What I think Nissan has done with the VSpec is take the look of the car to the Super Car level by installing the Ceramic brakes, black/anthracite type wheels and much more Carbon Fiber to lower the weight! What they didn't or couldn't do was get the performance to match without engine mods.

Not that they didn't try, they have probably spent more time at the Ring with the VSpec than they did with the standard GT-R. R&D surely didn't get in the way at all because they did plenty of it on the GT-R VSpec.

Great job on the video commentary turn for turn by the way. I enjoyed it very much.

Here are some things to ponder, also, things I've observed over the last few years from participating at my local tracks (SCCA) in my 07 Z06 Corvette and from my friends and fellow racers who happen to drive some of the cars I refer to in the short story I'm about to write;-) I also get a lot of information from blogging, but this seems to be made up information at best! I also do a lot of reading from all sources about super cars. At Willow Springs, my home track, Chevy does a lot of testing so I usually hang out and speak with the drivers and engineers trying to sweet talk some inside info from them, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't!

When I hear the way some testers talk about the cars they test, why do they have to apologize for what they really feel about the performance of that car or hide what they really feel, Is It because their readers or watchers of their TV show would think bad of them and might call them traitors because of their choice. Also, a lot of the people doing the testing of late think because a cars built at a certain place by certain people the car (car one) can't be considered a super car even after they take it on the track and absolutely blow away cars hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

Then they take the car out on the roads and highways just to find that its also the most docile car along with being the best daily driver getting the gas mileage of a mid-size sedan and has the most comfort, can be driven in 100 degree weather with the A/C blasting, has a thumping stereo system that out performs most high end home systems, all this while not having to worry about over heating or breaking down!

But then, since car one is all of these things and built by those certain people, they would pick the over priced (car two) car, which is much slower (7:40 Ring time to a 7:22.4 unOf), extremely hard to get in and out of with terrible driver ergonomics and 8/13 miles per gallon to 14/20mpg for car one.

Their reasons for choosing the over priced car….it looks more like a super car, it has that “feel” of a super car. (Hmmmm, so super cars have to feel slow and have terrible ergonomics with inferior handling? Gotcha!) Super Cars don't need to be thrifty at the gas pump, or have good driver ergonomics and even having to be fast with good handling characteristics because these are not factors for a car to be considered a super car. But then they turn around and say the total opposite when a car is less expensive than the car made in that certain place by those certain people, you know, the ZR1 made by the Americans

So with all these deficiencies from the ZR1's competition and the fact that the ZR1's faster, 7:26.4 or 7:22.4 unofficial, but claimed by reliable sources like Jan Magnussen and John Heinricy, also faster than the pre-production/Nissan driven GT-R “NurburgRingers” 7:29 and the production GT-R that a regular guy can own, but could only muster 7:54 and 7:55 respectively by professional test drivers from Porsche and cough….Drivers-Republic ;-p along with the $350,000++ ergonomically challenged $230,000+ more than a ZR1, because it feels and looks like a super car, the mighty Lamborghini Murcielago LP640. All this makes both the Lambo and the Nissan much more of a super car than the ZR1?

I have seen European Web sites and TV shows get critical of cars they have never driven and for that matter ever touched or even seen in person (ZR1) just because it's made by a country or manufacturer they dislike or because they want to believe their engineering is far better than that country that just blew their doors off at the Ring with a car that's $250,000 to over a Million dollars less than the competition. Also, this with a car that not only spanks them on the race track and I mean embarrasses them, but also on city streets or on those 250 mile runs across the California and Nevada deserts from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 100 degree heat, A/C on max, while listening to the founder and King of Rock n Roll….Elvis…. on the perfectly tuned 9 speaker, 600watt stereo system with XM and HiDef radio or the trunk mounted 50 CD/DVD juke box. The passenger can watch High Def DVD's on the 8″ HD GPS navigation screen during the long cruise through the desert while the entire time the needle on the temperature gauge never goes past 180°!

I forgot, you can also bring your golf clubs and the miss's with room to spare in the trunk! lets see you do this in a Murcielago or an Enzo!

One last thing to rub in…..um, talk about here is all the success the American car makers are having at the Ring and tracks all over this world. Let's start with the 2008 Chevrolet Cobalt SS which “owns” the Nurburgring record for the fastest time by a FWD Sport Compact car at 8:22.8 (on a wet track!) which is faster than cars like the 2008 Lotus Exige S and the 2008 Audi TTS coupe, while having a sticker price of just $23,000! At my home track these little pocket rockets are some of the hardest cars to pass, they handle as well as some of the slower cars in my class, which is amazing considering they are usually the older Dodge Viper SRT-10's that end up coming in behind the Cobalts!

Next up for your pleasure and James at Top Gear, who calls this one of the best cars he has ever driven! The 2009 CTS-V series Cadillac that owns the four door mid size luxury sedan record at 7:59, this happens to be the same time as a 2004 Porsche 911 Carrera S driven by Walter Röhrl in 2005 and faster than a 2007 Mercedes CLK 63 AMG Black Series at 8:02 or only 4 seconds off Chris Harris's time driving the 2009 Nissan GT-R from some internet site!!!

The Next Chevrolet to do damage at the Ring and the hearts of all the Porsche, Nissan, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Pagani, Maserati, Koenigsegg, Ruf, Bugatti, Mercedes, BMW and all the worlds production cars is the ZR1 Corvette! The ZR1 ran a 7:22.4 behind the driving of Jan Magnussen who is a factory Corvette driver besting the time (7:26.4) of Jim Mero an engineer with GM who has limited track time anywhere and in no way is considered a professional driver (as you can see by the herky jerky driving style he used during his Ring run. The only production car faster around the Nurburgring is the ACR Viper, that happens to be another American designed car! Both of these cars are at the $100,000 mark. The ACR Viper comes with the DOT approved “just barely legal” Michelin PS2 Sport Cup tires as their original equipment tires, if you have never seen these tires, Google them! They look like slicks with the tread grooves drawn on by a Sharpie Marker pen! The ZR1 uses the same Michelin tires but in the 100% street legal version with a harder compound and correct depth tread grooves!

I'd like to see the ZR1 run the Ring with those tires, it's said the PS2 Sport Cup tires can cut 2 to 4 seconds off most 1 minute tracks! Willow Springs 2.5 mile track has seen between 4 seconds and a whopping 8 second improvements over the times with the cars original equipment tires!

Ok, we have this to finish up!

Record times by GM and Dodge
2008 Chevrolet Cobalt SS…. 8:22. FWD Sport Compacts.
2009 Cadillac CTS-V….7:59. 4 Door RWD Luxury Sedan.
2009 Dodge Viper ACR….7.22.1. Production Sports Car.

Honorable mention.
2009 Chevrolet ZR1 Corvette….7:22.4 Second place in the Production Sports Cars

I hope this was as much fun for you as it was for me!

Ciao

The pre-production GT-R's were getting some unreal track times when tested by the Nissan and magazine drivers, that once they were able to purchase a GT-R right off the showroom floor the GT-R's times dropped immensely, especially here in the US.

Pre-production GT-R's that Nissan was lending out to the magazines which were beating the likes of the Z06 Corvette by nearly 6 seconds a lap on a certain track, that when a production GT-R was tested later against a Z06 came up 2 tenths short of the Z06's time.

Seems to me, getting lessons from the Nissan people how to drive could not over come the advantage of Nissan supplied “ringers” over production cars the public has to live with.