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Ode
To A Skyline
We test Nissan's wildest car -- the
Skyline GT-R V-Spec-- on its home turf, and get a wing clipped, too.
By DON SCHROEDER
Saturday,
9 a.m., Hakone, Japan:
After two days of rounding up test cars beneath gray skies, it's our first sunny
day. We stop at a Cosmo service station for a fill-up and a carwash. In contrast
to the good ol' U.S., here stations are stocked with cheerful, eager-to-please
attendants who apparently have not heard the term "chump change."
The Supra Turbo is parked in the bay of a "Lugar Big Top," a
carwashing superstructure that moves on rails back and forth over the parked
car. The Big Top completes its motion to the rear of the Supra, then stops
abruptly. The control-panel lights blink urgently: the rear brush is stuck
behind the Supra's wild rear wing, a $500 option.
One smiling attendant, 20-year-old Miss Motoko Yoshikawa, marches confidently
over to the control panel, ponders it for a moment, and presses a button. The
Big Top lurches forward and rips off the Supra's rear wing with a sickening
crackling noise, that same sound you remember as a kid perching on a tree limb
just before it collapsed.
This causes pandemonium at the station. Attendants and the manager run over,
yelling and gesticulating wildly. Yoshikawa-san has crouched on the ground, head
in her hands, and is weeping.
The good news is it wasn't the Nissan Skyline GT-R, the subject of this test.
Skylines are a line of sporty coupes and sedans sold only in Japan and
Australia. That, in itself, is not a good enough reason to go to Japan to test
one. The predecessor to this car appeared in 1989, the year Nissan cooked up the
first twin-turbo and intercooled 4wd Skyline for Group A and N track racing.
Enthusiasts around the world salivated over its technology, as did we when we
test-drove a GT-R that had been sneaked into the U.S. and tweaked to about 350
horsepower. We called it "so good, it's scary."
The new GT-R appeared in January. It comes in three forms: standard GT-R; the GT-R
V-Spec you see here, which has a more advanced driveline; and a racing version
with a revised suspension, called the N1.
In any form, the new GT-R is technically peerless. For motivation, twin ceramic
turbochargers with an intercooler feed a 2.6-liter six with 12.0 psi of boost.
The claimed 276 hp (at 6800 rpm) bumps up against the Japanese automakers'
voluntary power ceiling (Nissan insiders say the GT-R's actual figure is more
like 311 hp). At 4400 rpm, there's 271 pound-feet of torque. Redline is a
sizzling 8000 rpm.
A five-speed
manual feeds the GT-R's four-wheel drive via a center differential sporting an
electronically controlled multiplate clutch. This "ATTESA E-TS" system
sends 100 percent of the torque to the rear wheels until a wheel sensor detects
slip--then it meters up to 50 percent of the torque to the front. Our V-Spec GT-R
had yet another electronically controlled clutch, called A-LSD, which serves as
a separate limited-slip differential for the rear wheels. The intent of this
complexity is to distribute just the right amount of torque to each wheel to
provide neutral handling, not simply maximum full-time traction.
Massive 245/45ZR-17 Bridgestone Expedias on alloy wheels are controlled by
unequal-length control arms up front, with control arms and links in the rear on
their own subframe. The final piece of the puzzle is Nissan's electronically
controlled Super HICAS rear-wheel steering, which now receives information from
a new yaw sensor installed in the trunk.
Sunday, 11 a.m., Hakone:
We're at a crowded snack bar at an intersection of the Ashi-no-ko Skyline, a
meticulously maintained collection of curves, sweepers, and switchbacks making
up a scenic road surrounding Hakone's Lake Ashi. The traditional Japanese
breakfast looks just like last night's dinner; Pat Bedard once described it as
"a do-it-yourself fish assembly kit." It just hasn't hit the spot, so
we're now which are Japanese junk food in the form of little chocolate- coated
pretzels.
In the parking lot are hundreds of sport motorcycles--all the Japanese marques,
with dozens of Ducatis, BMWs, and new Triumphs mixed in. Our correspondent,
Yasushi Ishiwatari, calls their riders, none of whom look older than 18,
"mountain road boys." They wear brightly colored leathers tattooed
with mangled English.
An example is a jacket with a big red cross and the words: Yellow Corn,
Sledgehammer, Highway the Third.
A cross on a biker jacket seems like good insurance, considering the treacherous
roads. The lanes are narrow, passing zones plentiful, and warning signs few. But
most spooky are the curves, which are lined with sharp-edged, eight-inch-deep
concrete drainage ditches, ready to catch a wheel or rip out a suspension. The
mountain road boys aren't known for reckless driving, but then again the
ambulances around here are busy around the clock on weekends.
On these
roads, the Supra Turbo is just as we remember in the States: cool and composed,
with naturally weighted steering, progressive responses, and smooth, consistent
thrust from its twin-turbocharged 276-hp 3.0-liter six. Its sharp, unfettered
handling allows you to cut each curve and corner into consistent and manageable
bite-sized chunks: brake, turn-in, and back on the throttle. Repeat.
If the Supra is a Japanese ceramic knife, the Corvette is a backwoodsman's axe:
big, brutal, undoubtedly effective. The 300-hp 5.7-liter V-8 dominates this car,
even occasionally manhandling the suspension. Our car, like most
Japanese-specification Corvettes, was equipped with the base shocks and springs,
which can get floaty and restless under the narcotic influence of the LT1's
heady torque curve.
Smooth inputs are required to keep the Vette on the straight and narrow, but
there's more than enough tire grip, braking, and power to get the job done. Take
the Corvette's grip and the Supra Turbo's precision, add benign and neutral
four-wheel drive, and you've got a GT-R. This car is great fun, leaping from
corner to corner with the kind of sticky pull behind the wheel that we've seen
with four-wheel-drivers like the Mitsubishi 3000GT VR4 and Porsche 911 Turbo.
The soundtrack resembles that of a slightly muffled BMW M5--an urgent, insistent
droning from underhood.
From our somewhat tired press car (with 7000 miles on the clock), we could still
extract 60 mph in 5.3 seconds and a quarter-mile time of 14.0 seconds at 104
mph. (Japanese magazines recorded much faster times, but their uncorrected
testing was done in the winter cold, with launches that allowed spinning rear
tires.) A GT-R in better shape than ours would certainly get to 60 mph in under
five seconds. Still, our GT-R's speed is in a dead heat with the Vette's and
Supra Turbo's until 113 mph, where a Japan-standard governor abruptly halts the
fun.
The GT-R's 0.94-g roadholding may be the most usable grip since evolution
stumbled upon the opposable thumb. The driveline technology controls power-on
oversteer expertly--avoid overcooking the entry speed in a turn and you'll make
like F1's Ukyo Katayama every time. On a track, the GT-R is magnificent: brake
just deep enough into a corner to slide the tail, get on the gas early to crank
up the boost, and the ATTESA system feeds in just enough front torque to rein in
the oversteer and explode the GT-R out of the corner.
Tuesday,
3 p.m., Tokyo:
One hour in Tokyo rush-hour traffic can make Los Angeles seem like Tulsa. But
Tokyo drivers remain courteous, even in the face of driving habits that
westerners would find infuriating. The turn signal is used by many drivers as an
all-purpose device, when they want to slow down and park anywhere--adjacent to
another car, at a corner, or blocking a lane on a busy thoroughfare. That might
light off an explosion of horns in New York City, but we heard only one horn in
Tokyo -- blown at me, in fact, as I nearly caused an accident trying to wheedle
the $55,200 GT-R around one of those random parkers. Before you laugh, remember
that the rear-view mirrors and blind spots on a right-hand-drive car are
reversed.
A $55,200 pricetag doesn't make the GT-R exclusive. In three days, we saw at
least a dozen of them, many driven by guys more in the market for Clearasil than
Barbasol. Nissan says that in a six-month period last year, fully one-quarter of
GT-R buyers were under the age of 25, and that trend continues. Who are these
guys? Trust-fund babies? Drug dealers? (Nah.) Yakuza? (Maybe.) Remember, this is
a country where the average full-time worker makes about a third more than the
average U.S. worker--at least $45,000 a year. Despite the pay scale, real estate
remains beyond the reach of many, freeing up yen for other expenditures. Fancy
cars, for one.
Some banks in Japan still don't require comprehensive insurance to back up
expensive car loans, because default rates are low. Many hotshoes in Japan, says
Ishiwatari, are paying off two or three loans but driving only one car. The
other two were balled up on roads like the Ashi-no-ko Skyline. Balling up a GT-R
would be very sad. This is a handsome car--not as neatly tailored as its
predecessor, but still properly proportioned. The gaping front fascia tips off
the GT-R's intended mission, as does the huge, adjustable rear wing. And the GT-R's
round quad taillamps, when lit, cast the eerie glow of little jet afterburners.
The black Supra (relieved of its rear wing) looks a bit dull in comparison. The
Corvette looks unhappy, fitted with awkward fender flares in order to conform to
Japanese fender-to-tire proportion regulations.
The GT-R's
insides are from the Maxima school: dark gray with simple lines, austere and
businesslike. Gauges let you monitor oil temperature, turbo boost, and torque to
the front wheels. The monoform front seats, with just fore-and-aft and
seatback-angle adjustments, provide terrific support. Four adults will fit in a
GT-R comfortably. Try that in a 911. Look at the Skyline's center console and
interior floor, though, and you'll notice significant asymmetry right-to-left.
This, combined with the engine-bay layout in which the six-cylinder is canted to
the passenger side, reveals an obvious, depressing fact: it would take a
cross-wired Star Trek replicator, if not an act of God, to make a
left-hand-drive Skyline GT-R for the U.S.
Then again, there's always the customizing work of a Lugar Big Top, in the
skillful hands of Motoko Yoshikawa.
Courtesy of :-
