Nissan GT-R R35 | The End Complete

[Music] the 2020 nissan gtr r35 in this video you can expect a few things extreme detail the story and history of this car including the engineering we've worked with nissan usa nissan japan and ams performance to bring you every single thing that you probably want to know about this so get ready [Music] [Applause] [Music] when the r35 was released in japan in 2007 the world was a much different place and nissan was a much different company they were coming out of a severe slump and into positive cash flow the nissan gtr was a rebirth for the company setting new standards and pushing new levels of performance that we haven't seen before in 2009 north america saw its first taste of this car now the gtr has a long lineage in japan in north america not so much in fact most of our introduction to it was from a game called gran turismo created by polyfoni or polyphony digital at the time its creator had a relationship with some of the engineers and people inside nissan which led to the development of the infotainment screen or the gauges that they placed on the infotainment and nissan pioneered on-board telemetry for the average person what you have is customizable gauges if you want your oil temperature or transmission temperature you can have this here and this was really mind-blowing at the time and this is what nissan's fundamental idea was was making all of this performance and technology accessible to the average person now that philosophy of accessibility carries over into the cabin design the earlier gtrs had a very simple approach this was not trying to wow you with exotic materials it just was functional pure sports car feel now in 2017 they made some major revisions to materials the way the center stack is laid out and overall technology which brings it more in line with the current nissan lineup but the big thing here is you can be pretty much any body type and fit in these seats it is a large frontal cabin space with minimal sacrifice the adjustability is good the back seats are good for small children or things the trunk makes this usable seven days a week and not one day a week like many super cars so again it's trying to find this balance between price material choice and usability but i think that's a great time to get into the shop and really talk about the story and the engineering behind this car nissan gtr r35 and like most great cars just like this one there's a story so in the late 90s nissan was almost bankrupt and their new executive pulled them out of the disaster that they were in financially he then greenlit this project and in 2001 the first concept car came out and it was called the tm or trend maker because they believed the core philosophy behind this car would catch on with other automotive manufacturers and there were two primary objectives behind this product the first one you had to drive this thing or be able to drive this thing at 300 kilometers an hour or nearly 200 miles an hour and have a conversation with your passenger the second philosophy or goal with this car is it needed to be able to dominate the race track however they wanted it to be accessible and tamara-san who nissan internally calls mr gtr paints a rather interesting picture of what he believes a sports car like this should be like [Music] sorry to say your judgment i don't think so because complex meaning is a if you drive it's complex feeling because the handling is difficult excel break difficult complex it's meaning complex but some system complex and you know you if you don't see above for any on the floor you cannot see above for uh it's complex olympic player or human run out 0 to 100 meter maybe 100 years ago 10.2 seconds hundred years later now how much to deal 200 meter to reach by a human five second six second yes you're right nine point five eight by usain bolt just in one second or maybe below this is a hundred years ago of the differentiation of human physical stuff but car is different you know 100 mile or even quarter mile drug race everything maximum speed quite different power quite different but human it's almost same how you can connect to this human connection connectability so first step abs and lock brake system sorry mr customer your brake is so hard but your brake is bad when you rocked please release above for a brake pedal people cannot do that people could not do that are you protectable for dangerous zone we have to control above for break oil pressure right by electronic complex system okay so vdc or attraction control all of the system level maybe 0.1 is a boring car i don't want to drive about for this boring car yes true in the track day i do want to drive by myself but once again you know far from you know 500 miles from this i'm not sure for uh laguna seca for you laguna seca for you do you want to drive a boring interstate 5 by yourself maybe car please drive by yourself or some support by level three four five something like that it's okay that that's why for uh this complex system sorry to back to the story for you the complex is someday it's not complex but the first starting point maybe looks like a complex change the mind for the customer viewpoint not like uh like a geek type of the journalist you may better for understanding about for real customer of the attitude that's my approaching stance the way he explained it is the nissan the gtr coddles you it kind of holds you in its arms as you get to that limit it kind of pulls you back to safety and it doesn't matter what drive mode you're in between the all-wheel drive system the safety systems and its its overall design of how it's putting down power you always feel like the car is there to protect you and this was one of the most controversial things about when this came out it was the first car that was more driving simulator than driver's car and this was by design it wasn't trying to be that edgy at the limit uh you know always kind of being behind and chasing the car and keeping it in check it was there to kind of keep you in check while still delivering all that insane high performance power that a supercar would have the excitement of this vehicle came from the fact that you as a mortal man or woman who didn't necessarily have the driving aptitude of a race car driver they could get to that next level performance they could not get in one of the competitors and as you can clearly tell with modern cars here in 2020 2021 this philosophy's moved on to brands like bmw porsche chevrolet this core concept of having technology aid you and make you faster while keeping you safe has moved on and really become the trend in the automotive industry however as mark said it was controversial when it first came out and it's still controversial if you're someone that loves to drive there's always going to be that ongoing debate with sports cars at what point do you take driver control away where the car is doing more than the driver there's two other core philosophies behind this product the chase of perfection is the first one this car's been around for 13 years and they didn't really have an end goal or end objective when they're engineering this car they wanted to get as close to perfection as humanly possible and since then every single model year from 2007 to 2020 they made changes and the other philosophy is accessibility of performance every part about this car when it comes came to suspension technology drive mode body philosophy was about making this car usable every single day to a regular person so mass this car was very very heavy and it was a a point of contention when it first came out however mizuno-san the chief engineer believed that mass was important for making this thing ride correctly and have the traction it needed and with the traction needed came a new design principle for the architecture this was the first car nissan ever designed with a dual clutch trans axle which means the gearbox and the transmission are behind the driver right over the rear differential and they did that for weight distribution he believed weight in the right portions of this vehicle in the right corners helped drive this car into the ground and you can't really argue with the realities of it this thing puts down power enormously well yeah and weight is relative to what you're trying to achieve if you're trying to achieve speed you overcome weight by power yes and that is the modern way of doing things reducing weight or adding lightness costs money and when this came out from a story perspective this was between 70 and 80 thousand dollars and with inflation you're talking about a hundred thousand dollars the thing is you can't do everything with a development budget when you're setting a price point that's one of the parts about this car it was built to a price point to make sure that maybe somebody the normal man could afford this as an aspiration as an aspirational car so let's talk about that knowing that they couldn't go crazy exotic here nor did they really want to so this was never really designed as a supercar tomorrow son calls this a super sports car and with that the manufacturing process reflects it so the core parts of this vehicle the transmission really the drivetrain the heart of this car are takumi crafted what takumi's are is an overused phrase and often used in a marketing term but it's highly skilled japanese craftsmen who've developed or dedicated their lives to their trade so the engine which has each takumi's name stamped on it is built in the yokohama facility there are four takumi's who currently work for nissan in the yokohama facility and each engine is built by a single man over a period of many many hours the gearbox is also built by takumi's in the aichi facility so the dual clutch which was co-developed with borg warner is built in a separate facility and much like the engine is broken in after it's completed on a essentially an engine or transmission stand part of the charm of this is you kind of get that half and half you get the hand built part of the things that matter with the gtr and then everything else is sent down a traditional assembly line with other normal cars if there are a lot of orders for the gtr they can just build more of them this is built on the tochigi plant which is where all the other premium nissan infiniti products are already built the one thing to mention is the body structure really quickly so the body in white is basically largely steel however when they're painting this car unlike the other vehicles in the tochigi plant they pull it off the line to hand polish it however all the hang on panels on this car other than the rear quarters are aluminum talking about hood fenders and some other components so the next part jack is what the suspension technology so before we get into the nuts and bolts i'm going to quickly walk you through the drive modes and that's really one of the reasons this car is so impressive by today's standards you have three different kinds of drive modes you have your you have your traction modes so your stability control modes you have r which is race normal and all off esc off so when it's in normal mode it will not send any torque to the front of the car and it has maximum stability control intervention when you put it into r mode it allows you some more slip which they detect via yaw yaw sensors g sensors and steering angle sensors they also send more power or torque to the front differential of this car to help straighten the vehicle out so when you drive this thing and you mat it mid corner the rear end will step out and then after about .15 of a second they send power to the front of the car to straighten the vehicle out that delay is necessary for this car to feel rear driven and that's one of the core things about the all-wheel drive system and then of course you can turn it all off and try to drift this car like chris harris you have three drive train modes as well you have r normal and save save as your economical mode normal as normal and r opens up the rear exhaust baffles and tries to get this gearbox to downshift as quickly as possible and add a little more brutality or ferocity to the gearbox itself and then of course you have your three suspension modes comfort normal and r so in the front you have a double wishbone suspension with a steel front subframe and some aluminum control arms and your bilstein damtronic dampers nismo variants you do get carbon ceramics but in the regular variants of this car you get steel as you move to the back you have a multi-link rear suspension with a torque vectoring rear differential that can send torque to either wheel individually depending on how the all-wheel drive system is receiving input from all the various sensors of the car the rear end is also largely steel underbody is all covered with panels now this is part of the aerodynamic discussion jack so let's get into that so this car was designed at least initially to look like a gundam however it may look chunky because of its very unique styling but its focus was lowering its coefficient drag when this car first came out as one of the most aero efficient vehicles on the market i believe it's like a .26 drag coefficient and then in 2017 they made a pretty substantial update to the front and rear fascia to thus again i think they increased its aerodynamic efficiency by about five percent and they also made other changes to this car which i'm about to talk about your suspension again as i mentioned earlier was evolved every single model year and there's a philosophy behind that it's the performance to maturity scale that tomorrow sound showed us so when you look at this on your x-axis you have performance the making this feel like a supercar and the maturity side of it is your y-axis and this whole product belief for the regular gtr not the nismo is to move it up directly in the middle to get it more mature more comfortable a better gt car and i'm sure some of that has to do the fact that he's getting older he's been working on this project for almost 20 years the other part of it too is he wants to make it faster and the suspension changes also to reflect the tire technology changes so yes you have your knurled wheels that are built by rays but in 13 years tires have gotten a whole hell of a lot stickier so they had to make the necessary suspension changes to reflect that which are spring rates and damper valving in 2020 with a new tire compound you also had changes to your transmission programming and you also had changes to the brake programming or brake booster and the overall brake pedal feel and what they wanted to do was make the steel brake system on here similar feel similar to the modern carbon composite brake systems that were out from higher end sports cars so it's a full body approach to improving all these subsystems and it goes right back down to the original philosophy of chasing perfection through incremental improvements with the set aside budget that they have for r d and that's the other thing to bring up they didn't necessarily have the resources at nissan to keep doing massive redesigns to the car so something that is i guess a bit controversial is the gearbox they continually made changes the gearbox has made it to their tesla all-wheel drive system so i'm going to give them a quick overview of how the gearbox and all-wheel drive system works before we talk about the engine so in the back you have a dual clutch gearbox with a rear differential which allows torque vectoring then you have two drive shaft you have one drive shaft that comes from the engine in the front of the vehicle that sends power to the rear differential and gearbox and then you have a separate drive shaft that sends power to the front differential which is coming off the rear of the car so as i mentioned earlier when the car detects slip after 0.15 of a second it sends power to the front of the vehicle so looks very very interesting but the trans logic changed every single year when this car first came out and we're about to talk to martin at ams performance we'll talk more about this but the gearboxes were known to basically explode from abuse so they had to make software changes and some slight mechanical changes to the gearbox to make it evolve to make it feel better to survive the abuse all the stuff you were expecting from rolling engineering changes and i think that's a good time to talk about the mechanical changes the biggest refresh was in 2017. so tomorrow sun called it the one of the largest changes or as large of a change to the r35 as there was a leap in engineering from the r32 to the r33 so they changed the front crash structure of the car essentially they went to a more rigid setup they got that feedback from their race car drivers who believed the front suspension should be more rigid it allows for better front end feel than an oso again safety and the other thing they added was more structural adhesives so there's things about upping rigidity and i think they impr increase the overall rigidity of the front and the rear and it may sound like a little but again it's all these little tuning points i think it's like five to ten percent between the front and the rear so there are massive changes to the overall car it just doesn't particularly look like it but it makes a huge difference in the drivability and a lot of that has to do with software tuning and some of the engine tuning that we're going to talk about now jack so engine tuning i'm not going to get into too much of it because martin is going to walk you through this but in 2020 they changed the turbochargers and the trans logic so they allowed the trans to downshift harder but upshift smoother and with that and their changes in their stability control logic they allowed you to enter a corner and exit a corner faster allowing the car to rotate with the gearbox and also stop the car from upsetting itself mid-corner so you can now shift mid corner and it won't break traction like you will say in a 458 gearbox where it's like bang bang bang bang bang they also updated the turbocharging technology for this car they decreased the number of vanes and decreased the internal mass of the turbos to allow them to spool up faster and the what that translates into is the car is faster not just faster in a straight line but when you compare the 2020 to the 2017 after about a quarter mile this car will pull basically a length a car length and a half in front of the 2017 model just with the updated turbochargers so again incremental improvements exactly so with that let's head over to ams and walk you through what this thing is like to tune and actually live with [Music] we have made it to ams performance in west chicago illinois and we have this lovely gentleman here hi i'm martin from ams performance and we've been working on nissan gtrs since 2009 maintaining them building them and racing them that is a long time and when we usually talk about brand new cars like this one we don't have the perspective of history we don't know the evolution of them or even how they've held up in terms of reliability so we have that picture here we have a new product that's also extremely old at the same time so walk me through kind of your past with this and move us into the present okay so this is the uh vr38dt uh twin turbo v6 uh port injected uh engine um you know some of the basics are it's a sandcast aluminum block uh same with sandcast aluminum heads it's got variable cam timing on the intake side and it's actually very powerful a very capable stock engine that has had little issues over the years and not many changes very little changes actually internally engine just uh externally spreading turbos and intakes and things like that the transmission i guess the rest of the driveline uh that's been probably a little more troublesome than the engine especially the earlier your cars a lot of that had to do with um i would say the the components themselves but the launch strategy so when this thing came out had a really aggressive launch we were talking like 4000 rpm clutch drop you know and spinning all four tires and you know some people do it over and over and over again and eventually break stuff that way so they revised their launch control strategies over the years and they got aggressively on the conservative side after that and then it was no fun to launch the car and they kind of crept back up you know and made some changes over the years um and it's gotten pretty pretty reliable as far as that goes and work those bugs out for the most part you know we build a lot of track cars a lot of race cars um we've pushed you know not in this obviously stock form but over 3000 horsepower this platform in drag racing but the stock engine is very capable if anything the weak point uh in the stock components is the connecting rods over a certain torque level which is still under pressure you can you can bend the rods actually you can take the thing pretty far we'll do rods and pistons the factory pistons are you know cast we do rods and pistons and we'll make 12 1300 horsepower yeah i'm grateful they made this car because when it came out i mean it was so far and above everything else and you know the threshold of everything else was so high it wasn't like oh it's just a little better it was really really good and it still is good it took them a lot it took them this long to get the money back and the investment back so you know um you know of course it's been out for so long a lot of the new stuff that's coming out um has caught up to it that's the biggest difference you know they've made obviously changes much needed improvements like the interior and 17 you know the look of the car but a lot of the cars have caught up to it and but it kind of speaks volumes for how far above and beyond it was everything else back when it first came out and i'm really looking forward to what they do next [Music] [Music] jack gtr r35 no launch control but regular launch we got some snow tires on it's 36 degrees let's see how she does [Music] jesus christ there's no doubt in my mind what i perceived this car to be and i was in the first generation car and now we fast forward all this time i i am really astounded out at how remarkably fast this is and it's it's i'm not even overplaying it this thing is still every bit as capable and impressive in terms of straight line speed as it was when it came out if not even more now despite this all-wheel drive system being essentially like 15 years old [Music] the way it puts down power is i mean it's not overblown overblown at all it's amazing we talked about this briefly well more than briefly the mentality behind how they wanted this to feel as a driver it's extremely hard now to remove my brain from all the technical parts but i'm going to try to explain it when you get behind the wheel of this if you don't have a high driving aptitude or you don't have a lot of experience behind the wheel and you want to know what it's like to drive a missile this is the best type of car you could get in because it combines like removing the fear factor like you're driving a video game like a simulator you can go through a corner you could crash an old wall keep driving i get that same sense driving this that no matter what i do some part of the all-wheel drive system or some part of the drivetrain or the electronic tuning is always gonna get the power that i'm putting down with my right foot i could just mash it down turn the wheel any which way and it just stays where pretty much where you expect you can drive this thing like a total mid corner give it full gas the car will step out and then you feel the car send power to the front and sort out the slide it does feel rear driven though but the way the way this provides confidence to the driver is mind-blowing and as you're about to show me launch control as well you hold down the brake you're in manual mode just floor it [Music] jeez man wow wow dude so i i know that you know we've talked to nissan and they call this the super sports and that's a very japanese name for something like this and i understand why because in many ways it doesn't feel like a supercar interior exterior it's very it's it's for the person that doesn't want all the flash of like a supercar but when you get right down to the straight line performance and i don't want to bring up other brands but the ability for this thing to put down all that power on winter tires in any type of condition that's what makes freezing conditions freezing conditions and i hate to be out here in these conditions because you can't really explore traction and handling and all that but the fact that we can be in the dead of winter going through snow going through like slick surfaces with salt and have to be able to utilize everything that this car has is what makes this so special to me and when you break down some of its core driving characteristics suspension tuning trans tuning and steering it is a very livable package this has really really good ride control for a car like this yeah and they've softened it up too and we talked about that but i think you know right now we're driving in comfort mode and it's just a little bit too firm but i think again with this power you need the body control with all the pitch and yaw and all the movement you still need body control to manage all the power the braking like the dive you couldn't have this like you couldn't have it like a boat of a luxury car and still and still manage all the weight so i think they did a good job with suspension and then you know we have the transmission and this is kind of like a sticking point with this car pete and i've read this a lot well the transmission is not good it's it's dated i don't know what the hell people are talking about this thing is i mean i don't know what you expect i mean we talked about the revisions right every single year they they updated the logic of this gearbox and now it's at the point where the up shifts don't upset the car mid-corner it's much like a pdk in that regards you can be in an increasing or decreasing radius corner give it a shift mid corner and it won't break the rear end loose however the downshifts when you're getting into a corner are very ferocious i think i think it's a lit it's got some edge to it but i mean it gives you an element of excitement and you know when you strip away the manual transmission and you have a automatic we've been in cars where they've refined every edge out of the transmission speed tuning shift shock to the point where it's like why are you worrying it's so boring and i feel there is enough edge to this to make it fun you feel something um it's just perfectly quick enough for street driving and then when you put it in like save or r or normal i feel like there is just a subtle graduation of how it ramps up from soft to to fast and more harsh and all of this matches the character of what this car is trying to do i think again from the date of this car's inception and design to where it is now it completely holds up if not it's compared the drive the the transmission to an engine that is exactly what you want out of a turbo charged v6 it revs and it makes power all the way up to 7000 this thing is just constantly making power and it's and it's also a car that makes power from you know there's some lag to get going like any any turbocharged car of this type but once it gets going it doesn't seem to fall off after 100 miles an hour and part of that like we discussed this has the aerodynamics to make sure that you can continually pull to high speeds it's just a complete package for somebody that wants an everyday car that you can drive like a complete maniac that's totally safe and you can go flat out like you were in a supercar and i think to me again that's what differentiates this from many of the more esoteric very purpose-built one-trick pony type sports cars but the only thing i will say that is kind of caught me off guard is the steering is to me like it's the weakest point i don't know what you know like we were joking around when we were trying to pitch this thing sideways just to be asses and i don't know what's happening i feel like i'm literally driving a simulator wheel and i know we have hydraulic steering i know we have all this stuff but i don't know what's going on i mean i feel the body moving but my essentially arms are just kind of digitally up like my the part of my brain is trying to match up with what's happening in my surroundings but i'm not feeling anything and the steering isn't particularly natural either it feels very boosted it's got this really unnaturally fast off-center feeling i think as well the part that makes it amazing is also the part that makes it not for everyone absolutely and i think jack we've covered a lot of ground in this let's get to the final thoughts and kind of close this out all right final thoughts on the nissan gtr big thanks to wendy dan jonathan and tamara sun for helping out on the nissan end to build this project and tell the story also thanks to ams performance who has seen the evolution of this car and has supported it long after the car has left the dealership now let's talk about the pros and the cons the gtr is a product of the generation it was designed and despite them making these incremental improvements it still feels very much like a 2000s car which is a huge pro for it because there's nothing left in terms of japanese sports cars that feel like this aside from maybe like the sti which feels ancient in in certain ways but that's part of its charm that's why people love it they also love the fact that you can use it every day it's four wheel drive or all-wheel drive and much like this video we filmed it in the wrong time in the middle dead of the winter on snow tires so we don't really get a good sense of everything that it can do but we got a sense of what the practicality and the real world usage is when you're not just on a super sunny day 70 degrees in california you can use this year around and the trunk is amazing it also rides great all the changes in suspension all the things that they've done to evolve the platform are also due to its original creators understanding that not everybody one is 16 forever or 20 forever so that that maturity that's been baked into it is much appreciated in terms of that super car ish feeling that sports car feeling that you could really enjoy and put people on it and don't feel like you're in some crazy car so that's also the deficiency of it because they designed it to be that every person's car it loses some of the specialness that you're getting on some of the more modern sports cars it doesn't have that raucous nature like the gt500 or like it doesn't have the refinement in the high-end or high-tech feel like the c8 does so if you love this car you know it's expensive now it's way more expensive than it used to be but if you're a collector and you want to stuff on a way i would or on the used market i mean it's insane what you can do with this car and i think it's been a complete joy to drive it and experience it and if you are somebody that is watching these videos i'm going to tell you this just straight please subscribe because there is absolutely no return on investment for us to make videos like this we're not getting paid and i feel like we should be getting paid to do some of these types of videos but at the very least please subscribe so we can continue doing projects like this thanks for watching i'll see you next time what does gtr mean to you life work [Music] simple answer for you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: savagegeese

Views: 181,399

Rating: 4.9716244 out of 5

Keywords: Nissan GTR, Lexus LFA, cars, trucks, 2021, 2020, 400Z, Proto Z, reviews, best sports, best exotic cars, best sounding car, ferrari 458, 488, shelby gt500, mustang, gt350, lotus evora, porsche carrera GT, cars and bids, cargurus, carvanna, autotempest, porsche GT3, GT4, 718, cayman, 911, chevy corvette c8, supra, bmw, m4, m3, problems, lexus lc500, amg GT, reliability, mod, funny, pixel5, android auto, S30, iphone 12, need for speed, games, toyota 86, Lexus LC500, Toyota Supra

Id: GHulktfgy68

Length: 36min 38sec (2198 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/thingsjusthappened]

I remember when this car debut in 2007...Drove one, and it blew me away. Can't believe its been around for a decade to the point that my kids dream of them instead of me.

[u/CactusPlantBuddy]

just realized that you don't ever really see R35 GT-Rs in blue

anyways really good video

[u/Uptons_BJs]

Fun fact!

​

The GT-R uses the old Nissanconnect alongside the Nissan 370z. This version of Nissanconnect is a custom interface built on Android 2.3. Thus the Nissan GT-R is one of the few vehicles in 2021 you can buy that runs Android Gingerbread.

[u/YesIamaDinosaur]

Documentary length feature from Mr. Goose!

Quality on point, as always 👌

[u/Tw0Rails]

An excellent video - the interview with "Mr. GTR" Tamura San was a great touch. Certified badass and member of Midnight Racing team. His "life work" indeed.

[u/SingaporeSlang]

Amazing video, Geese.

[u/blu_cipher]

I have a 2012 GTR. Happy to answer any questions regarding it. Had an R32 GTR before it so definitely not new to GTR land nor heavily modified car land.

Maintenance wise? I don't understand why people say it's expensive. I literally change the oil and drive it everywhere. Besides that, it's not much different than your typical super car or car of that range. Example, GT350 tires are about the same price. I guess that's where people trip up.

Mods are in fact expensive as hell because "GTR Tax" for whatever reason. Intakes for the thing retail in the 650+. Catbacks retail for 2k+. Which imo, is outrageous for a bunch of pipes. I got a used HKS exhaust for 800 instead lol.

[u/dgolia1]

As fast as these are. I never see them on a track. Maybe once a year. I've heard that the consumables are just way too expensive for people buying these 3/4th hand

Edit. For all you people arguing about maintenance costs. I was refering to track days because these are fast as hell on track, yet you almost never see them on a track. I'm not talking about regular maintenance

[u/2002fofocuszts]

There's that Toby Keith song "As Good As I Once Was" and that is, at least what I think the GT-R is perceived as nowadays.

It's a GREAT supercar, it IS Godzilla and it'll still knock you on your ass despite it being "aged." I applaud Nissan for keeping this car around and doing incremental changes, making it better every time although the pricing of the GT-R has gotten higher it's still the best bang for your buck out there.