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Keyless entry means you only punch the red metal starter button behind the gear lever to fire up the big V6. With the engine ticking over with a deep burble, you bring the stubby lever back to A-M - it is a normal gate for an auto. Flick it to the right and you have manual, but I want to trundle out of here in automatic first.

The transmission clunks and clacks a bit, but you soon get used to it. Its low-speed manoeuvring isn't on a par with the auto-clutch unit on the F430 Scuderia, being slightly jerky in the uptake, but it's useable. On the move in auto mode, the gearbox is sublime, changing up early in the style of an Audi DSG and using the engine's torque to the full.

We burble out of Nissan's testing facility at the Nürburgring to meet the Porsche, bound for some of the best A-roads in the area, followed by the 'bahn.

You will have noticed by now that the Stig appears in these photographs. He materialised from a forest somewhere near Nitz, stood in the middle of the road and held up his hand for us to stop. I then rode shotgun as he thraped the GT-R for 20 minutes, absolutely flat-out, saying nothing. He then stopped and walked into another forest near Fensterseifen.

I have no idea how the Stig got to Germany, but Turner and I brought the Porsche 911 Turbo. Good yardstick, this. As we dispatched the low countries at an easy gait, driving overnight across deserted highways, it seemed inconceivable that Nissan could design anything to get even close to this car.

It is ancient. By 'ancient' I don't mean old-fashioned, other than in its strangely narrow cockpit and upright windscreen - it's ancient in its utter solidity and feeling of being honed for decades. The gearchange, for instance, is a masterwork in solid fluidity, with not a trace of excess movement in its short action.

The driving position is perfect, the large wheel placed just where you want it. And then there's the engine out the back, that mighty 480bhp twin-turbo straight six, utterly unburstable and awesome in its power, slamming the car forward with indomitable force, all four wheels clawing the road. The 911 Turbo is still a player, vast in its all-round ability, docile when it needs to be, fast as well.

But driving these two cars back-to-back, it's not long before you realise that the Nissan makes it seem old-fashioned. The GT-R's balance and body control is extraordinary through faster, bumpy bends that will have the 911 unsettled enough to have the driver lose confidence - not only a good driver, but a fairly regular enthusiast driver like myself.

I had a number of heart-in-mouth moments in the Turbo trying to keep up with the GT-R, even with the Porsche's suspension set to its harder 'sport' setting. It still seems soft, and there's a bouncy lack of balance in the way the suspension controls the body, and the way the big engine slung out the back threatens to swing round. By contrast, I never felt anything but natural solidity in the Nissan, adjustable and fluid.