R32 Gtr - For & Against

[blokeguy]

hello

I'm considering the purchase of an R32 GTR. I've heard many things, both good & bad but I would like to hear from current & previous owners as to the car's reliability, performance etc.

Would appreciate your comments.

[gun32gtr]

well ive had mine for almost 18months now and have not really any probs what so ever.

the car is absolute joy to drive every time i do..

bad things are once you get use to driving it you will just want to spend more and more on it?

also mine is not a daily driver and honestly if i had to have only one car i wouldnt want this to drive everyday,reasons being they aint the cheapest car to own in terms of maintaining them?

hope that helps

[Big Rizza]

This is a good article that highlights a few of the pros as well as the cons of GTR ownership, including the cons that eventually lead to the owner trading it in. I'd recommend an Autospeed subscription to anyone

http://autospeed.drive.com.au/cms/A_0302/article.html

Julian's New Car - Part 1 - Goodbye GT-R

The steering wheel wriggles in my grasp as the front tyres follow every longitudinal mark in the urban bitumen; constant steering corrections are required to maintain anything like a straight line. The ride is noisy and uncomfortable: the aftermarket plastic bushes in the front A-arms squeak at every bump, and the car on its otherwise standard suspension jolts sharply upwards over every minor road imperfection. I peer into the rear vision mirror, trying to see the following traffic past the wing that almost completely obscures the other cars. My lower back hurts from the seat's lack of lumbar support, and the wind noise - even at just 60 km/h - whistles around the leading edge of the A pillars. The gearbox whines, and every on/off application of throttle is accompanied by the rear diff moan. This car is no fun; this is literally a pain....

A day later:

The change from fourth to fifth occurs at 220 km/h, the road streaming towards me like a big screen TV with the VCR set on fast forward. I keep my boot planted, the car screaming along the country road. The bumps have grown as the road has shrunk in width; thank God I am in the only car that I have ever driven that aerodynamically becomes more stable the faster that you go. A glance flashed down at the speedo - 240 km/h - and then eyes go back to the road. I can hear the superb DOHC twin turbo six winding ever higher; this time the glance is darted down at the intake air temp gauge. The green LEDs show just 10 degrees above ambient: that fantastic Nissan intercooler! The needle keeps moving clockwise....250, 255, then 260! Two hundred and sixty kilometres an hour - 161 mph - in this glorious, glorious car....

My Nissan Skyline GT-R. The car that can be so rewarding to drive... and also so utterly underwhelming. The car that demands that you drive like a lunatic to enjoy its fabulous side, making you put up with its manifest disadvantages the 99 per cent of the time when sanity prevails. My Skyline GT-R... the car that yesterday I traded in on another car...

The Getting of Wisdom

When does the law of diminishing returns start to bear, when the expenditure of money no longer matches the rewards generated? That depends on the amount of money that you have available, what you term sufficient reward - and the car in which you gain it. After years of reading about how wonderful the Skyline GT-R was, I couldn't wait to get my bum into one. And I found probably the newest 1991 Australian-delivered R32 Skyline GT-R in the world - it had just 3500 kilometres on the clock. Sold by Nissan Australia for A$110,000 and 7 years later for sale at A$80,000.

Leasing the car was j-u-s-t within my budget; well it was when I considered how fabulous the rewards would be! Basically, I was prepared to pull just about any financial sleight-of-hand necessary to get the car; so what if my house roof leaked a little, if the carpet needed renewing.... This was a Skyline GT-R... a car which I believed to be the best in the world.... My initial disappointment with the car's handling (and the brilliant fix that was developed) you can read about at "Godzilla Tamed", but what was the car like once that problem was overcome? Or, to put it another way, what was the car good for, exactly? After driving the car for two years and 50,000km I can tell you what it's good for.

Not for normal daily use (can't leave it parked in a shopping centre/cinema/restaurant carpark - dings in the alloy front panels, stolen/vandalised probably within minutes); not for commuting (poor ride, tramlining, noisy gearbox/diff); not for a relaxing country drive (no cruise control, harsh ride, wind noise); not for driving fast at night (woeful headlights - and who's ever seen a GT-R with huge Hellas?); not for one of my recreational loves - camping (great joke, that - GT-R at an outback campsite) - er, what for then, exactly?

Try: cruising the cappuccino strip (cheers, pointing people, dribbling wankers trying to talk through your closed windows - bit embarrassing, really); full-on traffic light drags (sad when you launch at the required five grand and the other person dawdles off, though); really fast country drives (like 150 km/h+ - pity about the cops); exiting roundabouts in a four wheel drift with a touch of oversteer dialled-in with the torque split controller (but remember that you're then driving hard enough that if someone cuts you off, you're rooted); posing (but the charm wears off in minutes, see above re wankers) - er, not much here either, is there?

All of this could be forgiven if there was no other car that could touch its real-world performance for the price. No, I'm not talking the gospel according to performance magazines - where tiny increments in 0-100 and standing quarter times are apparently of earth-shattering importance - but in driving reality, where the difference between 0-100 in 6.5 and 5.5 seconds really counts for little: both are simply damn quick. In the real world, remember. What, don't believe me?

Well, consider overtaking. That's a time when more power definitely equals better: where it really counts. But if you're running an overtaking manoeuvre where a few tenths of a second make a difference, you're doing a pretty risky passing move, aren't you? And no, it's not the same as saying "Well, in that case, a bog-stock VN Commodore is as safe when passing as a Skyline GT-R". Any car doing six-point-something 0-100's (with commensurate in-gears performance) is going to be safe on the open road. Or maybe you're talking a traffic light grands prix? Any good turbo rotary will be faster than the GT-R, as will any well-developed V8. Well then, maybe its driving performance on a tight, twisty road? I'd take the current 6-speed Mazda MX5 myself - and I've driven the MX5 extensively. After a while "But it's a GT-R" (said in a hushed and reverent tone) starts to wear pretty thin....

Of course the GT-R has some good points; fantastic ones, actually. That engine. Is there a Six anywhere in the world that has a wider spread of torque, a powerband that realistically extends from 1100 to 8000 rpm? Where the revs are achieved so smoothly that it takes months to realise that one key to the car's response is its low, low gearing? Another plus: the GT-R's ability to put high speed corners behind you with utter precision and sheer pace. Where you can be exiting a corner at 150 km/h with an ever-so-slight tail-out attitude that is just so bloody good that you feel goose pimples rise all over your arms. Where - with my car's adjustable on-dash torque split controller - you can have in low speed corners anything from dramatic understeer to dramatic oversteer to perfectly neutral, all at the turn of the knob.

But how often can you enjoy all of those to the max? I made it a point to redline the car at least once every one of the 745 days that I drove the GT-R; but what do you do after that?

The Finances

A lease taken out over 4 years with a 40 per cent residual. So what's that mean in plain English? It means that you can drive a car that is more expensive than you can really afford! How so? Well, the GT-R lease was structured so that I paid $1217.74 every month for 4 years. At the end of the 4 years, a residual - final payment, if you like - of $30,000 would remain. Leases are calculated on the basis of average vehicle depreciation, with the residual supposed to match the car's value after that period - you sell the car to pay off the residual. And that's okay because prestige vehicles tend to hold their value pretty well. But not when direct Japanese imports are being sold at two-thirds the value of locally delivered cars!!

Just two years into the lease, the availability of Japanese import cars had dropped the value of my car from a paid A$75,000 to A$40,000. That's a 47 per cent drop in 24 months. Factor-in sharply decreasing prices for the Japanese import cars (where a Pulsar GtiR has dropped from A$35,000 to A$20,000 in a few years) and realistically at the end of the lease (in another 2 years' time) a GT-R - even an Australian delivered car - will probably be worth fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. Sound ludicrous - it isn't. Even now, importers are able to get R32 GT-R's onto Australian soil - import duties, etc paid - for low twenties.... So that would leave me with a A$30,000 residual payment at the end of the lease - and a car worth maybe A$15,000. Even after selling the car, I'd still need to take out a loan for perhaps A$15,000 to pay for the car I would no longer have. Leases don't work well when the value of a car declines in an unexpected way!

Incidentally, some people ask if I am bitter about the Japanese import car market - after all, it's personally cost me heaps. The answer is 'no', but I do think that importers should be forced through legislation to support their products for (say) ten years, with parts and service. That would weed out the backyarders PDQ. And if you think that I was pretty stupid paying A$75,000 for a car where direct Japanese imports were certain to dramatically reduce its value, consider the 2-door Subaru Impreza STi WRXs recently imported by Subaru Australia. Exactly the same situation exists with these cars - seen as collectors' items today and changing hands at well over the list price; tomorrow competing with the same cars imported by dealers directly from Japan and available for A$20,000 or A$25,000.....

So every day that I kept the GT-R, I saw its value declining and the amount of money that I would need to find at the end of the lease period increasing. That, and my feelings on the usefulness of the car to normal day to day living, meant there was only going to be one outcome...

Sidebar:

GT-R Handling

My coverage two years ago in magazine articles of my disappointment with the Skyline's handling still creates discussion today. Basically, the standard R32 GT-R behaves as a rear wheel drive car until massive tyre slippage is occurring, whereupon torque is fed to the front wheels. This makes the car handle like a RWD; power oversteer is available whenever you want. I don't think that a four wheel drive car should handle in that way - to me, it's being macho for the sake of bystanders and to the detriment of safety.

In Australia (the only country outside of Japan where Nissan sold the car) contemporary magazine reviews praised the car's handling as being wonderful - it even won magazine comparisons aimed at finding the best-handling car in Australia. Obviously I don't agree, although with the fitment of a good torque split controller the low-speed handling becomes outstanding (it's brilliant at high speed, even in standard form).

The most accurate review that I have ever read of the GT-R handling (this time of an R33 V-Spec) was in UK magazine Performance Car. They compared the GT-R with the Audi Quattro 20V, Ford Escort RS Cosworth, Lancia Delta Integrale Evo, and Subaru Impreza WRX. The comparison was made on real, mostly wet roads (as opposed to a racetrack), and said of the GT-R when comparing it with the WRX: "On unfamiliar, give and take roads, in wet weather, the Skyline can be unnerving, especially if you attempt to drive it as you would, say, the Impreza. In the Subaru, all your concentration is focused on judging the turn-in speed correctly. Once you know the front end has bitten, you can pretty much relax. In the Skyline, not only do you have to judge your turn-in speed, you also have to be careful applying power on the exit as it will readily snap into oversteer."

After 50,000 kilometres of driving a GT-R, I think that sums it up beautifully - it is not a relaxing car to drive fast around corners; you have to be on top of it at all times. And that statement simply does not apply to some other cars that - on public roads - are just as quick as the GT-R through the twisties....

Julian Edgar

[hrd-hr30]

Julian Edgar is a knob. if he wanted to improve the car's handling, he should have started with replacing the 7 year old shocks rather than trying to compensate for it by 2nd guessing the Nissan engineers ATESSA system. Mind you his only previous cars were fwd and subaru AWD - both of which are reknowned understeerers, so its no wonder he felt uncomfortable in the GTR and wanted to make it handle as badly as them...

[ali-turko]

drive a gtr and u wont look back

[gun32gtr]

drive a gtr and u wont look back

thats for sure

[hanyou]

thats for sure

i third that.

coming from a s2 33gtst. i wish i went straight to the gtr lol as i couldve used the money on the GTR. it is a money pit if you cant help yourself

i use it as my daily driver. had no problems since. (other then funds to go faster)

[fEkuaR]

id love a gtr.. but i dont know how they would go as a daily driver. You certainly would want to have a potential car meticulasly inspected by a mechanic to make sure you wont be having any major mechanical issues. Lets face it its a brilliant car and tough as nails but they are getting old now and time and abuse will have alot of poor condition mechanically gtrs out there now.

[Big Rizza]

Julian Edgar is a knob. if he wanted to improve the car's handling, he should have started with replacing the 7 year old shocks rather than trying to compensate for it by 2nd guessing the Nissan engineers ATESSA system. Mind you his only previous cars were fwd and subaru AWD - both of which are reknowned understeerers, so its no wonder he felt uncomfortable in the GTR and wanted to make it handle as badly as them...

Clearly anyone having a less than perfect opinion of the GTR clearly doesn't know what they're talking about. And yes, it is obvious that someone wishing their GTR to handle with the security of constant 4WD should not modify their 4WD system to make it behave like a constant 4WD system, but they should instead change their shock absorbers. And clearly someone who has owned a 1973 Honda Z, a ’77 AlfaSud, a ’77 BMW 3.0si, a 1986 Holden VL Commodore Turbo, and a Liberty RS before owning their R32 GTR, has infact only owned front wheel drive and subaru all wheel drives before owning their R32 GTR. And contemporary magazine reviews have unanimously recorded cars like the AlfaSud, BMW 3.0si and Liberty RS to be amongst the worst handling cars of all time, so it's only fit that one would want to make future cars they own handle equaly as bad.

I don't agree with everything Julian Edgar says, but don't let one persons less than perfect GTR ownership experience take anything away from the Godzilla legend. Saying "Nah he's a knob coz Thorpey said that GTR's are fully sick" doesn't make his opinion any less valid, and doesn't make his insight into GTR ownership any less valuable for a potential GTR buyer.

...

...

...

Anyways, back on topic, Thorpey told me that GTRs are fully sick, so you should definitely get one!

Edited November 1, 2006 by Big Rizza

[Big Rizza]

drive a gtr and u wont look back

Is that because everything behind you disappears over the horizon so quickly it's not even worth looking?

[R34 Rampage]

I reckon autospeed road tests are very honest, hate those typical magazine reviews where practically nothing bad is ever said about the test cars. Like it or not, the R32 GTR is more prone to oversteering than the later R33 or R34 models esp the V specs.

Driving Emotion

By Julian Edgar

Got to drive an N1 R34 V-Spec II GT-R Skyline the other day. Yes, that's the hottest factory version of one of the hottest factory cars ever released. Anywhere.

And with the drive scheduled for the next day, did I have trouble sleeping the night before? Nope. In fact, it filled me with - literally - about as much excitement as I would have had when facing the prospect of driving any car that's new to me. Like a Hyundai Getz, for example.

Trouble is, you see, my experience of Nissan Skyline GT-Rs has been sufficiently negative that I don't regard them as anywhere near as good a car as - apparently - millions of others do. Of course, I have actually owned one - something the vast majority of those millions haven't. I bought an Australian-delivered R32 GT-R back when it was near brand new, having been a believer in the fiction that I had read about them. You know, best-handling car ever, unbelievably good four-wheel drive system, fastest six cylinder you can buy - fables like that.

What I subsequently learned was that the car had a stupid amount of power oversteer and was only really quick when launched hard. Oh yes, and it was wearing to drive, had seats that gave chronic back-ache, attracted all the wrong sorts of attention, had steering terribly prone to tramlining - you get the picture. I fixed the handling with an adjustable torque split controller but it was never a car I particularly liked.

Too much hype, not enough reality.

I have since driven an R33 GT-R V-Spec (far better factory torque split control - nice power oversteer, not stupid) and another R32 GT-R (which drove just the same - ie as badly - as mine had).

So when the N1 R34 was lined up for a drive, I was interested but not excited. Not even one tiny bit.

In fact, to be honest, most of the hyped cars that I have driven have been way less than their reputation. Like a Clubsport R8 is a better car in most ways that count - including cost - than a 300kW GTS. Like a 1-year-old Impreza STi is in many respects a godawful car, something we said in print and which we were castigated for. (Recently I asked Peter Luxon - head honcho of major modifier APS - if he had ever driven a worse standard turbo car for lag and lack of response than an STi. After some thought he replied, "No.")

So the more that people rave about a car, the less I get excited.

Click for larger image

This particular N1 was running more boost than standard; it also had huge Harrop front brakes and fully adjustable suspension front and rear. Its roll-cage and high-winged race seats helped tell the story - it'd just done very well in the road race that's called Targa Tasmania, coming 12th outright.

Did I get any more excited?

I am afraid to say that I didn't.

AutoSpeed contributor Michael Knowling and I picked the car up from the very generous Craig Dean (of Melbourne's Sports and Luxury Cars) and headed out for a few hours. The car was warmed-up and so when I had done the U-turn on Burwood Highway I wound it out through the first couple of gears. It was slow to build boost but then shoved us back into the seats with an urgency that comes only from lots of power. And from a turbo car that is slow to come onto boost and then suddenly winds up those blowers...

I expected it to be strong; it was. Still not much excitement, though the push was definitely nice.

We headed up towards the ranges while I came to terms with the very sudden clutch (no doubt a race beastie) and started to enjoy the steering and ride. The ride on the modified suspension was really very good, especially when you consider the minimally-padded race seats. (Who cares about ride? Well, I am afraid I do. A good road car should have a decent ride as well as the handling - this car rode better than the awful Nissan 350Z... and surely would have better handling.)

And the steering was interesting. It was beautifully-weighted and superbly linear. There was none of the nervousness around centre that you'll find in an Evo 6 Lancer, and none of the sneeze-factor that seems to be built with religious faith into so many cars. It was, dare I say it, something rather like the Mazda MX5 Miata steering: so good you didn't have to think about it. At least I knew now that I'd be able to place the big car exactly where I wanted on the road. Unless of course I was fighting to keep it on the road in the first place...

The first corners were on the four lane road: constant radius on smooth bitumen. There was also traffic around so I just carefully loaded-up the suspension, much as you'd do on a skidpan or your favourite roundabout. Neither the front nor the rear of the car moved laterally a millimetre, instead the g-forces just built and built as the car sat flat and the speed rose. On its 265/35 road-race tyres it had amazing grip, so much that when I purposely said in a very casual voice "That's fairly impressive," Michael burst out laughing at the understatement.

But grip isn't handling: in fact, in many cars, lots of grip results in a fast breakaway when the available grip level is overcome. The 'grip-grip-grip-then-oh-shit!' scenario. I would have been astonished if the car didn't grip well - although even at this level of cornering I could tell that the four-wheel drive system was set up nothing like a horrible R32. Even with these sticky tyres, the R32 GT-R driver would have been spending most of the time looking out the side window at Impreza WRX drivers waving their fists as the GT-R slid into their lane...

The road emptied itself of traffic and narrowed: now it was a winding secondary strip of bitumen with moderately quick corners. I upped the pace - considerably, you might say - and enjoyed the feel of the steering and the feedback through bum and hands. The car wasn't sliding but it was still talking: I started to realise that this was a delightful car to drive quickly. Neat and precise and - if you remembered to get on the throttle a couple of heartbeats before the power was really needed, very linear. The modified brakes - lacking a booster and with twin master cylinders - needed a BIG push, but with the pads up to temp the retardation was strong.

It was coming together, without histrionics or misbehaviour, just extremely good handling.

But we only realised how good it was when Michael started calling out speeds: I was a mite busy to be looking at that instrument. Then we were astonished to find that we were consistently 50 km/h faster through each corner than we would have estimated. That's simply unbelievable.

Hmm, maybe this was a bloody good car.

I started getting excited. Very excited.

And braver and bolder.

I turned up an empty climbing side road: narrow - surely too narrow for a GT-R to be neat and fast - and started driving hard. Real hard...as in the huge Harrop brakes later got severe fade. The corners were tight: I was rocketing up, downchanging and braking and then turning-in at suicidal speeds. And the N1 was talking - no, it was yelling - at me. The steering was letting me know to the individual degree the amount of slip angle; not from the tyres squealing (they always stayed absolutely silent) but from the feel through the wheel, the feel through the car.

Michael gasped as the car understeered wide on one corner overlooking a substantial drop, but my heart rate didn't change because I knew it was just a settling motion that wouldn't go far. All that the car was doing was telling me that the turn-in needed to happen just a little slower, thanks. And then there was the right moment to get onto the power, the rear sliding into a superbly subtle oversteer as the car scrambled for grip, turbos up on full boost, the steering and the suspension alive and working with me.

And then the next corner, and then next. But then the Harrops fading, ABS kicking in as fear lent the strength of a weightlifter to my leg; then the trickle back down the hill, Michael stirring me about my breathing panting in and out as I tried to speak and breathe and laugh with the sheer enjoyment of the best handling car I have ever driven.

A car with an enormous level of grip but that lets go progressively and gently.

A car which when on boost is ultra strong and yet never feels overpowered.

A car that talks and talks, never doing anything that it hasn't telegraphed first.

A car with steering that's progressive, fast and yet not twitchy.

A car that as soon as it is turned into a corner is immediately settled, waiting for driver direction on cornering line or power - or preferably, both.

A car which rolls so little and yet is precise and never nervous.

Perfect? Nahhhhhh. The engine in a sequential twin turbo Supra is far more usable in its spread of torque, while the tramlining under brakes always required an assertive hand on the wheel. You could also - rightly, I think - argue that driving it on the very edge of adhesion with a throttle connected to that slightly surgy and laggy engine would require a lot of skill... more than I have, that's for sure.

But in the way it went around corners - not just in speed but in feedback and communication and predictability - was something I have never before experienced.

Absolutely blindingly good. A true redefiner of benchmarks.

And I sure have never said that before of anything with a 'GT-R' badge.

Finally, here is a car that lives up to the hype.

gtr

Edited November 1, 2006 by R34 Rampage

[ali-turko]

Is that because everything behind you disappears over the horizon so quickly it's not even worth looking?

LMAO but so true

Edited November 1, 2006 by ali-turko

[bnr#@]

This is a good article that highlights a few of the pros as well as the cons of GTR ownership, including the cons that eventually lead to the owner trading it in. I'd recommend an Autospeed subscription to anyone

http://autospeed.drive.com.au/cms/A_0302/article.html

Julian's New Car - Part 1 - Goodbye GT-R

The steering wheel wriggles in my grasp as the front tyres follow every longitudinal mark in the urban bitumen; constant steering corrections are required to maintain anything like a straight line. The ride is noisy and uncomfortable: the aftermarket plastic bushes in the front A-arms squeak at every bump, and the car on its otherwise standard suspension jolts sharply upwards over every minor road imperfection. I peer into the rear vision mirror, trying to see the following traffic past the wing that almost completely obscures the other cars. My lower back hurts from the seat's lack of lumbar support, and the wind noise - even at just 60 km/h - whistles around the leading edge of the A pillars. The gearbox whines, and every on/off application of throttle is accompanied by the rear diff moan. This car is no fun; this is literally a pain....

A day later:

The change from fourth to fifth occurs at 220 km/h, the road streaming towards me like a big screen TV with the VCR set on fast forward. I keep my boot planted, the car screaming along the country road. The bumps have grown as the road has shrunk in width; thank God I am in the only car that I have ever driven that aerodynamically becomes more stable the faster that you go. A glance flashed down at the speedo - 240 km/h - and then eyes go back to the road. I can hear the superb DOHC twin turbo six winding ever higher; this time the glance is darted down at the intake air temp gauge. The green LEDs show just 10 degrees above ambient: that fantastic Nissan intercooler! The needle keeps moving clockwise....250, 255, then 260! Two hundred and sixty kilometres an hour - 161 mph - in this glorious, glorious car....

My Nissan Skyline GT-R. The car that can be so rewarding to drive... and also so utterly underwhelming. The car that demands that you drive like a lunatic to enjoy its fabulous side, making you put up with its manifest disadvantages the 99 per cent of the time when sanity prevails. My Skyline GT-R... the car that yesterday I traded in on another car...

The Getting of Wisdom

When does the law of diminishing returns start to bear, when the expenditure of money no longer matches the rewards generated? That depends on the amount of money that you have available, what you term sufficient reward - and the car in which you gain it. After years of reading about how wonderful the Skyline GT-R was, I couldn't wait to get my bum into one. And I found probably the newest 1991 Australian-delivered R32 Skyline GT-R in the world - it had just 3500 kilometres on the clock. Sold by Nissan Australia for A$110,000 and 7 years later for sale at A$80,000.

Leasing the car was j-u-s-t within my budget; well it was when I considered how fabulous the rewards would be! Basically, I was prepared to pull just about any financial sleight-of-hand necessary to get the car; so what if my house roof leaked a little, if the carpet needed renewing.... This was a Skyline GT-R... a car which I believed to be the best in the world.... My initial disappointment with the car's handling (and the brilliant fix that was developed) you can read about at "Godzilla Tamed", but what was the car like once that problem was overcome? Or, to put it another way, what was the car good for, exactly? After driving the car for two years and 50,000km I can tell you what it's good for.

Not for normal daily use (can't leave it parked in a shopping centre/cinema/restaurant carpark - dings in the alloy front panels, stolen/vandalised probably within minutes); not for commuting (poor ride, tramlining, noisy gearbox/diff); not for a relaxing country drive (no cruise control, harsh ride, wind noise); not for driving fast at night (woeful headlights - and who's ever seen a GT-R with huge Hellas?); not for one of my recreational loves - camping (great joke, that - GT-R at an outback campsite) - er, what for then, exactly?

Try: cruising the cappuccino strip (cheers, pointing people, dribbling wankers trying to talk through your closed windows - bit embarrassing, really); full-on traffic light drags (sad when you launch at the required five grand and the other person dawdles off, though); really fast country drives (like 150 km/h+ - pity about the cops); exiting roundabouts in a four wheel drift with a touch of oversteer dialled-in with the torque split controller (but remember that you're then driving hard enough that if someone cuts you off, you're rooted); posing (but the charm wears off in minutes, see above re wankers) - er, not much here either, is there?

All of this could be forgiven if there was no other car that could touch its real-world performance for the price. No, I'm not talking the gospel according to performance magazines - where tiny increments in 0-100 and standing quarter times are apparently of earth-shattering importance - but in driving reality, where the difference between 0-100 in 6.5 and 5.5 seconds really counts for little: both are simply damn quick. In the real world, remember. What, don't believe me?

Well, consider overtaking. That's a time when more power definitely equals better: where it really counts. But if you're running an overtaking manoeuvre where a few tenths of a second make a difference, you're doing a pretty risky passing move, aren't you? And no, it's not the same as saying "Well, in that case, a bog-stock VN Commodore is as safe when passing as a Skyline GT-R". Any car doing six-point-something 0-100's (with commensurate in-gears performance) is going to be safe on the open road. Or maybe you're talking a traffic light grands prix? Any good turbo rotary will be faster than the GT-R, as will any well-developed V8. Well then, maybe its driving performance on a tight, twisty road? I'd take the current 6-speed Mazda MX5 myself - and I've driven the MX5 extensively. After a while "But it's a GT-R" (said in a hushed and reverent tone) starts to wear pretty thin....

Of course the GT-R has some good points; fantastic ones, actually. That engine. Is there a Six anywhere in the world that has a wider spread of torque, a powerband that realistically extends from 1100 to 8000 rpm? Where the revs are achieved so smoothly that it takes months to realise that one key to the car's response is its low, low gearing? Another plus: the GT-R's ability to put high speed corners behind you with utter precision and sheer pace. Where you can be exiting a corner at 150 km/h with an ever-so-slight tail-out attitude that is just so bloody good that you feel goose pimples rise all over your arms. Where - with my car's adjustable on-dash torque split controller - you can have in low speed corners anything from dramatic understeer to dramatic oversteer to perfectly neutral, all at the turn of the knob.

But how often can you enjoy all of those to the max? I made it a point to redline the car at least once every one of the 745 days that I drove the GT-R; but what do you do after that?

The Finances

A lease taken out over 4 years with a 40 per cent residual. So what's that mean in plain English? It means that you can drive a car that is more expensive than you can really afford! How so? Well, the GT-R lease was structured so that I paid $1217.74 every month for 4 years. At the end of the 4 years, a residual - final payment, if you like - of $30,000 would remain. Leases are calculated on the basis of average vehicle depreciation, with the residual supposed to match the car's value after that period - you sell the car to pay off the residual. And that's okay because prestige vehicles tend to hold their value pretty well. But not when direct Japanese imports are being sold at two-thirds the value of locally delivered cars!!

Just two years into the lease, the availability of Japanese import cars had dropped the value of my car from a paid A$75,000 to A$40,000. That's a 47 per cent drop in 24 months. Factor-in sharply decreasing prices for the Japanese import cars (where a Pulsar GtiR has dropped from A$35,000 to A$20,000 in a few years) and realistically at the end of the lease (in another 2 years' time) a GT-R - even an Australian delivered car - will probably be worth fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. Sound ludicrous - it isn't. Even now, importers are able to get R32 GT-R's onto Australian soil - import duties, etc paid - for low twenties.... So that would leave me with a A$30,000 residual payment at the end of the lease - and a car worth maybe A$15,000. Even after selling the car, I'd still need to take out a loan for perhaps A$15,000 to pay for the car I would no longer have. Leases don't work well when the value of a car declines in an unexpected way!

Incidentally, some people ask if I am bitter about the Japanese import car market - after all, it's personally cost me heaps. The answer is 'no', but I do think that importers should be forced through legislation to support their products for (say) ten years, with parts and service. That would weed out the backyarders PDQ. And if you think that I was pretty stupid paying A$75,000 for a car where direct Japanese imports were certain to dramatically reduce its value, consider the 2-door Subaru Impreza STi WRXs recently imported by Subaru Australia. Exactly the same situation exists with these cars - seen as collectors' items today and changing hands at well over the list price; tomorrow competing with the same cars imported by dealers directly from Japan and available for A$20,000 or A$25,000.....

So every day that I kept the GT-R, I saw its value declining and the amount of money that I would need to find at the end of the lease period increasing. That, and my feelings on the usefulness of the car to normal day to day living, meant there was only going to be one outcome...

Sidebar:

GT-R Handling

My coverage two years ago in magazine articles of my disappointment with the Skyline's handling still creates discussion today. Basically, the standard R32 GT-R behaves as a rear wheel drive car until massive tyre slippage is occurring, whereupon torque is fed to the front wheels. This makes the car handle like a RWD; power oversteer is available whenever you want. I don't think that a four wheel drive car should handle in that way - to me, it's being macho for the sake of bystanders and to the detriment of safety.

In Australia (the only country outside of Japan where Nissan sold the car) contemporary magazine reviews praised the car's handling as being wonderful - it even won magazine comparisons aimed at finding the best-handling car in Australia. Obviously I don't agree, although with the fitment of a good torque split controller the low-speed handling becomes outstanding (it's brilliant at high speed, even in standard form).

The most accurate review that I have ever read of the GT-R handling (this time of an R33 V-Spec) was in UK magazine Performance Car. They compared the GT-R with the Audi Quattro 20V, Ford Escort RS Cosworth, Lancia Delta Integrale Evo, and Subaru Impreza WRX. The comparison was made on real, mostly wet roads (as opposed to a racetrack), and said of the GT-R when comparing it with the WRX: "On unfamiliar, give and take roads, in wet weather, the Skyline can be unnerving, especially if you attempt to drive it as you would, say, the Impreza. In the Subaru, all your concentration is focused on judging the turn-in speed correctly. Once you know the front end has bitten, you can pretty much relax. In the Skyline, not only do you have to judge your turn-in speed, you also have to be careful applying power on the exit as it will readily snap into oversteer."

After 50,000 kilometres of driving a GT-R, I think that sums it up beautifully - it is not a relaxing car to drive fast around corners; you have to be on top of it at all times. And that statement simply does not apply to some other cars that - on public roads - are just as quick as the GT-R through the twisties....

Julian Edgar

Julian is a retard. The GTR is perfectly civil in daily traffic and even with my Apexi coilovers was perfectly acceptable. The gearbox doesn’t make any noise and neither did the diff. Fuel isn’t to bad as long as your not thrashing it, but if you do then prepare to pay. Repairs aren’t too cheap but you would expect that from a car that was faster then the Ferrari’s and porches of its time, still holds its own well on the track even today.

[psybic]

Its threads like these that make me just a little glad I have wasted so much on cars over the years. Its kinda fun to rattle off this list... ready.

Honda Accord

Toyota Celica - then modified wih GT4 engine, still FWD

Toyota Supra (non turbo)

R32 GTR

Charade 3cyl non turbo

S12 Gazelle ( 158rwkw SR20 )

R33 GTST S2

NOW... you'll note I build up to the GTR then quickly backward. Its simple, if you don't listen to the advice that they can cost you big $$$, then you'll end up like me, back in a charade before you know it.

If you get a $15k import like I did, you'll be proud as punch for 3weeks while you smash everything else in a straight line and around corners if you have balls to push it... then suddenly, you'll break something, cause they are old and have been driven.

The ultimate drive, even a 16yo thrashed out one was the best car I have ever driven and felt amazing to drive.

Make sure you get one taken care of though even then, you'll need a solid budget JUST IN CASE!

[ali-turko]

dat guy sounds like a f@#k wit and need a kick in the head, what dose he think he his...

[predator]

b-jesus.. anybody would think the GTR is the greatest car ever and have no negatives at all. Just look at the average ownership of a GTR - it's not that long in a long number of cases on here. If they were the perfect car to everybody, nobody would ever sell one.

He is just pointing out some negatives.. But he is only one opinion.

[Mr. Keets]

R32 GT-R

Pros: Lays waste to all that attempt to usurp its position as King..."fear me, I am Godzilla!"

Cons: It can be a little thirsty while lay waste to unbelievers.

Seriously. If you have a tight budget buy something else.

You should buy the best one you can find and be prepared to undertake a programme of preventative maintance. Leave the boost alone, do the timing belt and change all the fluids when you get it, be prepared to invest in a new fuel pump... cause their old now, new springs and shocks and be prepared for being targeted by the police, be ready for high insurance costs. If i havent scared you off yet go for it

Mods...now thats a whole different budget issue there.

[ignuz]

Best:

-Power and glory

-influence and cred

-bragging rights

-Lots of sex.. Maybe

Worst:

-Insurance

-Finance

-theft

[gtrchick]

^^ LOL classic

Reading that Julian Edgar's review just fustrated me... bah.

Gtrs are just sex on wheels...... but thats my 2 cents

Edited November 1, 2006 by gtrchick

[700HP-GTR33]

R32 GT-R

Pros: Lays waste to all that attempt to usurp its position as King..."fear me, I am Godzilla!"

Cons: It can be a little thirsty while lay waste to unbelievers.

Seriously. If you have a tight budget buy something else.

You should buy the best one you can find and be prepared to undertake a programme of preventative maintance. Leave the boost alone, do the timing belt and change all the fluids when you get it, be prepared to invest in a new fuel pump... cause their old now, new springs and shocks and be prepared for being targeted by the police, be ready for high insurance costs. If i havent scared you off yet go for it

Mods...now thats a whole different budget issue there.

Prevention is part of the cure...they must of wrote this while they were thinking of the gtr32.

The Japs no nothing of long term maintenance because they get rid of their cars every 3 to 4 years.

If you have some extra $$$ and are willing to part with them to make the car reliable ,the GTR

is your best choice.....

You can pick up a great one for $20,000 .......An extra 3 to 4K will get it reliable.

Hope I have been of some help.

Cheers