Here are the videos:
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Features/articleId=124973
For half the money of a Porsche turbo, the GT-R is faster on track and acceleration. How will this affect the competition if there is any?
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http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Features/articleId=124973
For half the money of a Porsche turbo, the GT-R is faster on track and acceleration. How will this affect the competition if there is any?
It will make little difference.
The Nissan is a fantastic car from a technical point of view. It has a number of issues however.
1. It’s a lot of money for a Nissan
2. The badge doesn’t say Porsche or BMW this is important in this sector.
3. It’s a specialist machine for enthusiasts only. Performance is not everything for alot of buyers.
4. It’s huge!
I’m thinking about getting one. Issues 1 and 4 are my biggest concerns about putting a deposit down.
It won’t.
The Corvette Z06 and Viper SRT10 are less money, yet faster than a 911 turbo, but has Porsche noticed them? Nope. Porsche has more selling points than speed. Porsche has Nissan beat in handling, ride, interior looks & ergonomics, exterior styling, and most of all, brand prestige. The GTR is a sweet car, but completely unknown outside the world of enthusiasts. Tell someone, anyone, you have a Porsche 911 and they are impressed. Tell a non auto enthusiast that you have a Nissan GTR and they might have a mental picture of a Sentra SER.
You’re actually bringing up a host of issues here… so let’s start first with how fast the GT-R is:
You first have the issue of Nissan turning in a fantastic lap at Nurburgring. And just like their earlier lap, you again have a car who’s closeness to stock/production is extremely questionable. At the very least, it’s known to have been running on R-Compound tires, which would come close to explaining the differences in times achieved by everyone who isn’t Nissan running the GT-R around the same track. Bottom line though, while fast, it’s not quite in the same league as the Nissan run laps would indicate.
And while it does stack up nicely in acceleration against the Porsche Turbo, it is comparing itself to the Tiptronic Turbo, which is an automatic transmission, complete with a torque converter. This means the Turbo in this case is carry about 100-150 pounds more than the manual version, and is losing an additional 5-10% horsepower in the drivetrain. The current tiptronic is much better, and highly touted by Porsche, but from personal observation at track events, it does not do the job as well as the manual. It may be more consistent for launching for many drivers though, but we’re talking absolutes.
Still, even if the GT-R were better in all these cases, it’s unlikely to cause any sales problem for Porsche or BMW. The Evo or STI offer great levels of performance for very little entry fee, and yet somehow Porsche and BMW have continued to grow sales! The Corvette Z06 offers great performance as well, but yet companies like those mentioned as well as Ferrari continue to sell everything they can make.
While the items you mention are all good sales and marketing, the fact of the matter is, that due to the price difference, the GT-R is not competing with the M3 or the 911 Turbo. The Corvette would be more likely to suffer, or the Porsche Boxster… but the truth is, people that are considering one of these cars are probably not looking at a GT-R, as people that are looking at a GT-R are probably not considering a Boxster or a Corvette.
The GT-R looks like a great car and I hope it does well as it would be nice to see a fresh round of performance cars from Japan as we did in the early 90s. But it will not cause any issue for the companies you mention; they are more concerned about the current Mortgage crisis and it’s affects on disposable income than they are about the GT-R.
No matter what you do to it, it is still a Nissan. You will have plenty of boobs living in the suburbs going oooh-ahhh and buying them. However, I assure you that said boobs would rather have a Porsche.
I have an ’06 911 Carrera 4s and love it. I’d gladly drop another $80k on a second 911 before I’d spend $80k, let alone $40k on a Nissan.