scathing

Aside from daily driving, what else do you want from the car? If you're just after a zippy daily driver that you don't want to do too many mods to, I'm going to go out to left field and say you should buy a VW Polo GTi. The cabin is well isolated when the windows are up, the seats are comfy, and the controls are well weighted. The stereo isn't bad either. The suspension is firm, but fair. Its a lot more controlled than your average Falcodore, but its not exactly a JDM Tuner Special. The build quality is VW, so its better than any Nissan and probably the Subaru too. In other words, its a great daily driver. But, get up it and its a quick little thing. That 1.8L Turbo has quite a bit of poke in its factory trim. Since the car is also mechanically identical to the old Audi TT, you can get the ECU reflashed with that car's tune and pick up another 30-40hp without having to replace any parts. The only thing it really needs is the ECU flash, rear swaybar, and maybe a pod filter / exhaust for noise (aftermarket induction/exhaust parts don't seem to make much gain so its not as worth it) to be a reasonably quick little car. So its not a bad hot hatch either. And because it will still look stock and its a Euro machine, the cops will leave you alone. Another plus for a commuter vehicle. Ultimately you can't do too much to it affordably, being European, and being FWD there's only so much power the fronts will handle (although the engine will take a fair amount of power). But, if you want a light tune vehicle then its hard to beat.

Mate just bought one of these, in an Individual colour scheme. He's ordering some optional 19" rims from the US for it, I think. Its got a fair amount of poke in its stock trim - its noticably quicker than my Z in a straight line, its certainly more comfortable and of a better build quality. Not sure how much a Convertible will go for, but the coupe's even more of a weapon.

Chuck Norris is everyone's weakness.

Hey guys, check out my new Rexie!

I thought those features were what you look for when checking to see if a Falcodores has done its 1000km run in......?

Not only did I think twice, I also read it twice. And I've still got no idea what the f**k you're on about.

People who buy GT-Rs to make a quarter mile machine aren't getting the point of a GT-R. Or a Porsche. I could build a 9 second VS Commodore for less than your late model 10 second R34 GT-R. But I'm guessing that's no longer what its all about when its against your prejudices instead of for it. Or I could buy a brand new superbike and run 10s with a V-Max of over 300km/hr on my way out of the showroom floor, reassured that this level of performance comes with a full manufacturer's warranty. Back on topic and in the land of lucidity, $80K might get you an older E46 M3. They're a nice GT. Comfy, refined, and reasonably quick. But, its no Porsche in terms of feel or badge cachet. If he's after something cruisier, you should be able to find a reasonable Mercedes coupe.

"Snow" mode launches the car in 2nd gear, to pull tractive effort out of the driveline and avoid wheelspin. It also changes the gears a little slower and at lower points to avoid (relatively) big changes of tractive effort. Pretty much useless in Australia, where you're unlikely to ever be in an environment with so little grip for the standard shift mappings to be undrivable. Power mode holds the gear for longer when you're throttling. I believe it may also downchange faster under brakes. It keeps you in the meat of the power curve. You'd be better off just using the shifter manually, since its still not smart enough to do what you want when you want it.

Found this video (can't even remember where anymore) of a 350Z with a rebuilt VQ35DE (increased to 4.2L) and running the APS Extreme Twin Turbo kit. While the peak power figure itself is impressive (850rwhp or around 640rwkW) its the shape of the power curve that's the most impressive. Its almost dead straight, and actually plateaus out in the top end. Either way, its showing how much headroom the next GT-R will have the moment its released while maintaining a "streetable" power delivery (assuming its running a VQ, which the short odds say it will).

No idea, man. They're the "standard" gold that the Volk SF Challenges come in from RAYS Engineering.

Why not just get them painted in another shade of gold? Its not like you can say they're genuine "Top Secret" rims anyway. Why not just get a generic gold instead, and paint them with that? To be honest, I don't see anything special about the Top Secret Gold colour. I'll be the first to admit that Top Secret LE37Ts are hot: (and yes, they are genuine with Top Secret stickers on the spokes) but that gold isn't exactly some easily identifiable custom colour. RAYS does offer a non Top Secret shade of gold for their rims, and my understanding is that you can get any of their wheels painted in any of their available colours as long as you pay extra for custom paint. Only the standard colours mentioned on the product page don't incur an extra charge. If you compare the Volk Racing SF Challenge's gold: you'd be hard-pressed to pick a difference in the shade unless you had the two side-by-side. (I realise the Top Secret rims look a lot yellower, but there differing light in both images and the picture of the LE37Ts has been colour corrected in Photoshop whereas the SF Challenge pic hasn't.) And if you were to order rims from RAYS in that shade of gold, it should only cost you the "custom paint charge" and not the "top secret paint charge".

Damian from Final Inspection recommends Dr Detail up here in Sydney. I haven't seen any of Dr Detail's work, but I have seen Damian's and its top notch. The work he and Domino did on Domino's 350Z are amazing.

In my experience, the tyre roar becomes noticable above 80km/hr. The Falken RS-V04s sounded like a low flying prop-aircraft from 60km/hr. The A032Rs only got noisy at about 90km/hr. The D01J's on a mate's S15 started humming at 80. Either way, it makes the commute to Wakefield Park an absolute pain.

There you go with your stupidity again. If people didn't like Skylines, its a pretty safe bet they wouldn't be on a forum called Skylines Australia. And anyone who lives in the real world knows that Japan makes some very reliable cars, at an excellent price point. And their sports cars are well regarded internationally as well. That you think we're knocking all Japanese cars because we're disappointed with the info released on the next GT-R so far once again shows your complete inability to actually understand what other people are saying. I've got plenty of respect for the GT-R; its still one of my dream cars and I know how quick they are. However, I'm not a close minded bigot that thinks that its the be-all and end-all of motor vehicles. The past GT-Rs sucked as a grand tourer (it certainly wasn't comfortable, quiet, or fuel efficient enough to devour long distances in the manner of a true "grand tourer", although it earned its "Racing" monicker honestly). The new one is apparently getting a lot of fruit to compete in the "luxury" stakes against the 911, and that's just going to add weight. The "spartan" R34 weighed as much as the 996 Turbo did; its no wonder people are estimating that the new GT-R is going to weigh 200kg more than the 997T. And I thought we were talking about production cars? Here you go crapping on about modifications again. Even an aftermarket ECU tune on a 996 Turbo will pull 30awkW+ with no other mods. The 997 might be harder to tune since it also has to control the VGT, but chances are you'll see the same gains since Porsches are tuned to run rich to preserve the engine when sitting at high load and high RPMs for long durations (due to the autobahns in their native habitat). Leaning the mixture out for Australian road conditions sees big gains in FI Euro cars. Let them run exhausts from Porsche tuning houses, and Eibach / Bilstein suspension (the latter being beloved by SAU's own Sydneykid) to make it mod-for-mod equal and see if the GT-R can romp away. At any rate, the next GT-R has got sweet f**k all chance of reclaiming the production car record. Which is a shame given that its this achievement that every Skyline otaku goes on about, but fair enough considering the car that holds said record is only technically a production car.

I'm living on planet Earth, a place you're evidently not familiar with. Your ignorance is so astounding I'd hazard to guess that you'd wear loafers because tying your own shoes is beyond your abilities. Firstly. "Glorified Volkswagen" is a bit of kettle calling the pot black, given that the Skyline donor car isn't even good enough to be used as a taxi. And I thought we were talking about stock. If you start going aftermarket, the RUF and Gemballa turnkey Porsches are serious machines. Porsche is the aspirational sports car in Germany, and so they've got a wealth of aftermarket parts for the cars. Of course, you'd need to pull your head out of your arse and look at the tuning scene outside of Australia to notice that just because you haven't heard of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. As for Porsche not being interested in AWD until the GT-R took them to the cleaners at the Nurburgring, you do realise the R32 GT-R's "groundbreaking" AWD drivetrain is actually Nissan's copy (after all, copying the Europeans is what the Japanese do best) of the Porsche 959 driveline right? You're not aware? Yeah, I didn't think so. That and the R33 GT-R that cracked was the "first" to crack the 8 minute barrier was running semi slicks, non-production suspension, and had the boost wound up (at the very least), so while it probably earned its time honestly as a "street car" it certainly doesn't deserve the "production car" record. The sub 8 minute time the 911 Turbo ran was in the same trim you'd get off the showroom floor. I'm not sure what trim the R34 that ran 7:52 was in but that time was still set after the 911 cracked it. Didn't know that either? Luckily for you the cure for ignorance isn't that difficult, and the only side effects is that you'll look like less of a cock. In testing on the Nurburgring right now for the next GT-R, the 997 Turbo Nissan's bought to compare is apparently lapping faster. Someone said that in American testing that vehicle is proving faster, but I haven't seen any sources for that. I won't forget I said that the GT-R being tested is slower than the 997, since media and industry sources back that up. When the car goes production I hope its quicker, but by all accounts Nissan is aiming to have it only line-ball. Considering the rumoured stats of the GT-R shows that it'll have less power and more weight than the 997 Turbo, getting line ball would be a testament to the chassis setup. That you haven't read the news out there, or even what I actually said, speaks more about your idiocy than it does about what planet I'm living on. I just noticed that you joined 2 months ago and you've already hit almost 1500 posts. Maybe you should stop flapping your yap so much and start doing some research in a subject you've got an interest in. You can start off by looking up the proverb that starts with "Empty vessels", which while not Skyline related may hopefully help you....

If you need the traction then they're good, but otherwise I wouldn't suggest it on a daily driver. Ignoring the wet weather grip (I found the A032Rs I used to be quite reasonable in the wet), the tyre roar will give you headaches. Turning up the stereo didn't help me much. The lack of tyre life is also a concern, if you're paying for it. That and, if you get pulled over, the cops assume they're not street legal and you have to spend time explaining it to them. And once you do tell them its "street legal race rubber, like on tarmac rally cars", inevitably your bonnet spends a lot of time in the "up" position while the cops try defecting you for something else.

The fact that it somehow managed to forget that it was speed limited to 180km/hr means that its tune isn't something you could have gotten off a show-room floor. So who else knows what was added to it aside from a Speed Cut Defenser? The infamous "first production car to break the 8min barrier on the Nurburgring" GT-R was running semi slicks and more boost to go with its speed limiter removal. That said, some R34 GT-Rs got officially exported to the UK and their speed limiters were set at 250km/hr.....which they easily reached. Those things also made "only 206kW".

Funny you should say that, since the target for the next GT-R is the 997 Turbo. And in testing the car apparently looks slower than the Porsche they bought for comparison. The 997T runs 7:42 around the Nurburgring, which the Z06 manages....so really the upcoming GT-R is only as good as a Yank Tank that's available now. It won't even be close to the production car record it (dubiously) used to own. Where did you hear that Nissan was "rubbing Porsche's noses in it"?

OK, so your future car will have a lightened flywheel. But, when you made the above posts, have you ever drive a car with its stock flywheel and then a lightened one to compare the difference? Were speaking from personal practical experience when you made the assertions, or not? Even in the future, if you get the car and make the change immediately you'll have no idea what the car was like with the OEM flywheel so you'd still lack the experience to make an informed comment. I guess everyone who's ever made the change is wrong when they say the car needs more throttle at low RPM to maintain speed up hills. I guess everyone else on the planet must be experiencing a psychosomatic loss of low-end torque. Like I said, I drove my car around with the stock flywheel for around a 3-4 months without any other mods before installing another flywheel half its weight (and made no other changes to the car with the flywheel install) and now around town I sometimes need to grab 5th on hillls the car would used to happily pull 6th while going up. Once I'm up in the middle of the rev range any differences aren't noticable, but when I've got the engine turning over at 1500RPM I can definitely notice the loss.

Are you speaking from personal experience? I am, when I say that after installing my JUN lightweight flywheel (14lbs vs the OEM 28lbs) I started having to drop down a cog on hills that I previously could traverse in top gear. Most prevalent when doing 60km/hr, since the engine's only turning over at 1500RPM or so. In the context of the original question (off the line torque) if you're doing a hard launch a lightweight flywheel would be an advantage. The engine will rev harder.

Apparently driving while disqualified is a "hoon" thing. As I said on another forum Anything that regular Australian motorists don't do is "hooning". That's what happens when you're not a sheep and don't keep your road rule breaking to doing 0-15km/hr over the limit, ignoring road signs like Stop and Give Way, running red lights, or drink driving. Do anything but the above, and you're a "menace".

The 350Z is lighter, is more likely to have Brembos, the handling is more direct, and the chassis is stronger (more bracing and spot welded). As a sports car, it does a better job. However, sometimes having only 2 seats is a right pain in the pass. And the front seats in the V35 are heaps nicer. Its also a bit more isolated in terms of ride and sound dampening, which makes it great as a cruiser. Most of the mods between the 350Z and V35 are interchangable (the only thing that isn't is the exhaust, given the extra length of the V35). Since these cars are getting very popular among the tuner set overseas (especially in Japan and the USA) you can get more power if you want. I've been giving some serious thought to trading in my car and getting a V35 coupe. I'll see if I'm still as enthused about track work a few months down the track, or if I'm in more desperate need for rear seats.

.............Which means you effectively have less torque in the low-end while rolling.

He'll probably get flamed for spending so much time and money on something that doesn't blind passers-by with glare, or make the car more impressive on the dyno.

Word on the street is that the RT615s will last longer (treadwear rating of 200 vs the RT215's 180), and they have better wet weather grip. I'm rolling on RT215s at the moment, though, and I've found their wet weather performance to be reasonable. As stated by others, I'd only use RTx15's on a weekend street car, or for hillclimbs. The tyres lack the out-and-out grip, and heat capacity, of proper R-Comp semis. At the same time they don't last long enough to be put on a daily, unless you've got a big tyre budget or you need the grip because your car makes monster torque off idle.