released, and the US guys start working on them? Given the sheer amount of money and population they've got to throw at the car, its their tuners that will end up modifying them harder and faster than any other English-speaking country. Australia's had GT-Rs forever on the grey market, but you'll notice that it was GTROC in the UK that got invited by Nissan to TAS for the official unveiling on VIP day. I'm willing to bet that, should NAGTROC have stayed singular and attracted some big-name customers, they would have gotten more inside info from Nissan (and Nissan taking their feedback) than GTROC, let alone SAU. Owning a 350Z, I've seen what happens when US enthusiasts get behind a car. More mods come out, both from the US and Japan (Tanabe's TEAS system was originally invented by the US and wasn't available from Japan with the Z33 / V35 being one of the first cars to support it and the first twin turbo kit for the FM platform cars was from GReddy, not Trust). Considering the platform was new and it was the first time the engine had been used in a performance car application, the mods came out relatively quickly too. A failure in the US enthusiast community affects us. While we can still rely on the Japanese to churn out excellent aftermarket parts and eventually get the R35 and VR38DETT to the level of support we enjoy with the R34 and RB26DETT, we'd get there a lot faster and cheaper if the Americans are on board.

I'd much rather the Whites did it. They've got Targa experience and they've been campaigning an R34 well after Jim decided to go devote a lot of his attention to Porsche.

If you were to put down $130,000 on a car I'd hazard to say that you'd start giving a f**k about a warranty. If that hand-built engine lets go because of a manufacturing fault, you'd be shitting bricks having to replace it out of pocket.

Yeah, without offsets it'd be impossible to call. They look a little sunken in on that R34 so its definitely possible, but I wouldn't stake my guards on it. You can run an 18x9.5 +22 and 18x10.5 +22 on our cars without rolling the guards. If you're willing to do some mods to the car (front and rear camber adjustment equipment, rolling the guards) you can fit aftermarket R34 GT-R rims onto our cars. There's a guy in the US running 18x10.5 +15 rims all round on his 350Z with 275 width tyres, with guard rolling and lots of camber. Unfortunately he's taken his pics down from that thread (and other threads don't show it), but I remember that it did look retarded on the front since the tyres stick out with the amount of camber being run. An OK look if you're building a race car, but it looks a bit ghetto on a street car.

Yeah, stealing Jim Richards away from Porsche would be quite a coup. I just can't see it happening, unless Richards thinks he's achieved everything he can with Porsche and wants fresh challenges. Just sounds like typical pie-in-the-sky dreaming from Nissan Australia. They might as well say they've given Mark Skaife a call and "they're discussing it, but he's involved with HSV".

In other countries, they do. Citroen went out and polled car modifiers to see what they like when designing their little hatch, which is a staple for tuners. In the US, you can spec out your Nissan with Nismo parts. Other US dealers also offer a great scope for customising, above the usual floor mats and boot liners. The greatest example is the new Mini. You can option it out to over double its base price, and the list of options goes for so long its pretty much impossible to see two identical Minis unless one person deliberately copied another. Even HSV knows that the only reason they're still not churning out shit fibreglass bodykits in a shed is because of the strength of its enthusiast customerbase. Enthusiast doesn't necessarily mean modifier, so you could consider a lot of companies that engineer their cars for their customers' tastes (like Lexus with the interior of the RX330 since Mark Levinson didn't find the cabin space conducive to good acoustics, VAG who offer a dozen different setups on the same platform, with different brands, depending on what kind of car you want, and then lets not even get into the customisation options of the big boys like BMW's Individual program, Bentley's Mulliner setup, Rolls and Maybach who build-to-order, etc). You'll notice that most of these brands are aspirational because they let the customer get what they want, rather than telling the customer what they should have. This is why Nissan Australia is basically regarded as a cardigan car company.

The 350Z is shit. Seriously, the Z33 isn't that bad a performer. A half-arsed driver like me, with light bolt-ons, can run reasonable times on the track in the car given how stable the thing is. However, if you look at BeerBaron's comments in a slightly different perspective then he's right. Nissan Australia has done nothing for the performance credibility of the 350Z, which motorsport competitors have demonstrated it can have. Since I had a Z33 since they came out and went looking for other enthusiasts early, I came into contact with the two teams that ran 350Z's in ProCar (Mike Fitzgerald via Pro Concept, and Peter Pilkington who was the mechanic for his son Nathan's JDM car). Not only did Nissan Australia not run their own factory team or provide half decent support for these privateers, but they actively tried to hold them back. Due to one of the rules in ProCar, you had to buy any performance modifications from the local division. I can't remember if it was Peter or Joshua but one of the guys was already discussing stuff with Nismo Japan, who had a bunch of parts they wanted a motorsport team to try out and use. However, Nissan Australia refused to act as an intermediary and sell them the parts, and the rules did not permit them to go to Nismo Japan directly. So, basically, they got bollocksed. If you ever watched the 350Zs race, they more than held their own in the corners but were obviously down on power in the straights. I haven't spoken to Aaron McGill about how his ProCar days in the S15 went, but I doubt it was much better. I think the Whites get the Nismo parts for their Targa Tasmania winning R34 GT-R from PowerPlay Imports. Isn't the guy who's running the Donut King R35 in Targa on this forum? I wonder if he's getting any help from Nissan Australia, since he's promoting the car and the brand in Australia's most famous road rally. Nissan Australia, quite frankly, can go bollocks themselves. They've done absolutely bollocksing nothing for the cult following the brand has in Australia. They decided to bring in that nugget Maxima instead of importing the V35 Skyline as the family car. The only reason they've got a market for this new halo model is because of enthusiasts like yourselves, who worked around their beancounters and brought the cars in without them.

Welcome to the Internets. Its a shame that it all went downhill. If there's one thing I hate, its politics. I hope Josh and Dave sort their shit out. While I haven't been on NAGTROC for ages, I've still dealt with them both as a mod on 350Z-Tech and they both seem OK guys.

I went to get some breakfast when we got to Palm Beach. I didn't know the cafe was going to take 40 minutes to bring our food out. By the time we finished eating and got back, everyone was gone.

When will people learn that understeer sucks, and they should avoid FWD cars?

My mileage is about similar to yours with the Z33.

Says who? The VT HSV GTS held its own against an E39 M5 on the Nurburgring, which is no mean feat. The new one is meant to have suspension isn't just along for the ride as the car leans on its tyres and prays they've got enough grip. When they build the W427, I'd love to see it lined up against the E60 M5 and see if it can replicate that feat. You'll notice that Jeremy Clarkson, who gets to drive plenty of hot metal and has the R32 GT-R in his list of the 50 best sports cars ever made (and in his Top 5 handling cars ever) still rated the old Monaro and VXR as a driver's car. This W427 is not a dedicated supercar coupe kind of handling so its no GT-R beater, but its not really fair to compare a "supercar" against a tuned up sedan. They both have different aims. Unless Nissan gets around to building that Infiniti sedan based on the PM platform then Nissan has nothing in the same space as this W427. You may as well wonder why anyone in their right mind would buy a used V35 coupe when you could get a brand new PRB at the same price (assuming you built it yourself) which would shit all over almost anything in the corners. Or ask why you would spend $150K on a car that only seats 2 people comfortably, and might fit 2 small people uncomfortably, when for $120K you could buy a car that will carry 5 in comfort when the difference in time to reach the legal speed limit would not be worth $30K, and the Commodore will turn practically every corner on a public road at the speed limit just as well as the Datsun.

Yeah, there's a guy I know with an S14 who runs 2 handbrakes (with 2 handles in cabin). He has his stock one for street legality, and he has a hydraulic one for dori. Don't think he's had cop hassles with it, but then he doesn't drive like a cock on the street.

Incorrect. There are a raft of ADRs that are unique to this country, and its those little things that tend to blow out the costs. We've yet to streamline our ADRs with the requirements of the rest of the world, which means Australian delivered cars need a custom run. So when you build so few cars of a specific spec, the economies of scale work against you. Of course, then there's the "because we can" factor. Australia's asking for a couple of cars a year that the US or European markets could probably sell in less than 6 months each. Given that there's a production capacity, why would the Japanese do a small Aussie production run and ensure that they put the right bits in when they could keep churning out LHD cars and keep the line rolling? It sounds simple to replace, say, the fitting of a dozen parts on a car if you're just one bloke or in a small workshop. But large companies don't work that way. You might find this editorial on Motor Trend enlightening.

Like this?

I haven't been on NAGTROC since the guys on 350Z-Tech spun it off. I joined when they launched it, but it held almost no interest for me. Is it that bad? The 'Tech guys are quite level headed.

Yeah, but he's a Japanese turbo car fan so he's not thinking about that Euro trash. Obviously he's talking about the superiority of the jewels of the East that can squeeze a lot of power in a relatively narrow band but from a smaller powerplant.....for a while.