On this episode of Ignition presented by Tire Rack
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00:00 [ENGINE REVVING]
00:20 The Nissan GT-R is in its ninth model year.
00:24 And I could spend the next 10 minutes talking about all of
00:27 the little incremental changes Nissan's made year by year to
00:30 make this car better and better and better.
00:32 And six of you would care.
00:33 Instead, let's take a look back at where the GT-R came
00:40 from, starting with that, the C10, the car
00:44 that started it all.
00:45 And then we'll hop in the R32, the GT-R that cemented the
00:54 Godzilla nickname and gave birth to this
00:56 giant killer, the R35.
00:58 [ENGINE REVVING]
01:14 You can divide the GT-R's lineage into three basic
01:17 generations depending on what engine's under the hood.
01:19 And this is the one that started it all.
01:21 It's a homologation race car with a psychopath of a 2-liter,
01:26 4-valve per cylinder, twin cam straight
01:28 6 under the hood.
01:29 Its successor used the same basic engine.
01:32 And we went a really long time with no GT-R at all until
01:34 that happened.
01:35 That's the R32.
01:36 And it was also a homologation race car.
01:39 But it had a twin turbo straight 6, all-wheel drive,
01:42 all-wheel steering, and all of the performance.
01:45 And its two successors used the same engine.
01:47 And we waited a long time before there was another GT-R.
01:49 And then the R35 came.
01:51 You know that.
01:52 What you don't know is what that car sounds
01:54 like at 7,000 RPM.
01:56 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:20 [ENGINE REVVING]
02:26 I am going to do something uncharacteristic and shut up.
02:29 Listen to this car.
02:30 [ENGINE REVVING]
02:57 I'm going to start.
02:58 [ENGINE REVVING]
03:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
03:26 [ENGINE REVVING]
03:29 OK, enough fun.
03:30 Let's talk about the car.
03:31 Those of you who are still virgins at age 30
03:34 already know this.
03:35 But the Skyline was more of a Prince than a Nissan.
03:38 Prince was a small Japanese car company
03:40 that was purchased by Nissan with the encouragement
03:43 of the Japanese government.
03:45 Right as this, the third generation Skyline
03:48 was being developed.
03:49 Third gen, but the first time the initials GT-R
03:52 were used on a Skyline.
03:54 And the GT-R was the touring car homologation version.
03:57 Initially a sedan, but later this coupe,
03:59 both with a two liter Prince racing engine under the hood.
04:03 The GT-R positively dominated the track,
04:06 winning every single race it entered, 49 of them in a row,
04:11 until a pesky rotary powered Mazda finally
04:13 broke its winning streak.
04:15 And speaking of engines, the first thing
04:18 you notice when you open the hood of this car
04:20 is the enormity of this straight six.
04:23 It looks like a four liter and yet it's a two liter.
04:25 And that tells you something, enormous bore,
04:28 tiny little stroke.
04:29 So it revs, it has twin cams, four valves per cylinder
04:33 and triple webers from the factory.
04:35 And it doesn't produce peak power until 7,000 RPM.
04:39 If 160 horsepower out of two liters
04:41 doesn't seem impressive, think of it this way.
04:44 The current Mazda Miata's high tech engine
04:46 has variable valve timing, direct injection
04:48 and a sky high compression ratio.
04:50 And it makes 155 horsepower out of two liters.
04:53 And the best part about this particular engine
04:54 is that this car's owner is standing over there
04:56 going like this, which means you better not shift
04:59 until at least 7,000 RPM.
05:01 I'll do my best.
05:03 (birds chirping)
05:05 (car engine revving)
05:08 (car engine revving)
05:12 (birds chirping)
05:14 (car engine revving)
05:26 (car engine revving)
05:32 (car engine revving)
05:35 This thing sounds like a Lamborghini V12.
05:47 Just all of that carbureted intake noise.
05:50 (growling)
05:52 Samurai soldier trying to kill you.
05:54 (car engine revving)
05:57 Jesus.
05:58 (car engine revving)
06:00 I have to say one thing about this engine.
06:02 It suffers from the worst turbo lag
06:05 of any naturally aspirated engine ever.
06:07 There is nothing below 5,000.
06:10 Nothing, nobody home.
06:12 And then from five grand to like 7,000 something,
06:16 it pulls like you wouldn't believe.
06:18 Just nuts.
06:19 (car engine revving)
06:25 And this was in the 1960s
06:27 when American engines rev to 3,800.
06:30 (car engine revving)
06:33 Let me talk about this car's nickname for a second.
06:38 In English we call it the Hakosuka.
06:40 In Japanese it's pronounced something like,
06:42 Hakosuka.
06:43 And that comes from two words.
06:46 Hako, which means box, and sky,
06:49 which is the Japanese word for sky, short for skyline.
06:53 So this is the boxy skyline.
06:55 Basically this is boxy sky.
06:56 This is the '60s, man, it was groovy.
06:59 I'm driving a boxy sky.
07:00 So cool.
07:01 Groovy cars from the 1960s
07:07 weren't typically light and nimble,
07:09 but the GT-R was.
07:10 There's no learning curve to drive this car.
07:14 It's a cinch to drive fast.
07:15 And it's shockingly, brutally fast in the twisties.
07:19 With these sticky tires on it,
07:20 this GT-R could easily outcorner sports cars
07:23 that are 40 years newer.
07:25 (car engine revving)
07:28 This is the kind of car
07:31 that doesn't really exist anymore today.
07:34 Most modern sports cars are just brag machines
07:37 for rich guys who think they're driving a racing car
07:40 because the marketing people have said
07:41 it's a race car for the street.
07:43 No, not here.
07:45 This is an actual race car.
07:47 There's nothing luxury about this at all.
07:49 It's got no sound deadening.
07:51 It has no nothing.
07:52 It takes every bit of your effort to make it go fast.
07:56 When the C10 Skyline was replaced by the next generation,
07:59 it was bigger and heavier.
08:01 And while it had a GT-R with the same S20 under the hood,
08:04 it was an unsuccessful one-year only car
08:07 that never went racing.
08:08 We waited two decades for something,
08:12 anything to recapture the magic of this GT-R.
08:16 And that finally happened in 1989
08:19 with the eighth generation of Skyline,
08:21 but only the third to wear the GT-R badge, the R32.
08:25 (car engine roaring)
08:29 (laughing)
08:41 Oh, first things first.
08:44 This is fast and not like, wow,
08:47 that would blow the doors off the Hakkofast
08:49 because it would.
08:50 This is like actual, holy (beep) modern car fast.
08:54 Like, I just can't imagine what somebody would have thought
08:58 28 years ago hitting the gas for the first time
09:00 in one of these things.
09:01 You didn't need to drive one to be shocked by the R32.
09:06 All you had to do was watch it on the racetrack.
09:09 It's the car that earned the GT-R the Godzilla nickname.
09:13 Like the Hakko, the R32 GT-R was a touring car
09:16 for the Haitian belt.
09:17 And also like the Hakko,
09:18 it destroyed everything that crossed its path.
09:21 And it also won every single race it entered.
09:24 Like the Hakko.
09:25 Detecting a theme here.
09:27 (car engine roaring)
09:47 Interestingly enough,
09:48 this car doesn't feel related to the Hakko at all.
09:51 Like there's nothing in common other than the fact
09:53 that they're right-hand drive and they say GT-R on them.
09:56 They don't sound the same.
09:57 They don't look the same.
09:58 They don't feel the same.
09:59 But these cars have one big thing in common.
10:02 And that's that they were both at the forefront
10:05 of technology for their time.
10:08 That's really interesting
10:09 because they don't feel like they're 20 years apart.
10:11 They feel like they're 50 years apart
10:13 in terms of technology.
10:17 What dominates the experience of this car is the engine.
10:19 The RB26DETT.
10:21 This is the straight six that everyone knows
10:24 will go 400 million miles,
10:25 make 5 billion horsepower and rev to, I don't know,
10:28 250,000 billion RPM.
10:31 It's indestructible.
10:32 What's really surprising is its smoothness.
10:35 Every time you look down,
10:36 you see four, five, 6,000 RPM.
10:38 It doesn't really sound like it's turning that fast.
10:40 And it certainly doesn't feel it.
10:42 Of course it has eons of turbo lag.
10:45 And that's sort of par for the course.
10:47 But the interesting thing is it pulls just as hard
10:50 as a modern GTR.
10:51 It doesn't pull as long.
10:52 Therefore, this car is not actually as fast.
10:54 But it feels that fast because this thing pulls so hard.
10:58 The turbos hit and it just goes.
11:00 (car engine revving)
11:03 (car engine revving)
11:07 Traction is never a problem
11:29 because it of course has four wheel drive.
11:31 Thanks to a system called TESA ETS.
11:34 And that stands for Advanced Traction, hold on.
11:38 Advanced Total Traction Engineering System
11:42 for All Terrain with Electronic Torque.
11:45 (car engine revving)
11:48 A TESA ETS isn't just an advanced all wheel drive system.
11:52 Today, only the best modern all wheel drive systems
11:55 function like this.
11:56 This is a rear wheel drive car until the computer says,
11:59 oh, I need to send power to the front wheels.
12:01 And when it does, there's a gauge that tells you
12:03 how much torque is going to the front wheels.
12:05 Why?
12:06 Because that's so cool.
12:08 It also has four wheel steering or HICAS,
12:10 which stands for All Wheel Steering.
12:13 And that's hydraulic and it works really well.
12:15 But still, this type of all wheel drive system
12:18 and rear wheel steering,
12:20 these are things that are only now becoming standard fare
12:23 on the most advanced cars in production today.
12:27 Think about that.
12:29 This is almost 30 years old.
12:31 It's modern car fast,
12:33 but way more fun than any of those cars are.
12:36 This is almost GTR fast and far more enjoyable to drive,
12:41 far more involving.
12:42 This is one of those times where you meet your hero and say,
12:45 yep, this car really does live up to every bit
12:50 of its reputation.
12:50 However, all good things must come to an end.
12:55 R32's domination of Japanese touring car was so absolute
12:59 that it effectively killed the whole sport.
13:01 It was replaced by an R33 and then an R34,
13:04 both of which use the same basic drivetrain.
13:07 And then like once before,
13:09 Nissan let the GTR name wither and die.
13:12 Only five years later, we got the R35.
13:14 It dropped the Skyline name,
13:16 as that now belonged to the car we knew then
13:18 as the Infiniti G37, but Godzilla was back.
13:21 (car engine roaring)
13:25 (dramatic music)
13:28 This GTR was like all of its predecessors,
13:36 a technological tour de force when it came out.
13:38 It killed everything.
13:40 It had ridiculous power, ridiculous acceleration,
13:44 ridiculous grip, ridiculous all-wheel drive.
13:47 I mean, it just slaughtered everyone,
13:49 but we never got to watch it in action
13:51 because Nissan didn't take it racing.
13:53 Instead, they took it to the Nurburgring by themselves
13:57 and set a record lap time.
13:59 Woo!
14:00 That lap time was seven minutes, 29 seconds,
14:02 which beat just about everybody.
14:04 And it pissed them all off too, especially Porsche,
14:07 which was so furious that it bought its own GTR
14:10 and couldn't get within 25 seconds of Nissan's time.
14:13 Porsche publicly called Nissan cheaters,
14:16 saying their car was obviously on non-production race tires.
14:19 Nissan responded by releasing a second video
14:22 of the actual lap and images of the tires they used.
14:25 And then, rather hilariously,
14:27 Nissan allegedly offered free of charge driver training
14:30 for Porsche's test drivers.
14:33 And you know what that sounds like to me?
14:34 Just a bunch of fly babies whining,
14:36 "Oh, your driver's faster.
14:38 "Oh, you had better weather."
14:39 Come on.
14:40 What we all really wanted to see was a GTR
14:43 punting a Porsche in the back fender,
14:45 fighting it out for actual race car dominance.
14:48 That's racing.
14:49 That's what we want to see.
14:50 I don't care about some computer simulated lap time.
14:53 Take 'em racing.
14:54 (grunts)
14:57 (engine revving)
14:59 And nine years in, Nissan hasn't even started
15:01 to work on a new GTR yet, so we know what's gonna happen.
15:04 The car's gonna die on the vine,
15:06 and we're gonna have to wait 20 years for the new one.
15:08 And when the new one comes out,
15:10 it's gonna kick the wasabi out of everything else,
15:12 which is great.
15:13 I just hope Nissan takes it racing so we get to watch that.
15:16 That is what made the GTR a legend.
15:19 (engine revving)
15:22 (explosion)
15:32 (upbeat music)
15:46 (dramatic music)
15:49 you