Audi R8 or Nissan GT-R?

Audi R8 or Nissan GT-R?


  • Total voters
    263
^ :lol: Yep, that was the effect I was going for.


"Passion" is a pointless and subjective argument anyway. Like some sports cars aren't built with passion at all? There's inherent passion in everything, whether it's the passion to build the most technologically advanced, hardest-gripping, most precise car like the GT-R; the passion to expand on multiple legendary racing victories like the Audi; or the passion to stick with a tried-and-true formula and wring the most amount of excitement and speed out of it like Porsche, Dodge, or the Corvette. Criticizing a car for not having enough "passion" means you haven't met the engineers who have toiled over the car day and night just in time for a deadline, working fervently to craft the best machine they can that they're proud to have worked on before the draconian marketers, lawyers, and beancounters get to it. Hand-pounding your car out with a mallet and hoping the duct tape won't fall apart might mean you have "passion", in which case we'd all be waxing lyrical about the Bristol Fighter, but these two companies have immense resources at their disposal. Naturally they're going to go and build the world's greatest cars, and if they do it via thoroughly modern supercomputers then so be it.

Arguing about "passion" makes you sound like a bunch of hopeless romantics.

The only cars built without passions are cheap Asian cars, and even their engineers set out to build the world's greatest cars. Yes, even the Chinese! It's not their fault if they don't have the knowledge or the financial resources to do so, because who the fuck wants to set out building the 2nd best?

I'd like to argue your point, but i see some sense in it. With that said i do think some lowly cars have much better attitudes then even the best super-cars we have today, old cheap Italians come to mind (Fiat 850 !!.) I'd love to say something like such car is more passionate, because its made for all the reasons that i personally want a car to be made for (primarily entertainment value,) but i suppose its about time we all stood up and put our foots down on this "Soul and Passion" nonesense, theirs better words out there.
 
on looks alone, the audi. the new skyline design still hasn't grown on me. if i were only looking at heritage, i'd buy the skyline without second guessing. overall all though, the audi is just too damn sexy!
 
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^ You must have hit post before me. I was browsing another forum before I finished.

Either way, the GT-R's over-engineered computers take some of the excitement away. It doesn't change my opinion, the R8 has more honest engineering. :p
Good excuse, I'll take it. Though if you're playing the "honest engineering" card, then I'll take that Viper anyday! ;)

I guess the point I was trying to make is that, to me, it feels as though they were excited while making the GT-R and it shows in the final product, whereas not so much with the R8.

I have engineered many a set of plans wherein I toiled during late hours to meet a deadline, was proud of the end result, but I could not say that I was passionate, or that I was excited, about what I had just engineered.

But I'll agree that it is a very subjective term.

As a former engineer (student, anyway), I say: take pride in your work, man. It's boring hammering out bagel toasters day in and day out, but even the people who build Chevy Cobalts need something decent to put their name on it. It's a much easier emotion to relate to when you're building the flagship halo car of a respected company.

"Excitement" is a much better word for it, that gets rid of the marketing-bullshit (and that's what it is, really, to lead you into thinking that the Alfa you just bought won't break down more often than your neighbor's Civic) "soul and passion" nonsense. What car do you feel more excited driving? The TG staff picked the R8 to answer that question, and that's such a more solid answer than rambling about in melodramatic Shakespearean prose.
 
Good excuse, I'll take it. Though if you're playing the "honest engineering" card, then I'll take that Viper anyday! ;)



As a former engineer (student, anyway), I say: take pride in your work, man. It's boring hammering out bagel toasters day in and day out, but even the people who build Chevy Cobalts need something decent to put their name on it. It's a much easier emotion to relate to when you're building the flagship halo car of a respected company.

"Excitement" is a much better word for it, that gets rid of the marketing-bullshit (and that's what it is, really, to lead you into thinking that the Alfa you just bought won't break down more often than your neighbor's Civic) "soul and passion" nonsense. What car do you feel more excited driving? The TG staff picked the R8 to answer that question, and that's such a more solid answer than rambling about in melodramatic Shakespearean prose.


:bow: Very nice.
 
^ :lol: Yep, that was the effect I was going for.


"Passion" is a pointless and subjective argument anyway. Like some sports cars aren't built with passion at all? There's inherent passion in everything, whether it's the passion to build the most technologically advanced, hardest-gripping, most precise car like the GT-R; the passion to expand on multiple legendary racing victories like the Audi; or the passion to stick with a tried-and-true formula and wring the most amount of excitement and speed out of it like Porsche, Dodge, or the Corvette. Criticizing a car for not having enough "passion" means you haven't met the engineers who have toiled over the car day and night just in time for a deadline, working fervently to craft the best machine they can that they're proud to have worked on before the draconian marketers, lawyers, and beancounters get to it. Hand-pounding your car out with a mallet and hoping the duct tape won't fall apart might mean you have "passion", in which case we'd all be waxing lyrical about the Bristol Fighter, but these two companies have immense resources at their disposal. Naturally they're going to go and build the world's greatest cars, and if they do it via thoroughly modern supercomputers then so be it.

Arguing about "passion" makes you sound like a bunch of hopeless romantics.

I've always felt someone throwing "soul" or "passion" (or both) in to a car review were trying to grab onto anything they could to justify liking a car even though it is inferior. It always showed up when comparing an European car to the "equivalent" Japanese.

A perfect example was the Mazda RX-7 (FC/2nd gen), when compared with the 944, was in almost every way better than the Porsche, except I think top speed and 1 other number, but it wasn't far off. The FC was cheaper though. Yet most reviews would still say the Porsche was better, usually with some BS about soul and passion and it was really just the badge. You talk to people that have owned both cars, and even with problems you get from the rotary, they still rather have the FC, if nothing else it's still cheaper to own/fix, while still being every bit as fun/nice as the Porsche.

Oh and using the passion argument, the Ford Model T pretty much trumps anything but the Ford GT40. Henry Ford's only care for years was finding ways to make the car less expensive to produce so that he could sell more. It bordered on OCD.
 
AYou talk to people that have owned both cars, and even with problems you get from the rotary, they still rather have the FC, if nothing else it's still cheaper to own/fix, while still being every bit as fun/nice as the Porsche.

Don't mean to butt in, but you kinda hit a nerve so, here goes:

The FC is quiet a twitchy little bastard, and my opinions are coming from people who drive "undriftable" :rolleyes: MR2s, the actual architecture of the suspension itself is messy, its not just a simple issue of spring-rates. as well all of the different 944 trans are supposedly capable of handling enormous amounts of power, so modifying the engine offers a few less headaches in a sense. Having been enamored by Japanese cars for awhile, and then switching to Italian cars I find it easy to say their is a big difference in the whole way the car is built, err designed. The Japanese commonly seem to skip over little details that don't technically matter, but somehow make a huge difference as a human being.
 
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I do a lot of circuit days, and I want to be really fast. Hence, the GT-R. Its more effortless to drive, and its outright quicker.

Well thats where we differ. I do no circuit days at all, and want a car that's quick in everyday traffic. Hence the Audi :p
 
Not really a fair fight. Should be Audi R8 or GT-R plus something else around $30-40K. Like...

10401014_200711.jpg


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etc...
 
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R8, hands down.

I'm sick and fucking tired of hearing about the fucking GTR. After the build-up and hype, the ONLY way the GTR will impress me in the SLIGHTEST is if it somehow folds my fucking laundry, takes the dog out on walks, cleans up the mess if the dog pisses on the carpet, washes itself and my other vehicles, comes with a hot wife who asks for nothing in life but the chance to give me oral pleasure on a daily basis, has 9,862hp to the wheels that can actually be used, comes with a lifetime supply of Hot Pockets (ham and cheddar, and don't try to fucking give me those bullshit Lean Pockets either), shaves my head for me, filters the air in my room should I pass gas while asleep, makes its own fuel out of Oreo wrappers and empty Mountain Dew bottles and only emits fresh $100 bills as exhaust.

Oh, and each and every one had DAMN WELL BETTER be hand-delivered by Bruce Campbell.

Anything less than that will be a severe disappointment after how much BULLSHIT I've heard about that car over the last couple of years.

I don't know you and all, but... I love you.
 
With that argument you could very well say that everything is manual, it just computer actuated. Don't be so thick.

No, you can't. How about you try not being so ignorant.

The "Tiptronic" gearboxes that BMW, Porsche, etc use are not completely manual. If you rev them to the limiter, they change up by themselves, even in "manual" mode.

The GT-R box will let you bang the engine off the limiter until the petrol runs out if you want it to. The only time it'll refuse to change down is if it the speed in the lower gear puts revs past the redline.....which is hardly a bad thing.

The GT-R box has an auto mode where it'll change gear itself, but in the manual mode it behaves exactly the way the title "manual gearbox" implies.

There's also an argument that people consider a torque converter gearbox to be non-manual. The GT-R, like all twin-clutch gearboxes, doesn't have a torque converter either. So it doesn't have the same parasitic loss. The only difference is the clutch cable is connected to a computer rather than a foot.


I don't see the attraction of having a clutch. What does a clutch bring to the table, when it comes to going fast? The only thing an computer-controlled clutch doesn't let you do is pop the clutch to shock the driveline and initiate a drift, or drop a burnout if the gearbox doesn't have launch control.

Doing your own rev-matching does add to driver satisfaction, but having driven a car with a dog box / staight cut gears and not using the clutch pedal on gearchanges I can't say it makes or breaks driver enjoyment.
 
^ All automated manuals tend to fry their clutches in traffic jams, and some of them are pretty jerky when the clutch is used, because a computer doesn't have a "feel" for when the clutch grips and what style of clutching is necessary in the circumstances. Of course people are going to reply that that can be fixed with another supercomputer under the hood with 15 billion different programmes for the clutch. But it's still a solution for a problem that doesn't have to exist in the first place.
In pure track cars a clutch isn't really a problem, because on a track all you're going to do is going all out, so you want your up- and downshifts to go as fast as (in)humanly possible. When you have a car that you want to use on a normal road on a day to dat basis this changes, for reasons i explained above. As Nissan is selling this car as a supercar you can drive every day, you should be able to fit a proper manual, because it's better suited for normal traffic needs than a gearbox that can shift faster than you can blink your eye, but goes very smelly after 15 minutes of start-stop traffic (dunno about the Nissan's box specificaly, but afaik it's a problem that hasn't been solved by any manufacturer. VW/Audi's Twin-clutch DSG does suffer from it too). Or like the one in the Aston Vanquish, that even broke after track usage, but that is something that is for another discussion altogether.
Fact of the matter is, i'd take a proper manual or a proper automatic with torque converter (like Porche/Audi's tiptronic) over an automated manual every day.
 
The "Tiptronic" gearboxes that BMW, Porsche, etc use are not completely manual. If you rev them to the limiter, they change up by themselves, even in "manual" mode.

The GT-R box will let you bang the engine off the limiter until the petrol runs out if you want it to. The only time it'll refuse to change down is if it the speed in the lower gear puts revs past the redline.....which is hardly a bad thing.

I'm not sure if you can call the automatic shifting at the limiter a characteristic of a slushbox 'cos Alfa's Q-system (a proper automatic, not the Selespeed automated manual) will hold gear at the rev limit if its in manual mode.
 
Audi R8, hands down. Comfortable, quick, practical, four-wheel-drive, proper gearbox, no stupid nannying nonsense, and so on and so forth...
 
Where's the option for "Neither". The Audi just doesn't look right and the GT-R will be bought by people who will go on for hours about the power to weight ratio and torque of the RB482 with the GRM4824 transmission and the B382 turbo and how they plan to get it to run low 11's on street tires once they upgrade to the B383 turbo and swap for the RB485 and TW482 tranny. It bores me to death and it's so annoying.
 
Would you honestly prefer this:
nissan-gtr-wallpaper1.jpg


over this:
2007-Audi-R8-Front-And-Passenger-Side-Speed-Tilt-Mountains-1280x960.jpg


And would you live with that interior for, let's say, 5 years:
09_gtr_intleft.jpg


when you can live with this:
2007-Audi-R8-Interior-1280x960.jpg



R8 FTW. I hate ricers and the whole tuning thing!

It's not gonna be chased down by ricers going "Z0MG U'Z H4Z SKYL1N3!" followed by some dipshit who has to remind him "it's not a skyline it's a GT-R"

GOLDEN!
 
No, you can't. How about you try not being so ignorant.

The "Tiptronic" gearboxes that BMW, Porsche, etc use are not completely manual. If you rev them to the limiter, they change up by themselves, even in "manual" mode.

The GT-R box will let you bang the engine off the limiter until the petrol runs out if you want it to. The only time it'll refuse to change down is if it the speed in the lower gear puts revs past the redline.....which is hardly a bad thing.

The GT-R box has an auto mode where it'll change gear itself, but in the manual mode it behaves exactly the way the title "manual gearbox" implies.

There's also an argument that people consider a torque converter gearbox to be non-manual. The GT-R, like all twin-clutch gearboxes, doesn't have a torque converter either. So it doesn't have the same parasitic loss. The only difference is the clutch cable is connected to a computer rather than a foot.


I don't see the attraction of having a clutch. What does a clutch bring to the table, when it comes to going fast? The only thing an computer-controlled clutch doesn't let you do is pop the clutch to shock the driveline and initiate a drift, or drop a burnout if the gearbox doesn't have launch control.

Doing your own rev-matching does add to driver satisfaction, but having driven a car with a dog box / staight cut gears and not using the clutch pedal on gearchanges I can't say it makes or breaks driver enjoyment.

Ok, good argument, thing is though, a MANUAL GEARBOX at least as I know it and have always know it, is one with 3 pedals and a gear lever. Unless I have control over the clutch pedal, its not manual. I man not be faster with a clutch, but speed isn't everything. I find driving a lot more fun and involving when I am swapping the cogs myself not some supercomputer. So what if its slower, IMHO it is more important to have fun while driving then go faster than light.
 
I didn't want to do this but too many of you are claiming that the Audi is much better looking so here goes;

The Audi is a profoundly stupid looking ugly ridiculous looking travesty of joke of a stupid ugly looking excuse for a car. There isn't a single section of the bodywork that doesn't look like stupid ugly smelly jerk face butts. From the ghastly little LED's to the ridiculous number of vents and slashes and the squinty little headlights and the way the back ends jaw sticks out like it has an underbite to the awful two-tone sideburn things... It's hideous. Based purely on looks, i'd take any other car in the world. And I haven't forgotten that SsanggYyong exist!

If this car could blow me and they were giving them away for free I still wouldn't want anything to do with it.

The GT-R is far from perfect looking but at least it looks like a car:
https://pic.armedcats.net/2008/02/13/nissangtrofficial1034.jpg

And not like a hellish nightmare of horrible awful terribleness.
 
The Audi only looks good from the front, while the GT-R only looks good from any angle that ISN'T the front. Combine the two and Harley Earl will cry in his sleep.

Seriously, the R8 looks like a headcrab.

headcrab_full.jpg


And the GT-R looks like it's about to retch something.

(no image needed, use your imagination)

That said, I'd still take the R8 until Nissan decides to offer a proper gearbox in it. Too bad, because I see nothing wrong with driving around in a Playstation.
 
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