Great Article from Times Live South Africa on GT-R

Chasing volcanoes

Motoring: Nisan GT-R

In fact, being bigger than GTI and so much more interesting than STI, the mythical letters G-T-R sparked a reaction akin to the unexpected return of some long-lost Messiah.

Wherever you went, whatever country you found yourself in, this curious new Nissan was staring at you from the cover of some glossy motoring magazine or a swanky backlit airport billboard. Looking like something that would devour your pets if you left it alone in your driveway for too long, the GT-R also made bold claims about being the fastest production car on Earth.

Of course nobody really knew what this meant at the time but after hearing important-sounding words like "Nürburgring" and "record breaking" uttered by the chaps on Top Gear, even the most desperate ranks of the auto-illiterate could work out that the GT-R meant business. While a nervous topic of conversation among Porsche and Ferrari- driving adults, word of this exotic oriental spilled unceasingly from the lips of the Playstation generation.

In every school, in every crowded playground, eager boys with overly developed thumbs could be found extolling the virtues of its "awesome" abilities and its onboard computer, dreamed up by the gurus responsible for their favourite racing game, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.

Bizarrely enough it was through playing this heralded driving simulator that I got my first taste of GT-R mania. The disc arrived inside a glossy black box and I immediately slid it into our office console and spent many a lunch hour admiring its form rolling across the glossy plasma screen. Even in this high-definition world built up from millions of microscopic pixels, the way the Nissan looked, drove and - if you can believe this - sounded struck a chord inside me and, from that day on, I knew that this was definitely a car I had to drive before the Reaper scythed me down.

Unfortunately, being such a complex animal and one made in relatively limited numbers, this notion seemed very much like wishful thinking, especially for us petrolheads stuck down on the very southern tip of the Dark Continent.

For although I was confident that the Japanese knew where South Africa was on the map and that its inhabitants did, in fact, shimmy around terra firma in cars and not, as many Americans still believe, on the back of elephants, something told me that they weren't planning on supplying us with their Lamborghini-slaying supercar any time soon.

Things echoed pretty poorly in the rumour mill, too, and when I heard via the motoring grapevine that the GT-R wouldn't be coming anywhere near our country - filled with foul fuel and rubbish roads - I surrendered all hope and quietly went back to the cold, virtual comforts of Gran Turismo. But that, as I quietly beat all the other cars into submission, just made me feel worse.

And then, just as some of my biting disappointment waned, Jeremy Clarkson wrote a review that somehow had the misfortune of landing on my desk. Not only had the big, balding oaf just been to Japan but - in-between whingeing about the island's mammoth population and horrendous traffic - it turned out that he actually got to sample the Nissan GT-R on its home turf and around a twisting mountain pass no less. He also, quite surprisingly, managed to keep some of his allotted word count for describing what this perceived banzai maniac was like to drive.

"This, then, is an extraordinary car, quite unlike anything I've driven before," he said somewhere near the end of the last paragraph. "You might expect it, with all its yaw sensors and its G readout on the dash, to feel like a laptop. Or you might expect, with all that heavy engineering, for it to feel like a road-going racer. But it is neither of these things. It certainly doesn't feel like it could do a 7.29-minute lap of the Ring. Even though I've seen a film of it doing just that."

Complimentary, perhaps, but not exactly the clean-cut words of praise I was expecting from the outspoken Yorkshireman.

To tell you the truth I wanted to hear fireworks from Clarkson, you know, one of his metaphorical sentences that punters would quote forever more. Instead, all I got from the god of motoring was a rather cryptic summary concluding that the GT-R was too good a car for the average mortal.

"I dare say that if Michael Schumacher were to find himself in the eye of an Arctic blizzard," Clarkson continued, "escaping from an exploding volcano, he might discover 10% of this car's abilities. But you? Me? Here? Forget it."

Skip forward roughly about a year and, with this sentence replaying in my mind, I find myself in a most unlikely scenario: It's summertime and freezing cold and, making things even more surreal, my eager fingers are just inches away from touching the paintwork of a bright red Nissan GT-R standing right here on South African soil. Disproving all the critics and even my own biting cynicism, Japan's über-car had arrived.

Unexpectedly large in real life, its presence rekindled the riotous hype of days gone by and I thought, once I fire up that engine, the next few hours would cause my adrenal gland to swell to exponential proportions.

Taking out my camera, I'm determined to document every nuance of this experience. But, most of all, I want to be - unlike Clarkson - utterly blown away by the high-performance innovations beneath its bonnet.

Apparently I'm way easier to please because even in the first 10km of my assault on the R512, I'm whooping and yelling like a girl at a Beatles concert. For despite the Nissan's uncanny ability of feeling dead calm during its storming displays of performance, the way it covers ground is gobsmacking.

Seemingly attached to the Earth through some devious form of black magic, a blood pact with the gods of gravity, the way it sticks through corners is awe-inspiring; a lateral rollercoaster ride that stretches your tendons, joints and neck muscles to snapping point with every flick of that leather-wrapped steering wheel.

True, the experience might lack the tactile qualities of something Italian and, yes, that cabin could benefit from an extra spattering of supercar fairy dust. But, for the money, no other car on this planet offers up such an eye-bulging pageant of easy speed.

Now even though I'm not Michael Schumacher, and didn't get trapped in the eye of a blizzard or end up anywhere near a volcano, my brief stint inside the GT-R confirmed everything I had suspected about this car in the first place.

So by all means believe the hype, believe those enthused musings from your TV-bound son but, most importantly, believe me when I tell you that this really is one of the most spellbinding supercars released in the past 10 years.

Fast facts: Nissan GT-R

The Basics:

Price: From R1175000

Performance: 0-100km/h in 3.5 seconds, 311km/h

Power: 357kw at 6400rpm, 588Nm from 3200 - 5200rpm

Thirst: 12.41l/100km (combined)

The Best:

• Proper supercar looks
• Explosive performance
• Huge bang for your buck
• Surprisingly practical
• Exceptional dual-clutch gearbox

Source: TimesLive