Man Maths: Nissan GT-R R35

Nissan’s engineers did some curious things with the GT-R, like putting the engine at one end and the gearbox at the other. Not at all unusual in itself, except that this is a four-wheel drive car. That meant power first had to be sent backwards to the gearbox before some variable proportion of it was sent via another shaft back to the front axle. Complicated and heavy, but it meant the car was fundamentally well-balanced. The twin-clutch gearbox was a bit of an innovation back then too, and it instantly made all other types of paddleshift transmission seem hopelessly outmoded.

Famously, the 3.8-litre twin-turbo V6 engines are handbuilt by just a handful of highly skilled technicians, called Takumi, in a hermetically sealed room to prevent dust particles from getting into the oily bits. I’ve been in that room and watched those Takumi at work. They’re like surgeons, lovingly assembling the car’s heart.

Even so, the GT-R isn’t for everyone. This is not one of those light, delicate sports cars whose balance and poise you sense beneath you. In a GT-R your inputs are not fingertippy precise, but forceful, sudden, aggressive. It’s like wrestling a bear. On track in particular, it pays to understand the original vision of creator Kazutoshi Mizuno, otherwise you’ll never get the best out of it. You must remember it has huge power and four-wheel drive, so the key is getting the car pointed nice and straight as early as possible at corner exit before stomping on the power as hard as you can. The chassis balance is intentionally hyper-adjustable to facilitate this. Forget mid-corner speed; just get to the apex, rotate the car on the spot, then blast out the other side.

A GT-R is a festival of knocks and clonks even in normal use, a reminder that it is a defiantly analogue machine. But depending on the model year (Nissan seemingly fiddled with things like spring and damper rates endlessly throughout the car’s life, as is the kaizen way, swinging back and forth with each new variant) GT-Rs can be beautifully compliant over bumps and they steer with real feel and precision. The Nismo versions were really quite hardcore, though, but all the more capable on track because of it.

I’ve been watching GT-R values for years, which has not been a particularly enthralling way to pass the time – the floor has been stuck around the £35,000 mark for as long as I’ve been looking. Given that a 15-year-old GT-R looks basically the same as a brand new one, and since it’ll be as brutally fast now as it was when new, I reckon that’s cracking value for money.

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