Yet it doesn't say that it would void the warranty on the driveline. So if the car's under warranty, they aren't saying they won't repair the non-consumables. It's miles and miles from what Nissan is doing.
Is it? After reading that in the BMW manual, do you honestly think that they would give you a new gearbox under warranty when you wreck it through repeated LC starts? Sorry, I absolutely don't see the difference between BMW and Nissan here, I don't see how the Germans would act any different.
Again, why the hostility against Nissan? Cellos also said that they would charge you a new gearbox after you've used LC one single time. I mean what the f*ck? How do you guys know? Sorry, that's just anti-Nissan-bias, nothing else.
You make it sound like 20 times is a lot of times. If you did it once a month, that'd be less than two years. If Nissan didn't want launch control available, they could have easily disabled it. We're not talking about sequences that require plugging anything into the car or altering the ECU programming. And the VDC button? It's not buried in the glove box or behind a number of menus in the whizbang dash system, is it? Doesn't take multiple steps.
Actually, it does:
- You need to set the dampers to "R"(ace)
- You need to set the transmission to "R"(ace)
- You need to set the VDC to off (!!!)
- You need to hold the brakes, floor the throttle and release the brake when the revs remain at 4.500 rpm
Now remember, there is a "R"ace mode for all three available settings. Yet, you need to switch the VDC to off instead of "R" to use launch control, where the manual of the car tells you that you must switch VDC off only under very special circumstances, such as being stuck in snow.
Also, it was this particular car whose transmission gave up after 20 LC starts. That doesn't mean that every GT-R's transmission will give up after that. However, they clearly say that your transmission is in danger when you do repeated LC starts, which is why they did not officially include the function in the first place. I have shown that it's not uncommon in cars, therefore I don't see why Nissan did something wrong here.
The cold hard truth of the matter is that Nissan has released a car that is so fragile that they actually felt the need to carve out a warranty exclusion for it. By definition, they are saying that these features are unusable, but they've left them in as long as they can remove themselves from the liability of doing so. They have explicitly acknowledged that merely the disabling of VDC (their words, not mine -- they didn't say launch control but VDC) under heavy use can rapidly cause major failure.
Yes, it can. And as you should have read before, so it can and will on many other cars from many other manufacturers. Where a lot of powers are involved, things will break. What else is new?
You can try and dance around the terminology all you want, but Nissan has done wrong here. They easily could have modified the VDC behaviour to make it unusable beyond 20% throttle application, for example, if they wanted to achieve the "stated" and very limited use for VDC-disable. No different than vehicles with adjustable ride height that automatically reset to a different setting at different vehicle speeds.
They probably will. The point is that their GT-R seems to be abused by the buyers like no other car, because somehow they think it's the invincible new god of automotive history. It isn't, and everyone who thinks so is an idiot. It's a high-powered sports car that was built on a budget but works well as long as you don't thoroughly abuse it on a regular basis. This guy did, and he paid the price. It has happened with other cars, and it will happen again with other cars. Why on earth is it so special when it happens to this one?
I was told I come across fanboy-ish about the GT-R before. But then, what is a fanboy? Am I an fanboy already when I try to get the actual facts and real knowledge out there? People are being called a fanboy so quickly nowadays. As it seems, there's little interest in a proper discussion with actual facts and comparisons. Honestly, I can understand the defensive stance so many petrolheads have taken against the GT-R, because there was (and is?) this enormous wave of blind faith and actual fanboyism for the car, along with the press hyping the thing like no other. Still, we should be mature enough to be aware of that fact and rely on the actual facts and stats, shouldn't we? We sure can question the GT-R's performance, but then we should be willing to find out why it performs as it does. We sure can question the GT-R's reliabilty, but then we should be willing to find out how reliable similar cars are. I'm all for the truth and nothing but the truth, that's the whole idea. That however incorporates a counterpart that is not simply interested in talking the GT-R down instead of recognising what it can be charged of, but also what it can't. And honestly, I am missing the latter from quite some people here. People who should know better. Sorry for that speech, but I had to say it...
