Why The R35 Nissan GTR Sucks!

when the gtr was first announced it was groundbreaking and impressive and there's absolutely no denying its accomplishments however the gtr isn't without its flaws and because of all the time i've spent with this fantastic car i'm in the perfect position to tell you all why the r35 nissan gtr sucks because of the title i know even before i begin this video is going to receive a lot of criticism so before i get into the content i feel that it's necessary to discuss my association with the nissan gtr and why i know absolutely anything about it my name is ian i'm going to be your instructor today we're going to be doing five laps in the gtr correct all right nick you're gonna go a little bit throttle we're gonna head straight on the course and then off to the left stay to the left hand side break hard you know how to do this one turn throttle throttle brake straight that was perfect i have thousands of hours with this car from different years different trims and different power levels i'm going to take all of this knowledge i've gained over the time i've had with the car as well as use the numbers that nissan has given out themselves so just as a quick outline on how i plan to approach this i'm going to start with what is absolutely certain about the car nothing but the facts then i'll move on to my criticisms for the car and then i'll wrap up with how nissan can improve the gtr so this video is going to be on the longer side so i'm going to go ahead and throw up some time stamps if you want to skip around a little bit i would ask however that if you intend on criticizing me you try and watch everything i have to say now to begin understanding the gtr we need to start all the way back with its initial announcement back at the 2007 tokyo auto show nissan had just announced its new amazing supercar the gtr a first look at this car and it looked a little confused critics and supercar fanatics alike weren't sure what to think about it and certainly everyone had their doubts the gtr was advertised as a luxury based 2x2 sports car featuring four wheel drive and a 485 horsepower v6 twin turbo engine the new and exciting features it had blew absolutely everyone away the car featured stability management through the brakes a tesla four-wheel drive and the invention of launch control not only was this car fast it also had a full bose sound system with leather seats this car could do anything the higher priced cars could do and it did it better exceeding all expectations and doing so on an affordable budget to someone new to the supercars scene this new exciting car might seem normal the nissan however was anything but luxury wasn't usually a top priority for these super cars they focused on performance and comfort came second in 2007 almost all supercars had a big naturally aspirated engine pushing a small two-seat cockpit back in 2007 the gt-r was competing against v12 murcielagos and 599s v10 r8 and gallardo's and v8 430s and mercedes the turbo hadn't really been utilized by anybody except porsche and porsche was not happy with the new competition during the car's announcement nissan proudly boasted a claimed nurburgring lap time of 7 minutes and 29 seconds this would podium the new gtr placing it as the third fastest production car around the ring the nissan gt-r claimed to have lapped the ring about 9 seconds faster than the 911 turbo and 3 seconds faster than porsche's gt2 immediately porsche disputed this time and said there was no way the new nissan gtr was this fast and must have cheated using semi-slick tires before we knew it porsha and nissan were arguing back and forth with porsha even buying the car and when porsche raced the nissan around the track they said the fastest time they could complete the nurburgring was 7 minutes 54 seconds in a rebuttal nissan posted videos and telemetry to try and prove to the auto industry that the nissan gtr truly was that much faster than porsche and the supercar competition so right off the bat there's controversy with the new nissan gtr and after personally looking at the data i have to side with porsche on this one let's take a quick look at the laptime list so you can better see what's going on here looking towards the top we can see the claimed lap time of 7 minutes 29 seconds posted by nissan then at 7 minutes 34 seconds we see a third party had posted another time for the gtr in 2011 and further down we have the video evidence that only displays a lap time of 7 minutes and 38 seconds now none of these times are slow by any means but a 9 second difference is a lot in the world of professional racing coming back to that neutral third party we can see sport auto had set the lap time of 7 minutes 34 seconds in 2011. sport auto is responsible for many of the entries on this list and their driver also set many of the times i think without a doubt they're a competent group capable of making accurate assessments of supercars however this slap time was set in 2011 three years after the dispute between porsche and nissan now if i go ahead and bring in some personal knowledge about cars into this debate i've actually driven a lot of these and it's really hard for me to believe that the nissan has ever been faster than a 2014 huracan 2015 rate or definitely not the 2011 mclaren mp4 having personally driven those older model gtrs i would be extremely surprised if it was faster than the original v10 audi r8 and if you consider this point the most accurate time was probably much closer to the one set by porsche so already we're off to an interesting start with this new car but regardless of scandals and lap times this new car is certainly impressive for it being as big and luxurious as it is it runs with much lighter and much more expensive supercars and that demands respect up until this point a luxury four-seat supercar was something of fiction and i don't think any automaker even dared to make the gtr crowned itself king of the supercars as the only vehicle that can deliver supercar speeds without sacrificing everyday practicality now that we've covered the gtr's announcement and its ascension into fandom let's take a close look at how it's developed over these past 13 years i'm also going to go over some other highlights in the supercar market throughout these years so we're gonna go ahead and start in 2008 once again the car is already the focus of controversy nissan managed to raise the price seven thousand dollars this falsely cheaper price affected reviews and made the car seem more impressive than it was at launch many automakers and consumers were disgruntled by this act of deceit in 2009 nissan continued with the sale of the car for the same price of 77 000 also ferrari announced the successor to the f430 the 458 italia this new ferrari is going to revolutionize the supercar world forcing all new cars to meet a new standard for what will be considered a supercar coming into 2010 we can see nissan still has yet to make any significant changes to the car but raised the price to now 80 700 one year later however nissan just eliminated the base model gtr you now can only get the car in premium trim also due to reliability concerns the gt-r is actually slower and only has a 0-60 time of 3.5 seconds not only is the car slower this more expensive trim option now puts the base model gtr cost at 84 000 2011 is also the year where mclaren introduced the world to the mp4 12c this car has horsepower and weighs a thousand pounds less than the nissan competitor the new mclaren incorporates similar stability management to the gtr and is proven to be much faster although far less reliable 2012 brought some new updates to the gt-r the car now has 45 more horsepower and a facelift giving it a much more modern look the price also increased with the power coming up to 90 000 in 2012 porsche also finally created a new lineup of cars to compete in the new exciting market the new porsche turbo has 530 horsepower weighs 400 pounds less than the gtr but still manages to have all-wheel drive this new porsche also matches the gtr's lap time of 7 minutes 34 seconds finally placing the german car as an equal to nissan's stark child if we move on to 2013 we can see that the gtr once again really hasn't changed but nissan raised the price again to 96 820 however in 2014 nissan's made some pretty significant changes to the gtr and giving the car 545 horsepower with a new tune the gtr is also available in a new trim track edition i'll talk a little bit more about the track edition gtr but for now just know that it's a lot faster and has a 0 to 60 time of 2.7 seconds however nissan once again raised the base price of the car so now to get a gtr it costs 99 570 also in 2014 corvette just announced the new c7 platform the new z06 has 650 horsepower and only costs 78 995 simultaneously lamborghini also just brought a new supercar to the table to compete with the 458 the huracan once again however in 2015 there's no update for the gtr but nissan decided he needed to pay more so now it's 101 770 audi in 2015 also announced the new r8 model this is going to be built on the huracan platform similar to how the old r8 was built on the guyardo at the same time as all these cars have just come out ferrari also introduced the world to the 488 meaning they now have a twin turbo entry into the supercar market we can skip right on by 2016 as nissan hasn't changed the car this year but if we move on to 2017 we can see that they have updated the visuals and also given the car a little bit more horsepower coming in with 565 however these updates come with a higher price tag of 109 990 dollars if we continue on to 2018 we can see that nissan actually changes things up a little bit and makes a lower quality gtr now available for ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety dollars in 2019 there aren't any changes but if we continue on to our current year of 2020 we can see a newer visual update and a higher base price of 113 thousand five hundred and forty dollars i know this was a pretty long witted illustration but i wanted to give you guys a sense of the change of the nissan gtr over these past 13 years now i'm going to give some criticisms for why i think the nissan gtr is not a car that lives up to its expectations or its hype the biggest criticism i have for the nissan gtr is in relation to its age i didn't take the time to go through the car's history chronologically for no reason the car is old the fact that people still consider this to be a modern high performance supercar is an insult to any other car in the market this car is from 2007 and it drives like a car from 2007. when the nissan gtr was new it handled slightly worse than the porsche ferrari and lamborghini competitors but it had the power to compensate for this lack of handling but the cars it was competing against are long since retired and their respective companies have refreshed their flagship cars and have been improving them over the past 13 years it's pathetic really the nissan gtr handles like a supercar of yesteryear but everyone still refers to it as if it's the incredible breakthrough that it was back when it was announced the car was incredible but now it's 13 years old and hardly anybody bothers to compare it to modern competition another huge issue with the gtr's performance comes from its focus on luxury because nissan tried to make the gtr as luxurious as possible it's big not in the slightly larger than other cars big no it's huge now this was a perk back when it was comparable to the older generations of supercars but now it's a massive liability coming into a corner at high speed can only be compared to trying to change direction in a yacht without a doubt the nissan gt-r has stupid amounts of torque and can accelerate extremely quickly but once you reach a corner you have two tons of steel to try and slow down if you didn't realize it before the stock brakes on the nissan gt-r are not enough to handle the power and weight of the car you start driving this car hard and the factory steel brakes fade extremely quickly and that's just unacceptable for a six-figure car another big issue with the performance of the gt-r is how top-heavy the car is since its initial design was from around 2005 composite chassis design wasn't a popular choice leaving this car with a steel frame and a ton of weight in its bones many people love its body lines they are boastful and muscular but supercars look sleek and low profile for a reason it's not all style the gtr struggles on high-speed corners as the suspension becomes unsprung on the inside tires due to its tall and broad stature go ahead take a look at the gt-r compared to the other supercars it's tall very tall this stature may have worked fine for a sports car but with the cornering potential of a supercar it creates a ton of handling issues when you're driving on track this car feels floaty over any change in altitude even bouncy as the suspension struggles to accommodate the heavy load even when switched into the stiffest settings the car suspension simply can't handle the g-forces forcing the car to lean over this became even worse in the later years of the car as designers packed the car with heavier and heavier leather and premium interior options you can band-aid this floaty unresponsive handling characteristic by lowering the car and stiffening the suspension nissan themselves fixed this problem in the track edition gtr and it improves the car immensely but this stiffer suspension comes at a cost it isn't nearly as comfortable as the other competing supercars you're sacrificing comfort for slightly more acceptable handling characteristics lighter supercars don't need to sacrifice this comfort for handling even the track edition gtr can't handle anywhere near as well as the other supercars once again this type of trade-off speaks volumes about the car's age and the importance of designing a car with great weight distribution and more modern chassis design it's time to talk a little bit about the all-wheel drive system on the gt-r if you didn't know it before cornering in an all-wheel drive car is tough as it is but the atesa system is always changing making the challenge even greater if you didn't know it before when you're racing an all-wheel drive car on track when you start getting into the accelerator it has a tendency to lift the nose and create a ton of understeer this understeer is affected by the torque split of the car the more rear biased the torque is the less understeer you're going to get under acceleration but the less grip you're going to have when you accelerate the a tesla all-wheel drive system is highly complex and its design is to keep the car stable while cornering but for advanced drivers this just makes the car unpredictable every lap the car will behave differently so it just becomes a fight between what you want the car to do and what the car thinks you want to do look at this summary for how the system works this is multiple pages on just how power is delivered to the wheels just as a quick comparison and i i know i i make too many comparisons but the lamborghini huracan is a four wheel drive supercar with a far simpler all-wheel drive system similar to the gt-r the stability control system uses the brakes however the lamborghini only uses the brakes to stabilize the car unlike the nissan the huracan uses a set 30 front 70 rear torque split on track which is just about perfect no doubt the lamborghini huracan was able to use newer technology and build on the mistakes nissan made with the gtr but nissan never bothered to fix this mess a tessa still tries to fix the driver's mistakes by changing where the torque is sent around the car when you're driving the nissan gt-r you have no idea what the torque split is because it's always changing but the car loves understeer understeer all day every day understeer on the way into the corner understeer the center of the corner understeer on the exit of the corner hell the car would probably understeer down the straightaway if it could and sometimes when the tires are cold you might just get a little bit of oversteer but man it's inconsistent now it's totally possible to send the car in and intentionally start a slide but if you're trying to go fast that unpredictable four-wheel drive is going to be working against you it's a simple case that the all-wheel drive system in the gtr wasn't designed to allow the driver to push the car to the absolute limit the all-wheel drive system was created to make the gtr easier to drive and it does a fantastic job of that the nissan gt-r is the easiest supercar to drive period it was designed to allow novice drivers the experience of driving what still is one of the fastest cars in the world i will give a lot of credit to nissan for creating a drive system that does this because the press absolutely love this car if you've never driven a fast car before you're in luck the nissan gt-r is here to hold your hand and guide you through every corner the soft suspension smooths over a twitchy driver's mistakes and the understeer saves most drivers from immediate danger and the attessa system oh the attessa system it's going to coddle that arrogant flat footed driver and keep them on the track nissan did a fantastic job of creating what should be considered the water wings of fast cars but there's a problem the nissan gtr is godzilla the supercar killer however the nissan i've driven and known over these years is definitely not godzilla the slogan for the nissan gtr should be overprotective mom the press pleaser the nissan gtr is safe to the extreme it's so safe that it hurts the driving experience of the car the gt-r feels unresponsive spongy heavy and bloated the idea of a supercar or even a sports car for that matter is to have a two-seat street legal monster that handles like a go-kart with ungodly amounts of power nobody gets out of the ferrari 458 saying wow i wish the car didn't corner so flat or wow the porsche gt3 is just too responsive for me we love supercars because they give us absolute control and they give us this control even if some people can't handle it all this being said the handling and track performance of the gtr can become what it was promoted as all it takes is money that's probably the saving grace for the nissan gtr the absolutely massive list of aftermarket parts available that have been developed over the past 13 years but for the record to make a car into what it's advertised as i shouldn't need to spend another fifty thousand dollars like i said before i'm gonna go ahead and go over a couple of ideas that can turn the nissan gtr into the monster it deserves to be first allow r mode to set the a tessa system to a fixed torque split immediately this just made the car more predictable for driving on track next nissan needs to lighten the car by around 500 pounds this shouldn't be too hard we can see lots of examples of aftermarket garages selling lighter composite panels for the car all nissan needs to do is take the lead from some of these companies i would start by using alloys and composites in the chassis to make it lighter this would automatically give the car much better handling another place nissan could lose some weight would be the interior if you've never been inside of a gtr it's all cheap plastic and low quality leather for contrast if you hop inside of a porsche it's a lot of aluminum and sturdy plastic although porsche may sound like it's less luxurious the gtr just feels soft and flimsy in comparison to the other supercars lastly nissan has to lower the car from the factory it's great that the nissan never struggles with speed bumps but there should be an option to factory lower the car for no cost this thing sits probably five to six inches off the ground that's a huge disadvantage during performance driving with just these few changes i feel that the gcr would be a far greater competitor in the supercar market not only would the gtr be closer to performing the way it was advertised it will overall be a far greater driving experience in truth the self-proclaimed supercar slayer is nothing compared to its competition if you don't believe what i've said i want you to challenge me and put my opinion to the test go ahead go to the many driving experiences around the world that allow you to drive supercars around a racetrack i want you to drive the gtr then i want you to drive anything other than the gtr drive the nsx drive the gt3 a huracan 488 a corvette i don't care you're gonna find the difference and if you don't like the idea of owning the automotive equivalent to water wings then you should buy the real supercar killer it's out there lurking sitting dusty in an old garage waiting for someone foolish enough to test their skills and luck against it with that big thank you to everyone who made it to the end of this video if you could i would really appreciate it if you like this one as it took me a lot of hours to make if you know anybody who is unreasonably in love with the gtr feel free to send them this and see what they have to say i like the gtr but from what i can tell nobody is being critical about the way the car truly performs sure the gtr is fast when it's modified but if anything that should be a sign that nissan is leaving a lot of performance on the table with that i'm gonna go ahead and wrap this one up if anybody has questions or concerns feel free to ask in the comments i'll try and get back to you hopefully everybody enjoyed this look at the gtr but that's everything for me i'll see all of you in the next one you

Channel: Project:Car

Views: 31,305

Keywords: Nissan GT-R, GT-R, Supercars, Nissan GTR, Cinematic, Review, R35, R34, The Nissan GTR, Track Edition, Track, Exotics, R35 Review, Project:Car, Racing Rationalized, History of The GTR, The GTR Sucks, GTR Bad, GTR Slow, GTR Heavy, Nissan Sucks, Porsche vs Nissan, Nurburgring, Lap Times

Id: uOUOlYTC3oA

Length: 25min 46sec (1546 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 28 2020