Nissan GT-R automatically unlocks speed limiter when you get to a circuit

The new Nissan GT-R will be limited to 180km/h in the land of the rising sun. The rather low-speed limit has been the source of some derision of the GT-R, although it is expected that in North-America and Europe the limit will be set at a more respectable 250km/h.

It’s not all bad news for the Japanese though. Through some clever use of already existing technology, the Japanese version of the GT-R has its 180km/h limit lifted when it enters a domestic (ie. Japanese) circuit. The inbuilt GPS system recognizes when the car has entered the circuit and sends a signal to the ECU to disable the limiter.

For those of you reading this and thinking of disabling the limiter yourself, Nissan engineers have used heavy levels of encryption on the ECU and it is said that only a small number of people in the world (yes, the world) can hack the system.

This is markedly different from the limiters used in BMW and Mercedes cars, which can be removed by nearly anyone with a computer these days, as evidenced by the multitude of ads in the back of motoring magazines offering to do just that.

Nissan’s strategy to curb modification to the GT-R is a little puzzling, as it has always been a tuner’s favourite, but hopefully there will be ways around it in the future.