The Motor Report Auto News Blog

The amazing news concerning Nissan’s new GT-R just keeps coming and must have the supercar manufacturers shaking their heads. Inside Line have tested a privately owned Japanese spec GT-R at an airstrip just outside of Tokyo. The fact that they thought the GT-R was the ducks guts is one thing but they also found the launch control system and peeled off a staggering 0-60mph (96kmh) time of 3.3 seconds and a quarter mile time of 12.6 seconds!

Launch control you say…there has been no mention of that before but yes, the GT-R is launch control equipped;

“Activating the Nissan GT-R’s launch control is a matter of configuring its transmission, dynamics control and damping adjustments properly. The transmission and damping switches must both be set to the R mode and the VDC must be switched off completely by holding the VDC-R button down for a few seconds. Then it’s just a matter of pinning the brake with your left foot and wooding the throttle with your right, not unlike the technique used to produce a tire-shredding burnout in that ‘85 Camaro you drove in high school,” said Inside Line

Simply put that makes the GT-R the fastest car ever tested by Inside Line. Faster that a Corvette Z06, Dodge Viper and Porsches 911 Turbo Tiptronic. In fact the GT-R is faster than most cars out there, supercars included.

These times give even more credence to the suspected grossly under-exaggerated power output figures, for which Nissan is already famous and re-writes the supercar rule book, because the latest entrant to that elite group is the cheapest and one of the fastest.

Anybody doubting the GT-R’s ability to compete with the best of the best must be desperately hoping that it has some major flaw, yet to come through in the limited road tests undertaken to-date. Maybe…but I suspect not.