2012 Nissan GT-R officially goes 0-60 in 2.9 seconds

How come nobody complains when Ferrari's explode after regular use, eat transmissions for breakfast and cost 3 times the price.

All supercars do that. Ferraris, Lambos, Zondas, you name it... They're not meant to last 300,000 km, the same way cars that do last 300,000 km are not as fun or as pretty as the supercars. Engineering on the edge always sacrifices durability for performance. Not too long ago, Formula 1s went through an engine and transmission through every race, till they were forced to use a limited amount of engines per season. The record breaking SR-71 spy plane, flying at 3 times the speed of sound, had very high maintenance, as did the Concorde.
 
At 90,000 american dollars, which 911 is on it's range? (genuine question, 911s confuse me)
I like the GT-R, looks racy, I wouldn't own one I guess but I'd like to see it in GT series against 911s, Gianettas and 458s
90k$ will buy you a 911 Carrera S with 385 horses.
 
How come nobody complains when Ferrari's explode after regular use, eat transmissions for breakfast and cost 3 times the price.

Because Ferrari will usually fix the car. Nissan told their customers to fuck off and buy a new $30,000 transmission. It was more of the way Nissan handled it than that fact the car broke.

Anyway, people expect Italian cars to break and they expect German and Japanese cars to be reliable - even supercars.
 
Because Ferrari will usually fix the car. Nissan told their customers to fuck off and buy a new $30,000 transmission. It was more of the way Nissan handled it than that fact the car broke.
I probably shouldn't, but ... [citation needed]
 
I actually doubt that Ferrari would fix a transmission if you broke it drag racing, even informally. But I think there are two distinctions:

(1) People who buy $250,000+ cars can probably afford a new $20,000 transaxle in the first year. People who buy $70,000 cars probably can't. The GT-R is a $70,000 car with the maintenance costs of a $250,000+ car. That'll catch buyers by surprise.

(2) The way in which Nissan denied warranty claims was offensive. They didn't look at it on a case-by-case basis and say "no, it looks like this car was really abused and this resulted from that abuse, so we're not going to replace this." They had a magic button, and you couldn't meet the widely-advertised performance numbers without pushing that button. But, when you pushed that button, even once, the car recorded it, and anything that happened after that point in time wasn't covered by the warranty. I mean, having a button that you need to push to reach advertised performance numbers, but that pushing even once voids the warranty, feels like some sort of violation of the principles of truth in advertising. It's really underhanded.
 
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I wonder how long the transmission will live. And no matter how much they try it will never be quicker than a Turbo S in pure acceleration.

I'm guessing the transmission will live life 1/4 mile at a time.
 
I actually doubt that Ferrari would fix a transmission if you broke it drag racing, even informally. But I think there are two distinctions:

(1) People who buy $250,000+ cars can probably afford a new $20,000 transaxle in the first year. People who buy $70,000 cars probably can't. The GT-R is a $70,000 car with the maintenance costs of a $250,000+ car. That'll catch buyers by surprise.

(2) The way in which Nissan denied warranty claims was offensive. They didn't look at it on a case-by-case basis and say "no, it looks like this car was really abused and this resulted from that abuse, so we're not going to replace this." They had a magic button, and you couldn't meet the widely-advertised performance numbers without pushing that button. But, when you pushed that button, even once, the car recorded it, and anything that happened after that point in time wasn't covered by the warranty. I mean, having a button that you need to push to reach advertised performance numbers, but that pushing even once voids the warranty, feels like some sort of violation of the principles of truth in advertising. It's really underhanded.

Well, yes, if this is not mentioned anywhere in big red letters then it's a douchebag move on Nissan. But I think the GTR is like a Veyron, it costs much more to make than it's retail
 
I actually doubt that Ferrari would fix a transmission if you broke it drag racing, even informally. But I think there are two distinctions:

(1) People who buy $250,000+ cars can probably afford a new $20,000 transaxle in the first year. People who buy $70,000 cars probably can't. The GT-R is a $70,000 car with the maintenance costs of a $250,000+ car. That'll catch buyers by surprise.

(2) The way in which Nissan denied warranty claims was offensive. They didn't look at it on a case-by-case basis and say "no, it looks like this car was really abused and this resulted from that abuse, so we're not going to replace this." They had a magic button, and you couldn't meet the widely-advertised performance numbers without pushing that button. But, when you pushed that button, even once, the car recorded it, and anything that happened after that point in time wasn't covered by the warranty. I mean, having a button that you need to push to reach advertised performance numbers, but that pushing even once voids the warranty, feels like some sort of violation of the principles of truth in advertising. It's really underhanded.

Is there a standalone ECU for the GTR yet? That sounds like the only solution in this case. Swap the ECU out for the standalone when you're racing, swap the stock ECU back when you need to take it to the dealer.
 
How come nobody complains when Ferrari's explode after regular use, eat transmissions for breakfast and cost 3 times the price.

Because Ferrari is an exotic and that's a price for owning an exotic, GT-R is supposed to be an everyman supercar...
 
I actually doubt that Ferrari would fix a transmission if you broke it drag racing, even informally.
Exactly my thoughts. I think it was the Ferrari 599 where Jeremy Clarkson demonstrated how to use the secret launch control. Given one would use this technique repeatedly on his 599 to extract maximum performance of the car, and the gearbox would break because of that, would you expect Ferrari to replace it for free?

But I think there are two distinctions:

(1) People who buy $250,000+ cars can probably afford a new $20,000 transaxle in the first year. People who buy $70,000 cars probably can't. The GT-R is a $70,000 car with the maintenance costs of a $250,000+ car. That'll catch buyers by surprise.
That's a good point. However, a lot of people forget that being able to buy a car doesn't mean that you can afford it in the long run - something which should be checked in advance. And the GT-R seems to have ridiculously high maintenance costs when something goes wrong; goes with the complex engineering I suppose. I guess that many people simply didn't see that coming, they thought that a cheap supercar is also cheap to maintain.

(2) The way in which Nissan denied warranty claims was offensive. They didn't look at it on a case-by-case basis and say "no, it looks like this car was really abused and this resulted from that abuse, so we're not going to replace this." They had a magic button, and you couldn't meet the widely-advertised performance numbers without pushing that button. But, when you pushed that button, even once, the car recorded it, and anything that happened after that point in time wasn't covered by the warranty. I mean, having a button that you need to push to reach advertised performance numbers, but that pushing even once voids the warranty, feels like some sort of violation of the principles of truth in advertising. It's really underhanded.
I'm not sure if this is correct. In all cases I heard of, Nissan did look into the case and the recorded data before making a decision. In the case that got the ball rolling, the car was towed to a Nissan dealer and checked by local mechanics. Then, two guys from Nissan Japan flew in, downloaded the data, looked into it and then told the owner that they would not replace the gearbox. Also, just disabling VDC once in the cars life would not void your warranty for all times - this was blown out of proportions by the media and the internet.

Nonetheless, the launch control issue was handled all wrong from the start. It seems pretty much everyone demonstrated it openly and said that it's okay to use it, which is exactly contrary to what the manual states. Nissan should have said this clearly from the beginning. Also, it was not very clever by Nissan to advertise the launch control 0-60 time as the official time (although this is not uncommon for high performance cars). The VDC-on-time is not far off at around 4 seconds instead of 3.5, which puts the actual real world relevance of the launch control into question. But I understand that drag racers would insist on their right to reach those times within the warranty.

By the way, the 2009 GT-R has a revised software which enables the driver to use launch control without having to switch off VDC and thus operating within the warranty.
 
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If it was such an issue, and the GTR having more liquid displays than an Airbus 380's cockpit, there should be a humongous warning once you press that button, to let you know, you might be damaging your car.

But on the most basic of questions... if the feature is not supposed to be used, then why is it there? In case you, one day for some reason, have to escape a life or death situation really quickly and only then is justified to engage the super fast button?
Other than that, if I buy a car that's fast and I wanna show it off, I should be able to... Otherwise I'd just get a more practical, more comfortable sedan for less money.
 
If it was such an issue, and the GTR having more liquid displays than an Airbus 380's cockpit, there should be a humongous warning once you press that button, to let you know, you might be damaging your car.

But on the most basic of questions... if the feature is not supposed to be used, then why is it there? In case you, one day for some reason, have to escape a life or death situation really quickly and only then is justified to engage the super fast button?
Other than that, if I buy a car that's fast and I wanna show it off, I should be able to... Otherwise I'd just get a more practical, more comfortable sedan for less money.
Well here is the thing. There was no "LC" button in that car. There was a way to get the car into LC mode by doing some stuff. One of those was turning off VDC (ESP in other cars) basically what it did is allow the GT-R to run as a basic AWD where it would more or less just send the torque to all 4 wheels w/o trying to shuffle it around for better grip. As you can imagine 4 massive sticky tires, a gearbox with little give in the clutch and a shitload of power/torque meant that running all 4 wheels at the same time at same level of power from a standstill on tarmac meant stress on the components.

According to Nissan the only time that VDC should have been off in the car would be to get out of snow/mud (anyone realistically driving a GT-R under those conditions is questionable but w/e). In such a low grip situation stress on all the components would be much much lower and also people wouldn't generally be putting the pedal to the floor. This is actually something that was in the manual as well. However while promoting the car Nissan showed off the LC mode to anyone who cared to look and of course everyone who bought the car tried it out...
 
A Ferrari isn't meant to be a GT car, though. Not likely to be used everyday, which the GT-R is. That's the whole idea of the GT-R, supercar speed with everyday practicality.

They're both expensive sports cars that are likely to only be driven occasionally, the Ferraris and Lamborghinis just cost more.
 
They're both expensive sports cars that are likely to only be driven occasionally, the Ferraris and Lamborghinis just cost more.

That's not how the GT-R was marketed. Nissan was making a big fuss of it being a supercar you can take grocery shopping.
 
Yes I got that impression too, that the GTR was aimed at the 911 monopoly of being the one supercar that you can have a normal life with
 
It is, because it is a fairly comfortable car with a useable boot, is easy to get in and out of and easy to operate. That however doesn't mean that it will also be able to withstand extracting its supercar performance on a regular basis. Other supercars won't, so the Nissan will not as well.
 
It is, because it is a fairly comfortable car with a useable boot, is easy to get in and out of and easy to operate. That however doesn't mean that it will also be able to withstand extracting its supercar performance on a regular basis. Other supercars won't, so the Nissan will not as well.
No matter what the reality is, Nissan was MARKETING the car as such. Also as the few 911 owners on the boards can confirm they can take it to the track and beat the shit out of it and then just drive it home and pick up some milk on the way.
 
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