Nissan GT-R: In The Belly Of The Beast

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hugh ujhazy

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1 963 views Apr 8, 2011

2011 Nissan GT-R

The current objet-drool is sitting in the driveway. Its wide silver flanks sit astride four shiny chrome exhausts and meet mother earth on 20-inch gloss black rims. It’s the Nissan GT-R. Take a Nissan Sentra (or similar four door family car of your preference), amputate two rear doors with a sawzall, pack the whimpering invalid that results off to the gym with a canister of Bulk-Me-Up and instructions to "get ripped." The result emerges with bulges everywhere. Stretched and sliced, the passenger cabin is flattened into the high waist. This is a vehicle which buys attitude in 55 gallon drums from Costco. Weekly. It doesn’t demand respect. It grabs you by the throat, dangles you six inches off the ground and takes it. 

The fact that it rests in my driveway is confusing. Some misguided soul decided it would be a good idea to give this spawn of video games and alien experiments to someone for a day. I must have been dozing because they looked for the most un-threatening individual in the room and picked me. Sad, really. 

Silver bodywork, aforementioned gloss black wheels, massive quad exhausts, deeply tinted windows and black leather interior. The only relief from the monochrome palette is the GT-R badge in lurid red. Puttering around downtown, the car is a dream. So the dash looks like it was designed by a 12-year old arcade addict (I actually learned some of the controls from Gran Turismo 5). So it has ridiculously tiny back seats. So the hood disappears into the distance and it has lousy rear vision. 

In the driver’s seat, Pee Wee Herman would feel like a god. The seat envelopes you, holding you with the firm attentiveness of an experienced masseuse. Even my six-foot frame fit nicely. The glow of the dash, the lure of more setup options than a build-your-own Linux distro, all forgotten in view of the road ahead. 

When my physics teacher explained relativity, he used a road with streetlights. “As you approach the speed of light, notice how the street lights bend inwards”. Finally, with my right foot planted on the floor, my right hand caressing the car up through the six-speed dual-clutch gearbox, I knew exactly what he meant. Nissan had called Einstein's ghost in and asked for a special version of reality. And Einstein obliged.

The factory for this car must be a cross between Monster Garage and Area 51. Figures in white suits with face masks murmur indistinctly in the background as shiny probes and bright lights bathe the exposed hand-built 3.8-liter V-6 engine (each one has a slightly different horsepower rating as a result). From a large tub, around 530 horses are beaten to submission and entombed beneath the shiny valve cover.  Just in case that wasn’t enough, a loon at the end of the line sneaks in two turbo chargers and hopes no one will notice. Close the hood and the sweeping headlights take over, flanking the enormous black grille that feeds air to this beast. 

Driving it is easy. Start her up, engage gear and burble off through your day. It would be easily possible to drive this monster at 30 mph all day long. However, if you feel the need to donate regularly to the local police retirement fund, plant that right foot. The car crouches down, gathers itself for a microsecond or two inside the vast electronic brain, and launches you to infinity and beyond. Really. And all this for only $90,000 or so. 

If two doors are your thing, aggressive street looks desirable and you nurture the heart of a 15-year-old beneath the three piece suit, please, please go drive this thing. I still sit in my driveway waiting for it to return. Maybe, one day soon, it will