View Poll Results: GTR or M3
GTR, do what you have to do to get one
75
78.95%
M3
20
21.05%
Voters: 95. You may not vote on this poll
Need Help: GTR or M3
03-29-08, 12:22 AM
#91
It's exactly fair to compare the prices WITH market adjustment. That price with markup is what you will have to fork out to get the car. MSRP is manufacturer's SUGGESTED retail price after all. IF Nissan sticks to 1500 GT-R per year, that markup might last for some time if not throughout the production run. You can order M3 right now at the stealer at MSRP and spec it out exactly the way you want it and have the car in about 4 month time.
Yes the GTR will definitely cost a lot more than the M3, and will be less of a "bargain". However one must realize that the M3 is a great performing car for its price at 60k, and the GTR is STILL a great performing car for its price at 90k.
So ya to sum it up, GTR is at a disadvantage right now due to the price gap. However in a year or 2, it will be VERY different.
03-29-08, 04:41 AM
#92
Lexus Champion
I agree totaly, b/c once people start driving these cars for a while they will realise they are a piece of crap even for $70, then the demand will deffinately fall off.
03-29-08, 05:13 AM
#93
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Unfortunately I have to disagree. The only place the GTR has the goods on the M3 is with power. Like I said earlier in the thread I found the interior to cheap and will definately become a rattle box after a short period of time with it wearing 20" rims. Other than that it has the usuall turbo engine problems with the turbo lag. I will take the power curve of a naturally aspirated engine any day of the week.
From everything I've read and seen turbo lag is one thing that seems non existent in the GT-R. I think I read in EVO that they described the power progression as pretty much like a normally aspirated engine. It's been said that even the mighty 911 turbo has more turbo lag. I know we could quote and quote from the mountains of articles which have been written about the car but suffice it to say that without exception not one auto journalist I've seen has pronounced the M3 superior to the GT-R. Not even the European press. I certainly hope this isn't coming across as "fanboyish" but everyone I've seen who's driven this car around the track has said the GT-R is nothing less than phenomenal.
In the video I posted above the M3 is simply out powered and out handled by the GT-R. Add to this that the GT-R is more exotic-looking (The M3 is a great car but is still will just look like a 3-series with extra muscle) and I don't see any comparison. But that's just me.
As to the interior. Well, you have your impression of it. Again, I can only go by what I've read because I've yet to see one in the flesh but I have read things to the opposite of it having a cheap interior. It may not have the poetic style of a Porche or Ferrari inside but it just doesn't come across as cheap.
I do think statements like these from a recent test from Speed Channel must factor in. "I was expecting shoddy plastics, horrid carpets and a general feeling of the $70k price tag covering some fine mechanicals and then Nissan subsequently bunging an iffy interior in for free. Not a sign of such tricks; the clock faces are brash and technical, the electronic gauges in the center console are a source of endless amusement and the leather sections on the dashboard actually look, feel and smell like leather." and "Despite being nearly twice the asking price, the Porsche cabin doesn't feel any more expensive" or "By comparison, the $124,000 Porsche feels no more expensive. OK, its door trims are smothered in dead cow and this particular car is drowning in carbon fiber, but otherwise it just feels smaller. Not more expensive."but before all that they said "You push and prod things, glide a hand over various surfaces and reach the conclusion that time, money and effort have been lavished here like no GT-R before it." http://automotive.speedtv.com/articl...-911-turbo/P3/. So to say that the car is "crap" and a "rattle box" are bold statements. We'll have see if that proves to be true.
But for now I just can't see any area, except for rear-seat practicality and maybe trunk space and fuel economy, that the M3 bests the GT-R.
So if it's not the GT-R I think others like the Audi RS8 are far more special than the M3.
Last edited by speedflex; 03-29-08 at 04:24 PM.
03-29-08, 05:56 AM
#94
I didn't say anywhere on my post anything about GT-R being a poor car with or without the markup. My only point is your previous statement "It is only fair to compare the actual prices without the market adjustment." is dead wrong. OP is trying to decide which car to get right now or very near future. He/she will have to pay whatever is the current market value of the car which means something in the low $90K range for GT-R and high $60K to low $70K range for a M3 depending on options. And some will argue extra $25k or whatever that gap end up being is worth the extra performance and some will say it's not worth extra $$$. I'm guessing you will argue it is worth extra $25K and that's fine.
My original point was/is I see alot of people saying something like "hey fully loaded M3 costs $70K and for that price you should get GT-R" and that's just wrong in current environment because the only way you are getting GT-R for MSRP right now or in the foreseeable future is if you own a Nissan stealership.
My original point was/is I see alot of people saying something like "hey fully loaded M3 costs $70K and for that price you should get GT-R" and that's just wrong in current environment because the only way you are getting GT-R for MSRP right now or in the foreseeable future is if you own a Nissan stealership.
Are you saying that the GTR is a poor car right now, but will be a great car in 2 years when there are no markups? I find that hard to consume.
Yes the GTR will definitely cost a lot more than the M3, and will be less of a "bargain". However one must realize that the M3 is a great performing car for its price at 60k, and the GTR is STILL a great performing car for its price at 90k.
So ya to sum it up, GTR is at a disadvantage right now due to the price gap. However in a year or 2, it will be VERY different.
Yes the GTR will definitely cost a lot more than the M3, and will be less of a "bargain". However one must realize that the M3 is a great performing car for its price at 60k, and the GTR is STILL a great performing car for its price at 90k.
So ya to sum it up, GTR is at a disadvantage right now due to the price gap. However in a year or 2, it will be VERY different.
03-29-08, 03:32 PM
#97
its relatively low volume and high desirability? I don't believe Nissan can
match Honda in terms of reliability and durability, but I could be wrong.
03-29-08, 04:38 PM
#98
That is one beautiful automobile.
For me the long and short of the original question is this: The M3 is simply outclassed by the GT-R in nearly every measurable way (badge not withstanding). Except in daily practicality, there is no area where it even truly competes.
In fact, the only other auto which would be just as exciting without spending a quarter million, short a 911 GT3, would be the Audi RS8... that is if you have the cash.
For me the long and short of the original question is this: The M3 is simply outclassed by the GT-R in nearly every measurable way (badge not withstanding). Except in daily practicality, there is no area where it even truly competes.
In fact, the only other auto which would be just as exciting without spending a quarter million, short a 911 GT3, would be the Audi RS8... that is if you have the cash.
03-29-08, 04:43 PM
#99
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I decided to post the entire AUTOCAR article since it is one of the most concise evaluations of the GT-R I've read and it also addresses some of the prime critisisms leveled at it by some in this thread. Take it for what it's worth.
http://automotive.speedtv.com/articl...-911-turbo/P1/
TWIN TEST: Nissan GT-R Vs. Porsche 911 Turbo
Written by: Autocar staff
02/28/2008 - 12:29 PM
London, UK
The Skyline arrived before the Turbo – literally, not figuratively, of course. The weather was fine, the road was empty and there seemed little point in hanging around for the appearance of the Porsche. So with the owner’s permission I went off for a tootle. Good word, tootle; it aptly describes the process of driving with no appetite for speed. A tootle is an exploratory outing, a systems check, a familiarization period.
Above and beyond all the other facts about the Skyline that I learned that day – most of which were hyperbolic – realizing that the Nissan requires the shortest tootling period of any fast car in my experience was perhaps the most important. Because just as we all hoped, the R35 Skyline (OK, Nissan has decreed that it must be called GT-R, so we will do so, but to enthusiasts it will always be the Skyline) is about to disrupt the comfortable world of the European super-duper-coupe in a manner that not even its precocious predecessors managed.
Great technological leaps in automotive hardware are a strange phenomenon to judge because all too often their significance is clouded by their seamless introduction into the motoring world. They are so inherently right, so good at what they set out to achieve, that their excellence becomes less obvious; it simply blends into the process of driving, so that the driver very quickly assumes that this is the way the world has always been.
The GT-R is to fast road cars what the mobile phone is to personal communication; you wonder what feckless creatures we must have been to have survived without them. This is the crux of the new GT-R; it is a new type of sports car. It is a baby Veyron.
You climb into the GT-R via a DB9-style extending door lever. The cabin dimensions don’t justify the large exterior – this is a big, big car – but shuffled down into the leather seat and having juggled with the wheel, you can select an excellent driving position. There is no key, just an electronic fob that opens the doors and whose presence then sanctions a push on the large red starter button. That pushed, the 3799cc, twin-turbo V6 fires with no more drama than a 350Z and settles to a burbling idle that sounds very GT-R indeed.
Plonk the gearlever back to D, brush the throttle and the car tootles away from rest as the driver familiarizes himself with the surroundings. The scuttle is high, the dash voluminous and imposing with more than a hint of Ferrari 550 about its shape and detail; those air vents are a dead ringer, for starters.
You push and prod things, glide a hand over various surfaces and reach the conclusion that time, money and effort have been lavished here like no GT-R before it. You look down and see that the gear indicator in the clock set is displaying the figure ‘6’. But you only remember one gearchange.
That was from first to second – and as the cogs enmeshed, there was a slight judder through the car’s structure. You remember feeling that, but your brain has no recorded information on the subsequent five gearchanges actioned by the double-clutch transmission. Something to investigate after the tootling period is over.
At a tootle, in its base chassis setting, the GT-R is harsh. It crashes into anything deeper than a cereal bowl, fidgets most of the time and turns the humble lane marker into a rowdy member of the percussion section. This is very disappointing; you wait all this time to drive a GT-R and then it seems that spring rates taken from an early Mercedes G-Wagen scupper any chance it might have on back roads.
But then you notice the script ‘comfort’ winking on the dashboard and pull down on the paddle switch. The change is in no way dramatic, but in the context of what will happen over the coming hours, it is crucial. The ride settles slightly, and even if the boisterous Bridgestone RE 070s still do a muffled impersonation of Niagra Falls, the car is no longer deflected by the road’s topography.
Two minutes into the tootle, comfort setting engaged, you push the throttle towards the front bulkhead. The gearbox accomplishes a sixth-to-second shift whose speed and smoothness is beyond the capability of any mortal being, and the car begins to chew asphalt. This is probably the last time you will ever drive a GT-R at a tootle.
Where do you start with this machine? The 434lb ft of torque it produces from 3200rpm that barely feels turbocharged? The steering that has been so expertly developed that it makes it easy to thread down narrow roads a vehicle that the tape measure and bathroom scales consider too bulky. The preposterous levels of adhesion achieved at all times? On reflection, we’ll start with the bit that matters, with the component that binds these rare talents together into something meaningful: the transmission.
Two large, metal paddles appear from behind the R35’s steering wheel like elf’s ears. Pull the left one and it shifts down, pull the right one and the car selects a higher gear. That is all you need to know to drive the GT-R. And whereas the same could be said of a Tiptronic Porsche, the immediacy and smoothness of the R35’s gearchanges makes any other hydraulically actuated manual system (or doctored automatic) seem, at once, completely obsolete. It fashions forward momentum from situations that didn’t seem to offer such an opportunity.
With the able assistance of four driven wheels, this gearbox means that were you to plot a graph of available power and torque against the amount actually being deployed, the GT-R would register a flat line. You push, it goes. Accordingly, I now have grave fears for the 911.
It has arrived. Perhaps to keep the Turbo’s dignity – or maybe in a feeble attempt to protect my own affection for the thing – I’m tempted not to drive it. This is the wrong course of action on two fronts; progress and natural selection mean that something must eventually emerge and challenge the fastest point-to-point car currently on sale. And once it’s traveling over some moorland road at a reasonable clip, the Porsche soon counters with a very different (and, some might argue, more relevant) take on high performance.
Wheel travel and ride comfort are its initial weaponry. The tires feel semi-inflated after the Nissan, and whereas the GT-R seems to want to beat the road into submission, the Porsche wants to accommodate the surface. It’s a small distinction but one that will prove critical later on. It’s an amazing thing, the Turbo – a car of confused physics that chews straights, stops with the force of a racing car and scoots through most bends at demon speeds.
Where the Nissan can feel slightly detached, the Porsche pulls you into the process of driving. It yaws and pitches, dives and shimmies. The wheel loads and unloads more obviously and the general feeling, having just driven the GT-R, is that the Turbo is simply too soft and underdamped. Push harder, however, and it gets better. If it were legal, you’d discover just how capable and enjoyable the Turbo can be.
But how can it be that a car weighing around 450lbs more than the 911 – one with less power, less torque and narrower rear tires – feels just as agile? Furthermore, how can it feel the quicker point-to-point device? Mostly it’s that transmission; all the time spent flailing about with the stick between the Porsche’s two front seats is employed in the business of going forwards in the GT-R.
But despite not feeling as delicate and not dealing with bumps anything like as well as the Porsche, the Nissan isn’t slowed by them. The car’s suspension has immense control over the bodyshell’s movement and this gives the driver great confidence – more confidence than the 911 gives its driver.
Don’t confuse this as a simple analog-versus-digital exchange, either. If the Porsche is the more characterful, the Nissan is still dripping with charisma – partly because anything that can demolish a road the way it does is going to enthrall any car lover, but also because it is so interactive.
Any car that, when idling stationary, emits a discernable clatter from within its wheelbase, on account of it having a second propshaft feeding power away from its transaxle to the front wheels, is a thing of singular character.
It’s as a static object, as something to see on your driveway, that the Nissan is perhaps the biggest surprise of the year. I was expecting shoddy plastics, horrid carpets and a general feeling of the $70k price tag covering some fine mechanicals and then Nissan subsequently bunging an iffy interior in for free. Not a sign of such tricks; the clock faces are brash and technical, the electronic gauges in the center console are a source of endless amusement and the leather sections on the dashboard actually look, feel and smell like leather.
By comparison, the $124,000 Porsche feels no more expensive. OK, its door trims are smothered in dead cow and this particular car is drowning in carbon fiber, but otherwise it just feels smaller. Not more expensive.
The subject of price is one that has been deliberately avoided so far. That Nissan pursued the 997 Turbo as its benchmark during the GT-R’s development is no secret, so it seems entirely fair to place it against that car, regardless of the price differential.
Even if they were equally priced, any objective assessment of these vehicles attributes would have to conclude that the Nissan was the better car. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but it really is the case.
The few areas in which the Porsche is superior are in ride comfort, straightline braking from very high speeds and steering – and only in the first category is the advantage clear-cut. The Nissan has more available performance, more grip, better stability, a bigger cabin and superior traction.
There is a spooky air of invincibility about the GT-R, and that’s what validates the “baby-Veyron” comparison. The Bugatti is the only other vehicle I have driven that provided such staggering on-demand performance, such a feeling of omnipotence. Somehow, it seems unfair to mention that the R35 costs little more than half the sum Porsche wants for a new 997 Turbo with ceramic brakes. Progress is thrilling for the consumer but cruel to the competition. The Turbo must respond, and soon, because the GT-R is the undisputed winner here.
Chris Harris/Autocar
http://automotive.speedtv.com/articl...-911-turbo/P1/
TWIN TEST: Nissan GT-R Vs. Porsche 911 Turbo
Written by: Autocar staff
02/28/2008 - 12:29 PM
London, UK
The Skyline arrived before the Turbo – literally, not figuratively, of course. The weather was fine, the road was empty and there seemed little point in hanging around for the appearance of the Porsche. So with the owner’s permission I went off for a tootle. Good word, tootle; it aptly describes the process of driving with no appetite for speed. A tootle is an exploratory outing, a systems check, a familiarization period.
Above and beyond all the other facts about the Skyline that I learned that day – most of which were hyperbolic – realizing that the Nissan requires the shortest tootling period of any fast car in my experience was perhaps the most important. Because just as we all hoped, the R35 Skyline (OK, Nissan has decreed that it must be called GT-R, so we will do so, but to enthusiasts it will always be the Skyline) is about to disrupt the comfortable world of the European super-duper-coupe in a manner that not even its precocious predecessors managed.
Great technological leaps in automotive hardware are a strange phenomenon to judge because all too often their significance is clouded by their seamless introduction into the motoring world. They are so inherently right, so good at what they set out to achieve, that their excellence becomes less obvious; it simply blends into the process of driving, so that the driver very quickly assumes that this is the way the world has always been.
The GT-R is to fast road cars what the mobile phone is to personal communication; you wonder what feckless creatures we must have been to have survived without them. This is the crux of the new GT-R; it is a new type of sports car. It is a baby Veyron.
You climb into the GT-R via a DB9-style extending door lever. The cabin dimensions don’t justify the large exterior – this is a big, big car – but shuffled down into the leather seat and having juggled with the wheel, you can select an excellent driving position. There is no key, just an electronic fob that opens the doors and whose presence then sanctions a push on the large red starter button. That pushed, the 3799cc, twin-turbo V6 fires with no more drama than a 350Z and settles to a burbling idle that sounds very GT-R indeed.
Plonk the gearlever back to D, brush the throttle and the car tootles away from rest as the driver familiarizes himself with the surroundings. The scuttle is high, the dash voluminous and imposing with more than a hint of Ferrari 550 about its shape and detail; those air vents are a dead ringer, for starters.
You push and prod things, glide a hand over various surfaces and reach the conclusion that time, money and effort have been lavished here like no GT-R before it. You look down and see that the gear indicator in the clock set is displaying the figure ‘6’. But you only remember one gearchange.
That was from first to second – and as the cogs enmeshed, there was a slight judder through the car’s structure. You remember feeling that, but your brain has no recorded information on the subsequent five gearchanges actioned by the double-clutch transmission. Something to investigate after the tootling period is over.
At a tootle, in its base chassis setting, the GT-R is harsh. It crashes into anything deeper than a cereal bowl, fidgets most of the time and turns the humble lane marker into a rowdy member of the percussion section. This is very disappointing; you wait all this time to drive a GT-R and then it seems that spring rates taken from an early Mercedes G-Wagen scupper any chance it might have on back roads.
But then you notice the script ‘comfort’ winking on the dashboard and pull down on the paddle switch. The change is in no way dramatic, but in the context of what will happen over the coming hours, it is crucial. The ride settles slightly, and even if the boisterous Bridgestone RE 070s still do a muffled impersonation of Niagra Falls, the car is no longer deflected by the road’s topography.
Two minutes into the tootle, comfort setting engaged, you push the throttle towards the front bulkhead. The gearbox accomplishes a sixth-to-second shift whose speed and smoothness is beyond the capability of any mortal being, and the car begins to chew asphalt. This is probably the last time you will ever drive a GT-R at a tootle.
Where do you start with this machine? The 434lb ft of torque it produces from 3200rpm that barely feels turbocharged? The steering that has been so expertly developed that it makes it easy to thread down narrow roads a vehicle that the tape measure and bathroom scales consider too bulky. The preposterous levels of adhesion achieved at all times? On reflection, we’ll start with the bit that matters, with the component that binds these rare talents together into something meaningful: the transmission.
Two large, metal paddles appear from behind the R35’s steering wheel like elf’s ears. Pull the left one and it shifts down, pull the right one and the car selects a higher gear. That is all you need to know to drive the GT-R. And whereas the same could be said of a Tiptronic Porsche, the immediacy and smoothness of the R35’s gearchanges makes any other hydraulically actuated manual system (or doctored automatic) seem, at once, completely obsolete. It fashions forward momentum from situations that didn’t seem to offer such an opportunity.
With the able assistance of four driven wheels, this gearbox means that were you to plot a graph of available power and torque against the amount actually being deployed, the GT-R would register a flat line. You push, it goes. Accordingly, I now have grave fears for the 911.
It has arrived. Perhaps to keep the Turbo’s dignity – or maybe in a feeble attempt to protect my own affection for the thing – I’m tempted not to drive it. This is the wrong course of action on two fronts; progress and natural selection mean that something must eventually emerge and challenge the fastest point-to-point car currently on sale. And once it’s traveling over some moorland road at a reasonable clip, the Porsche soon counters with a very different (and, some might argue, more relevant) take on high performance.
Wheel travel and ride comfort are its initial weaponry. The tires feel semi-inflated after the Nissan, and whereas the GT-R seems to want to beat the road into submission, the Porsche wants to accommodate the surface. It’s a small distinction but one that will prove critical later on. It’s an amazing thing, the Turbo – a car of confused physics that chews straights, stops with the force of a racing car and scoots through most bends at demon speeds.
Where the Nissan can feel slightly detached, the Porsche pulls you into the process of driving. It yaws and pitches, dives and shimmies. The wheel loads and unloads more obviously and the general feeling, having just driven the GT-R, is that the Turbo is simply too soft and underdamped. Push harder, however, and it gets better. If it were legal, you’d discover just how capable and enjoyable the Turbo can be.
But how can it be that a car weighing around 450lbs more than the 911 – one with less power, less torque and narrower rear tires – feels just as agile? Furthermore, how can it feel the quicker point-to-point device? Mostly it’s that transmission; all the time spent flailing about with the stick between the Porsche’s two front seats is employed in the business of going forwards in the GT-R.
But despite not feeling as delicate and not dealing with bumps anything like as well as the Porsche, the Nissan isn’t slowed by them. The car’s suspension has immense control over the bodyshell’s movement and this gives the driver great confidence – more confidence than the 911 gives its driver.
Don’t confuse this as a simple analog-versus-digital exchange, either. If the Porsche is the more characterful, the Nissan is still dripping with charisma – partly because anything that can demolish a road the way it does is going to enthrall any car lover, but also because it is so interactive.
Any car that, when idling stationary, emits a discernable clatter from within its wheelbase, on account of it having a second propshaft feeding power away from its transaxle to the front wheels, is a thing of singular character.
It’s as a static object, as something to see on your driveway, that the Nissan is perhaps the biggest surprise of the year. I was expecting shoddy plastics, horrid carpets and a general feeling of the $70k price tag covering some fine mechanicals and then Nissan subsequently bunging an iffy interior in for free. Not a sign of such tricks; the clock faces are brash and technical, the electronic gauges in the center console are a source of endless amusement and the leather sections on the dashboard actually look, feel and smell like leather.
By comparison, the $124,000 Porsche feels no more expensive. OK, its door trims are smothered in dead cow and this particular car is drowning in carbon fiber, but otherwise it just feels smaller. Not more expensive.
The subject of price is one that has been deliberately avoided so far. That Nissan pursued the 997 Turbo as its benchmark during the GT-R’s development is no secret, so it seems entirely fair to place it against that car, regardless of the price differential.
Even if they were equally priced, any objective assessment of these vehicles attributes would have to conclude that the Nissan was the better car. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but it really is the case.
The few areas in which the Porsche is superior are in ride comfort, straightline braking from very high speeds and steering – and only in the first category is the advantage clear-cut. The Nissan has more available performance, more grip, better stability, a bigger cabin and superior traction.
There is a spooky air of invincibility about the GT-R, and that’s what validates the “baby-Veyron” comparison. The Bugatti is the only other vehicle I have driven that provided such staggering on-demand performance, such a feeling of omnipotence. Somehow, it seems unfair to mention that the R35 costs little more than half the sum Porsche wants for a new 997 Turbo with ceramic brakes. Progress is thrilling for the consumer but cruel to the competition. The Turbo must respond, and soon, because the GT-R is the undisputed winner here.
Chris Harris/Autocar
03-29-08, 08:25 PM
#101
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another 2c
I just did my 2nd test drive of the M3, this time with wife, 2 kids and sales person in the car (plus me) that's 5 people. Now this was the sedan obviously and it was not a track-car like test drive or anything, I was mainly testing out the shifter again to see if I wanted the 6MT.
I don't race cars it's more just for me and how does it behave on the street and how does it feel. Etc..
I am not arguing the M3 is as good as the GTR. I think I would say from reading so much as I have about the two cars the GTR is better much like I would say the GT3 or 911 turbo would be better than the M3
BUT
The M3 is not meant to be a track car (at least for me) and as a 2+2 GT-ish car it's fine. I mean on my real roads I'm not pushing a car like a M3 or GTR to it's limits and likely for me the GTR has more muscle than I'm needing.
As I said if I could compare the two at the same/similar price that'd be a good question, but for an extra $500 a month the GTR had better be a lot better which it seems to be.
I mean if the question was is a 911 turbo v GTR then the GTR is a great price but for me $69K v $93K is a quite a different price range. If I had tons of money I wouldn't care about the extra whatever and likely there are many people to buy a GTR for $90K++ like people buy Aston Vantage or GT3 etc. but right now I don't find it to be in the $70s.
If people can find them for $70K by all means buy it and you would likely be able to sell it for more.
Also, I do see a M3 more as the IS-F or C63 etc. competition not something in the league with the 911 turbos etc.
I just did my 2nd test drive of the M3, this time with wife, 2 kids and sales person in the car (plus me) that's 5 people. Now this was the sedan obviously and it was not a track-car like test drive or anything, I was mainly testing out the shifter again to see if I wanted the 6MT.
I don't race cars it's more just for me and how does it behave on the street and how does it feel. Etc..
I am not arguing the M3 is as good as the GTR. I think I would say from reading so much as I have about the two cars the GTR is better much like I would say the GT3 or 911 turbo would be better than the M3
BUT
The M3 is not meant to be a track car (at least for me) and as a 2+2 GT-ish car it's fine. I mean on my real roads I'm not pushing a car like a M3 or GTR to it's limits and likely for me the GTR has more muscle than I'm needing.
As I said if I could compare the two at the same/similar price that'd be a good question, but for an extra $500 a month the GTR had better be a lot better which it seems to be.
I mean if the question was is a 911 turbo v GTR then the GTR is a great price but for me $69K v $93K is a quite a different price range. If I had tons of money I wouldn't care about the extra whatever and likely there are many people to buy a GTR for $90K++ like people buy Aston Vantage or GT3 etc. but right now I don't find it to be in the $70s.
If people can find them for $70K by all means buy it and you would likely be able to sell it for more.
Also, I do see a M3 more as the IS-F or C63 etc. competition not something in the league with the 911 turbos etc.
03-29-08, 09:01 PM
#103
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another 2c
I just did my 2nd test drive of the M3, this time with wife, 2 kids and sales person in the car (plus me) that's 5 people. Now this was the sedan obviously and it was not a track-car like test drive or anything, I was mainly testing out the shifter again to see if I wanted the 6MT.
I don't race cars it's more just for me and how does it behave on the street and how does it feel. Etc..
I am not arguing the M3 is as good as the GTR. I think I would say from reading so much as I have about the two cars the GTR is better much like I would say the GT3 or 911 turbo would be better than the M3
BUT
The M3 is not meant to be a track car (at least for me) and as a 2+2 GT-ish car it's fine. I mean on my real roads I'm not pushing a car like a M3 or GTR to it's limits and likely for me the GTR has more muscle than I'm needing.
As I said if I could compare the two at the same/similar price that'd be a good question, but for an extra $500 a month the GTR had better be a lot better which it seems to be.
I mean if the question was is a 911 turbo v GTR then the GTR is a great price but for me $69K v $93K is a quite a different price range. If I had tons of money I wouldn't care about the extra whatever and likely there are many people to buy a GTR for $90K++ like people buy Aston Vantage or GT3 etc. but right now I don't find it to be in the $70s.
If people can find them for $70K by all means buy it and you would likely be able to sell it for more.
Also, I do see a M3 more as the IS-F or C63 etc. competition not something in the league with the 911 turbos etc.
I just did my 2nd test drive of the M3, this time with wife, 2 kids and sales person in the car (plus me) that's 5 people. Now this was the sedan obviously and it was not a track-car like test drive or anything, I was mainly testing out the shifter again to see if I wanted the 6MT.
I don't race cars it's more just for me and how does it behave on the street and how does it feel. Etc..
I am not arguing the M3 is as good as the GTR. I think I would say from reading so much as I have about the two cars the GTR is better much like I would say the GT3 or 911 turbo would be better than the M3
BUT
The M3 is not meant to be a track car (at least for me) and as a 2+2 GT-ish car it's fine. I mean on my real roads I'm not pushing a car like a M3 or GTR to it's limits and likely for me the GTR has more muscle than I'm needing.
As I said if I could compare the two at the same/similar price that'd be a good question, but for an extra $500 a month the GTR had better be a lot better which it seems to be.
I mean if the question was is a 911 turbo v GTR then the GTR is a great price but for me $69K v $93K is a quite a different price range. If I had tons of money I wouldn't care about the extra whatever and likely there are many people to buy a GTR for $90K++ like people buy Aston Vantage or GT3 etc. but right now I don't find it to be in the $70s.
If people can find them for $70K by all means buy it and you would likely be able to sell it for more.
Also, I do see a M3 more as the IS-F or C63 etc. competition not something in the league with the 911 turbos etc.
03-30-08, 01:31 AM
#105
Lexus Champion
I decided to post the entire AUTOCAR article since it is one of the most concise evaluations of the GT-R I've read and it also addresses some of the prime critisisms leveled at it by some in this thread. Take it for what it's worth.
http://automotive.speedtv.com/articl...-911-turbo/P1/
TWIN TEST: Nissan GT-R Vs. Porsche 911 Turbo
Written by: Autocar staff
02/28/2008 - 12:29 PM
London, UK
The Skyline arrived before the Turbo – literally, not figuratively, of course. The weather was fine, the road was empty and there seemed little point in hanging around for the appearance of the Porsche. So with the owner’s permission I went off for a tootle. Good word, tootle; it aptly describes the process of driving with no appetite for speed. A tootle is an exploratory outing, a systems check, a familiarization period.
Above and beyond all the other facts about the Skyline that I learned that day – most of which were hyperbolic – realizing that the Nissan requires the shortest tootling period of any fast car in my experience was perhaps the most important. Because just as we all hoped, the R35 Skyline (OK, Nissan has decreed that it must be called GT-R, so we will do so, but to enthusiasts it will always be the Skyline) is about to disrupt the comfortable world of the European super-duper-coupe in a manner that not even its precocious predecessors managed.
Great technological leaps in automotive hardware are a strange phenomenon to judge because all too often their significance is clouded by their seamless introduction into the motoring world. They are so inherently right, so good at what they set out to achieve, that their excellence becomes less obvious; it simply blends into the process of driving, so that the driver very quickly assumes that this is the way the world has always been.
The GT-R is to fast road cars what the mobile phone is to personal communication; you wonder what feckless creatures we must have been to have survived without them. This is the crux of the new GT-R; it is a new type of sports car. It is a baby Veyron.
You climb into the GT-R via a DB9-style extending door lever. The cabin dimensions don’t justify the large exterior – this is a big, big car – but shuffled down into the leather seat and having juggled with the wheel, you can select an excellent driving position. There is no key, just an electronic fob that opens the doors and whose presence then sanctions a push on the large red starter button. That pushed, the 3799cc, twin-turbo V6 fires with no more drama than a 350Z and settles to a burbling idle that sounds very GT-R indeed.
Plonk the gearlever back to D, brush the throttle and the car tootles away from rest as the driver familiarizes himself with the surroundings. The scuttle is high, the dash voluminous and imposing with more than a hint of Ferrari 550 about its shape and detail; those air vents are a dead ringer, for starters.
You push and prod things, glide a hand over various surfaces and reach the conclusion that time, money and effort have been lavished here like no GT-R before it. You look down and see that the gear indicator in the clock set is displaying the figure ‘6’. But you only remember one gearchange.
That was from first to second – and as the cogs enmeshed, there was a slight judder through the car’s structure. You remember feeling that, but your brain has no recorded information on the subsequent five gearchanges actioned by the double-clutch transmission. Something to investigate after the tootling period is over.
At a tootle, in its base chassis setting, the GT-R is harsh. It crashes into anything deeper than a cereal bowl, fidgets most of the time and turns the humble lane marker into a rowdy member of the percussion section. This is very disappointing; you wait all this time to drive a GT-R and then it seems that spring rates taken from an early Mercedes G-Wagen scupper any chance it might have on back roads.
But then you notice the script ‘comfort’ winking on the dashboard and pull down on the paddle switch. The change is in no way dramatic, but in the context of what will happen over the coming hours, it is crucial. The ride settles slightly, and even if the boisterous Bridgestone RE 070s still do a muffled impersonation of Niagra Falls, the car is no longer deflected by the road’s topography.
Two minutes into the tootle, comfort setting engaged, you push the throttle towards the front bulkhead. The gearbox accomplishes a sixth-to-second shift whose speed and smoothness is beyond the capability of any mortal being, and the car begins to chew asphalt. This is probably the last time you will ever drive a GT-R at a tootle.
Where do you start with this machine? The 434lb ft of torque it produces from 3200rpm that barely feels turbocharged? The steering that has been so expertly developed that it makes it easy to thread down narrow roads a vehicle that the tape measure and bathroom scales consider too bulky. The preposterous levels of adhesion achieved at all times? On reflection, we’ll start with the bit that matters, with the component that binds these rare talents together into something meaningful: the transmission.
Two large, metal paddles appear from behind the R35’s steering wheel like elf’s ears. Pull the left one and it shifts down, pull the right one and the car selects a higher gear. That is all you need to know to drive the GT-R. And whereas the same could be said of a Tiptronic Porsche, the immediacy and smoothness of the R35’s gearchanges makes any other hydraulically actuated manual system (or doctored automatic) seem, at once, completely obsolete. It fashions forward momentum from situations that didn’t seem to offer such an opportunity.
With the able assistance of four driven wheels, this gearbox means that were you to plot a graph of available power and torque against the amount actually being deployed, the GT-R would register a flat line. You push, it goes. Accordingly, I now have grave fears for the 911.
It has arrived. Perhaps to keep the Turbo’s dignity – or maybe in a feeble attempt to protect my own affection for the thing – I’m tempted not to drive it. This is the wrong course of action on two fronts; progress and natural selection mean that something must eventually emerge and challenge the fastest point-to-point car currently on sale. And once it’s traveling over some moorland road at a reasonable clip, the Porsche soon counters with a very different (and, some might argue, more relevant) take on high performance.
Wheel travel and ride comfort are its initial weaponry. The tires feel semi-inflated after the Nissan, and whereas the GT-R seems to want to beat the road into submission, the Porsche wants to accommodate the surface. It’s a small distinction but one that will prove critical later on. It’s an amazing thing, the Turbo – a car of confused physics that chews straights, stops with the force of a racing car and scoots through most bends at demon speeds.
Where the Nissan can feel slightly detached, the Porsche pulls you into the process of driving. It yaws and pitches, dives and shimmies. The wheel loads and unloads more obviously and the general feeling, having just driven the GT-R, is that the Turbo is simply too soft and underdamped. Push harder, however, and it gets better. If it were legal, you’d discover just how capable and enjoyable the Turbo can be.
But how can it be that a car weighing around 450lbs more than the 911 – one with less power, less torque and narrower rear tires – feels just as agile? Furthermore, how can it feel the quicker point-to-point device? Mostly it’s that transmission; all the time spent flailing about with the stick between the Porsche’s two front seats is employed in the business of going forwards in the GT-R.
But despite not feeling as delicate and not dealing with bumps anything like as well as the Porsche, the Nissan isn’t slowed by them. The car’s suspension has immense control over the bodyshell’s movement and this gives the driver great confidence – more confidence than the 911 gives its driver.
Don’t confuse this as a simple analog-versus-digital exchange, either. If the Porsche is the more characterful, the Nissan is still dripping with charisma – partly because anything that can demolish a road the way it does is going to enthrall any car lover, but also because it is so interactive.
Any car that, when idling stationary, emits a discernable clatter from within its wheelbase, on account of it having a second propshaft feeding power away from its transaxle to the front wheels, is a thing of singular character.
It’s as a static object, as something to see on your driveway, that the Nissan is perhaps the biggest surprise of the year. I was expecting shoddy plastics, horrid carpets and a general feeling of the $70k price tag covering some fine mechanicals and then Nissan subsequently bunging an iffy interior in for free. Not a sign of such tricks; the clock faces are brash and technical, the electronic gauges in the center console are a source of endless amusement and the leather sections on the dashboard actually look, feel and smell like leather.
By comparison, the $124,000 Porsche feels no more expensive. OK, its door trims are smothered in dead cow and this particular car is drowning in carbon fiber, but otherwise it just feels smaller. Not more expensive.
The subject of price is one that has been deliberately avoided so far. That Nissan pursued the 997 Turbo as its benchmark during the GT-R’s development is no secret, so it seems entirely fair to place it against that car, regardless of the price differential.
Even if they were equally priced, any objective assessment of these vehicles attributes would have to conclude that the Nissan was the better car. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but it really is the case.
The few areas in which the Porsche is superior are in ride comfort, straightline braking from very high speeds and steering – and only in the first category is the advantage clear-cut. The Nissan has more available performance, more grip, better stability, a bigger cabin and superior traction.
There is a spooky air of invincibility about the GT-R, and that’s what validates the “baby-Veyron” comparison. The Bugatti is the only other vehicle I have driven that provided such staggering on-demand performance, such a feeling of omnipotence. Somehow, it seems unfair to mention that the R35 costs little more than half the sum Porsche wants for a new 997 Turbo with ceramic brakes. Progress is thrilling for the consumer but cruel to the competition. The Turbo must respond, and soon, because the GT-R is the undisputed winner here.
Chris Harris/Autocar
http://automotive.speedtv.com/articl...-911-turbo/P1/
TWIN TEST: Nissan GT-R Vs. Porsche 911 Turbo
Written by: Autocar staff
02/28/2008 - 12:29 PM
London, UK
The Skyline arrived before the Turbo – literally, not figuratively, of course. The weather was fine, the road was empty and there seemed little point in hanging around for the appearance of the Porsche. So with the owner’s permission I went off for a tootle. Good word, tootle; it aptly describes the process of driving with no appetite for speed. A tootle is an exploratory outing, a systems check, a familiarization period.
Above and beyond all the other facts about the Skyline that I learned that day – most of which were hyperbolic – realizing that the Nissan requires the shortest tootling period of any fast car in my experience was perhaps the most important. Because just as we all hoped, the R35 Skyline (OK, Nissan has decreed that it must be called GT-R, so we will do so, but to enthusiasts it will always be the Skyline) is about to disrupt the comfortable world of the European super-duper-coupe in a manner that not even its precocious predecessors managed.
Great technological leaps in automotive hardware are a strange phenomenon to judge because all too often their significance is clouded by their seamless introduction into the motoring world. They are so inherently right, so good at what they set out to achieve, that their excellence becomes less obvious; it simply blends into the process of driving, so that the driver very quickly assumes that this is the way the world has always been.
The GT-R is to fast road cars what the mobile phone is to personal communication; you wonder what feckless creatures we must have been to have survived without them. This is the crux of the new GT-R; it is a new type of sports car. It is a baby Veyron.
You climb into the GT-R via a DB9-style extending door lever. The cabin dimensions don’t justify the large exterior – this is a big, big car – but shuffled down into the leather seat and having juggled with the wheel, you can select an excellent driving position. There is no key, just an electronic fob that opens the doors and whose presence then sanctions a push on the large red starter button. That pushed, the 3799cc, twin-turbo V6 fires with no more drama than a 350Z and settles to a burbling idle that sounds very GT-R indeed.
Plonk the gearlever back to D, brush the throttle and the car tootles away from rest as the driver familiarizes himself with the surroundings. The scuttle is high, the dash voluminous and imposing with more than a hint of Ferrari 550 about its shape and detail; those air vents are a dead ringer, for starters.
You push and prod things, glide a hand over various surfaces and reach the conclusion that time, money and effort have been lavished here like no GT-R before it. You look down and see that the gear indicator in the clock set is displaying the figure ‘6’. But you only remember one gearchange.
That was from first to second – and as the cogs enmeshed, there was a slight judder through the car’s structure. You remember feeling that, but your brain has no recorded information on the subsequent five gearchanges actioned by the double-clutch transmission. Something to investigate after the tootling period is over.
At a tootle, in its base chassis setting, the GT-R is harsh. It crashes into anything deeper than a cereal bowl, fidgets most of the time and turns the humble lane marker into a rowdy member of the percussion section. This is very disappointing; you wait all this time to drive a GT-R and then it seems that spring rates taken from an early Mercedes G-Wagen scupper any chance it might have on back roads.
But then you notice the script ‘comfort’ winking on the dashboard and pull down on the paddle switch. The change is in no way dramatic, but in the context of what will happen over the coming hours, it is crucial. The ride settles slightly, and even if the boisterous Bridgestone RE 070s still do a muffled impersonation of Niagra Falls, the car is no longer deflected by the road’s topography.
Two minutes into the tootle, comfort setting engaged, you push the throttle towards the front bulkhead. The gearbox accomplishes a sixth-to-second shift whose speed and smoothness is beyond the capability of any mortal being, and the car begins to chew asphalt. This is probably the last time you will ever drive a GT-R at a tootle.
Where do you start with this machine? The 434lb ft of torque it produces from 3200rpm that barely feels turbocharged? The steering that has been so expertly developed that it makes it easy to thread down narrow roads a vehicle that the tape measure and bathroom scales consider too bulky. The preposterous levels of adhesion achieved at all times? On reflection, we’ll start with the bit that matters, with the component that binds these rare talents together into something meaningful: the transmission.
Two large, metal paddles appear from behind the R35’s steering wheel like elf’s ears. Pull the left one and it shifts down, pull the right one and the car selects a higher gear. That is all you need to know to drive the GT-R. And whereas the same could be said of a Tiptronic Porsche, the immediacy and smoothness of the R35’s gearchanges makes any other hydraulically actuated manual system (or doctored automatic) seem, at once, completely obsolete. It fashions forward momentum from situations that didn’t seem to offer such an opportunity.
With the able assistance of four driven wheels, this gearbox means that were you to plot a graph of available power and torque against the amount actually being deployed, the GT-R would register a flat line. You push, it goes. Accordingly, I now have grave fears for the 911.
It has arrived. Perhaps to keep the Turbo’s dignity – or maybe in a feeble attempt to protect my own affection for the thing – I’m tempted not to drive it. This is the wrong course of action on two fronts; progress and natural selection mean that something must eventually emerge and challenge the fastest point-to-point car currently on sale. And once it’s traveling over some moorland road at a reasonable clip, the Porsche soon counters with a very different (and, some might argue, more relevant) take on high performance.
Wheel travel and ride comfort are its initial weaponry. The tires feel semi-inflated after the Nissan, and whereas the GT-R seems to want to beat the road into submission, the Porsche wants to accommodate the surface. It’s a small distinction but one that will prove critical later on. It’s an amazing thing, the Turbo – a car of confused physics that chews straights, stops with the force of a racing car and scoots through most bends at demon speeds.
Where the Nissan can feel slightly detached, the Porsche pulls you into the process of driving. It yaws and pitches, dives and shimmies. The wheel loads and unloads more obviously and the general feeling, having just driven the GT-R, is that the Turbo is simply too soft and underdamped. Push harder, however, and it gets better. If it were legal, you’d discover just how capable and enjoyable the Turbo can be.
But how can it be that a car weighing around 450lbs more than the 911 – one with less power, less torque and narrower rear tires – feels just as agile? Furthermore, how can it feel the quicker point-to-point device? Mostly it’s that transmission; all the time spent flailing about with the stick between the Porsche’s two front seats is employed in the business of going forwards in the GT-R.
But despite not feeling as delicate and not dealing with bumps anything like as well as the Porsche, the Nissan isn’t slowed by them. The car’s suspension has immense control over the bodyshell’s movement and this gives the driver great confidence – more confidence than the 911 gives its driver.
Don’t confuse this as a simple analog-versus-digital exchange, either. If the Porsche is the more characterful, the Nissan is still dripping with charisma – partly because anything that can demolish a road the way it does is going to enthrall any car lover, but also because it is so interactive.
Any car that, when idling stationary, emits a discernable clatter from within its wheelbase, on account of it having a second propshaft feeding power away from its transaxle to the front wheels, is a thing of singular character.
It’s as a static object, as something to see on your driveway, that the Nissan is perhaps the biggest surprise of the year. I was expecting shoddy plastics, horrid carpets and a general feeling of the $70k price tag covering some fine mechanicals and then Nissan subsequently bunging an iffy interior in for free. Not a sign of such tricks; the clock faces are brash and technical, the electronic gauges in the center console are a source of endless amusement and the leather sections on the dashboard actually look, feel and smell like leather.
By comparison, the $124,000 Porsche feels no more expensive. OK, its door trims are smothered in dead cow and this particular car is drowning in carbon fiber, but otherwise it just feels smaller. Not more expensive.
The subject of price is one that has been deliberately avoided so far. That Nissan pursued the 997 Turbo as its benchmark during the GT-R’s development is no secret, so it seems entirely fair to place it against that car, regardless of the price differential.
Even if they were equally priced, any objective assessment of these vehicles attributes would have to conclude that the Nissan was the better car. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but it really is the case.
The few areas in which the Porsche is superior are in ride comfort, straightline braking from very high speeds and steering – and only in the first category is the advantage clear-cut. The Nissan has more available performance, more grip, better stability, a bigger cabin and superior traction.
There is a spooky air of invincibility about the GT-R, and that’s what validates the “baby-Veyron” comparison. The Bugatti is the only other vehicle I have driven that provided such staggering on-demand performance, such a feeling of omnipotence. Somehow, it seems unfair to mention that the R35 costs little more than half the sum Porsche wants for a new 997 Turbo with ceramic brakes. Progress is thrilling for the consumer but cruel to the competition. The Turbo must respond, and soon, because the GT-R is the undisputed winner here.
Chris Harris/Autocar