How not to drive a Nissan GT-R

Remember Christmas? I know, it was literally months ago now, wasn’t it? I got to spend the festive period with a Nissan GT-R, and this got me thinking. It’s a car we know inside out, but only in one way: we know it for its speed, it’s tuneability, it’s ability to transcend physics.

So I thought I’d spend my time with the latest 2017 GT-R – the very same car that appeared in Chris Harris’s latest film – trying to uncover new aspects of it. Like what happens if you ruin the aero by wrapping tinsel around the rear wing. Or make the first recorded use of the drivetrain’s eco mode.

But before I go getting stuck into the oddities of GT-R usage, I want to make a point. Remember when the R35 GT-R was launched almost ten years ago and everyone criticised it saying it was digital, emotionless and did everything for you? Well, they were wrong then, and they’re even wronger now. I think there’s an argument that the GT-R (4WD, turbocharged, double clutch gearbox) was the car that forged the path others have followed. It’s not that the GT-R was a pioneer in any one area, but that its capabilities forced others to follow suit so their more expensive cars wouldn’t be slower.

Now these cars (Audi R8, 911 Turbo, McLaren 570S, Ferrari 488 et al) feature much of the same technology, and for the most part it’s been even more smoothly integrated. As I was driving about in the GT-R, I came to realise that, far from being a digital, binary machine, it’s now amongst the most mechanical, feelsome sports cars out there. I hadn’t expected that and I enjoyed the discovery.

But without further ado, here’s what your GT-R can do if you’re not fully focused on giving it 1,000bhp.

Nissan is coy about exactly how much downforce the GT-R develops – chiefly I suspect because it’s not really a downforce car, but a fast road car, so the aero is there for stability reasons, and the pressing-into-the-tarmac stuff is taken care of by the car’s hefty mass (did you know that the R35 GT-R’s chief engineer, Kazutoshi Mizuno, never intended it to be a light car? Read the interview we did with him five years ago – he’s good value: "All journalists say ‘GT-R is heavy, heavy, heavy - it should be lighter, lighter, lighter!’ I say, journalists need to develop a more professional level of thinking! More study! More thought!”)

Moving on. Wrapping a quid’s worth of cheap tinsel around the wing was done purely in the name of fun – it made people smile and softened off the GT-R’s aggressive image. The long ends? I’d left them there in the hope they’d billow elegantly behind the car at speed...

The air obviously departs the car so cleanly that even lightweight tinsel isn’t disturbed. Still can’t imagine it did the 0.26Cd drag factor any good. Incidentally, anyone care to name me a sports car or supercar that’s more slippery through the air? There aren’t many...

Now I’m not going to lie. I only saw this result once and the previous score showing on the display was, ahem, 17/100, and the brake bar was literally not there at all. But if you potter about, coast where you can and take life easy, you can make the bar charts grow.

But be honest, have you ever seen this screen in a GT-R before? Of course you haven’t, because the central screen is usually too busy telling you how fast boost is building, the temperature in cylinder three or precisely how much steering angle you carried through that last corner. Until I started prodding about I had no idea the GT-R had an eco report screen either. Something new to us all then.

The way to get a good result is to push the driver control switches down. Again, no-one does this, because every GT-R you see will be in R mode. Even if it’s attempting to parallel park.

But Save mode is quite interesting. The left-hand switch controls the transmission – the shift speeds and software strategy primarily. Save is designed for slippery or snowy condition. That being the case the system also includes some engine control, assuming you need all the help you can get. So as well as dropping you into sixth before 30mph, it also softens the throttle response and adjusts the boost to build more slowly.

In reality the combination of this and Comfort dampers is soporific by normal GT-R standards. The spring rates on the latest car were backed off anyway (by 6.3 per cent front and 2.8 at the rear) and even on its 20in wheels and run-flat tyres, the GT-R now rides well. Quite a bit of road roar still, but Comfort is actually comfortable. Comfortable enough for me to ferry my mother-in-law about with not a whisper of complaint. The Recaro seats were even praised for not niggling her back.

So, Save is useful for elderly relatives and also helps return good...

...fuel economy! Now, have you ever seen a GT-R with this sort of figure on the trip computer? Well I haven’t. Normal order of the day is around the 18mpg mark.

Still, as you can see, even this sort of gentle driving slurps a tank of fuel in a little over 300 miles.

Obvious one, but how often do you see anyone travelling in the back of a GT-R? It can be done, but it comes with a word of warning. It ain’t half small back there. I know it’s a big car outside, but there’s almost no legroom in the back, even for 11 year olds with biro bones, and if you’re any taller your head is pressed against the rear glass.

Dedicating myself to the cause I travelled in the back on one journey. That’s why I can tell you there’s only as much room as there is in the back of a Porsche 911. It’s not a good look, it’s not good for your skeleton and if the thick fug of Christmas food and alcohol is sitting heavy on you, the process of squeezing yourself in there is less than pleasant.

We’ve had quite a few detail shots of the car in a row. Thought I’d intersperse them with a pretty one. I used the Nissan to drive the family up a hill and go for a walk, this was sunset. Simple as that. No racetracks were involved in the making of this picture.

The GT-R demands 100 Octane. I was planning on doing a story about driving it to go and get some, but as far as I can work out, it’s now not sold anywhere in the UK. If you know different, please let me know. A BP garage near Silverstone used to have 102 available, but has since stopped selling it and I can’t find a higher Octane than Tesco’s 99. Personally I favour a bit of Shell V-Power, so that’s what it ran on.

This was a short-lived challenge. The area near me is criss-crossed by by-ways, and while I didn’t particularly want to use the GT-R as an off-roader, I did want to see what it looked like in that environment. Well, it looks daft. See that puddle about 15 metres ahead? That’s as far as I got before I decided that semi-slick Dunlops are not the right thing to investigate off-road adhesion with.

I had a choice about driving it off-road, but the cold snap we had over Christmas, and the lack of gritting on small roads meant there was no way to avoid ice. At times like this I do wish Nissan saw fit to offer the GT-R with something other than Dunlop’s SP Sport 600 DSST. They might very well be ‘the fastest runflat tyre around the ‘Ring’ but they sure as hell aren’t the fastest runflat tyre up Pilot Hill when it’s -5 degrees Celsius.

Serious point actually – a set of winters would turn the GT-R into an all-season weapon – and probably reduce road roar and further improve the ride, to boot. Anyone out there fitted some to their GT-R? Be interested to know how it turned out.

Thought you might be interested in this. I wanted to see how the GT-R fared when subjected to a standing start on ice. It has a claimed 0-60mph of 2.8secs of course, and as you can see it took almost two seconds longer with a bit of frost and ice introduced. Still, 4.6secs to 60mph isn’t a shabby showing. A couple of years back I did a similar test in a Subaru WRX on a Swedish ice lake. You can watch how long that took to accelerate to 60mph and brake back to zero here.

What was more interesting on this occasion is how the system apportions the torque when grip is severely reduced. Dial up launch control (by putting those driver switches into R, of course), and when you release the car the back wheels spin magnificently and it’s the fronts that are left to do the actual work of pulling the car forward.

It doesn’t learn the surface in the same way as the latest McLarens and Ferraris, but repeats this behaviour time and again. It’s quite amusing, and obviously still pretty effective, but I was surprised by how long it took the system to bring the spinning wheels back under control. It’s like the GT-R isn’t used to not having traction and doesn’t quite know what to do about it. Fit a set of winters though and we’ve got to be looking at sub-4sec.

This will be a familiar graphic to anyone who owns a GT-R. One fullbore start is all it takes to have the screen complaining about overheating clutches. Yep, even when it’s below zero and there’s no traction.

Couple of minutes of cooling down and it gets itself together so you can have another go.

I love cars. I also love my Orange mountain bike. And my Seasucker bike rack. In fact both the bike and the rack are two bits of equipment that have never let me down and constantly impress me with their performance.

I wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity of putting Orange on Orange (yep, Nissan hasn’t been too pretentious and claimed this is Beach Bronze or St Tropez Sunburst or something. Katsura Orange, that’s where we’re at). Normally I ride from home, but the opportunity to pitch up in a trail centre car park full of VW Transporters shouldn’t be overlooked.

On a practical note, I was amazed at the lack of wind noise. I shot a timelapse with the bike on the roof because I wanted to see how much the bike wobbled on the roof. It barely moved at all. Several people have got in touch asking me about the Seasucker rack. All I can say is I was sceptical about it initially, but not once have any of the suckers ever lost pressure and the rigidity they offer is remarkable.

Here’s another angle. Front bolt-through axle clamps in at the front, Velcro straps wraps over at the back. It’s neat, clean and utterly wrecks Mizuno-san’s carefully developed airflow.

No test of the alternative aspects of GT-R use would be complete without a boot shot. So here it is, carrying beer, a bike wheel and wellies. That’s Christmas sorted round mine.

I know, last few words and I’m departing my plan and focusing on driving. Because at some stage with the GT-R, you have to. It’s just too good to ignore. The way the GT-R deals with a B-road, even when you’re just cruising along with the kids in the back, is a delight.

The steering gives you information, the chassis is this dextrous wonder that’s hyper-alert without being nervous, and skirting the edges of the turbo boost is great fun. You may be sitting higher, the ambience may be less exotic, the engine note might be plainer, but dynamically the GT-R is every bit as rewarding as any of the rivals I’ve already mentioned.

It’s not perfect – despite Nissan’s claims to have worked on gearbox smoothness and refinement, it still clunks when manoeuvring and, when you start it up, takes a few seconds before it’ll let you slide the lever into gear. The diffs are tight, so the car hops on full lock, too.

But this can be classed as character – you can see past it, and you can probably cope with the small back seats, too. In fact the only two major drawbacks to the GT-R are the tyre/road noise and the cabin quality/design. The infotainment is bloody hopeless and that’s something you have to use pretty much every time you get in the car.

Look, it’s almost ten years old. I’ve lost track, and mostly lost interest, in the regular tweaks it gets. A day spent in a new GT-R is spent trying to discover what’s new, what’s changed, what’s better. But a couple of weeks is an immersion, a reminder of how enjoyable and capable this car still is. I’ve come to genuinely appreciate it – and learn there’s much more to the Nissan GT-R than just extracting yet more horsepower from it.