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**Fair!** · 05-07-2008, 03:54 PM

Re: May 7, 2008

This was the best article this week in RCN!

2008 Nissan GT-R Review
By Stephan Wilkinson
May 7, 2008
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/200...n-gt-r-review/

The GT-R is the blind date everybody’s been telling you about for months: incredible body, second in her class at Harvard, fabulous conversationalist, star athlete. Then you meet her. Yes, she has obvious “assets,” but nobody mentioned the halitosis. She graduated with a B.A. in accounting. She’s a great conversationalist, but her voice sounds like run-flat tires with three-inch sidewalls running over a concrete-aggregate rumble and tar-strip slap. She's an athlete, but a grunting shot-putter, not a Sharapova. In short, the GT-R is SO not a supermodel.
...

Two of the car's most highly touted features baffle me, though. One is the endlessly configurable instrument display, called-up via the nav screen. Nissan readily admits that it “was inspired by videogames.” It’s not what you’d call useful– unless you're intent on studying steering-wheel deflection, slip angle, transmission-oil pressure and brake-pedal position while late-apexing an off-ramp. It's the geek equivalent of the complex chronographs of the 19th century: pocket watches that read out everything from the tides to your mistress's menstrual cycle.

The GT-R’s fiddly “launch mode” for maximum acceleration (meaning turbo spool-up) is also a curiosity. It will amuse those who haven't an ounce of mechanical sensibility who don't mind abusing machinery. Actual GT-R owners will use it a few times to amuse the neighbors, and then will realize that they're still making payments on the $70,000+ appliance they're brutalizing. Even Nissan told me to only use it "once or twice."

For me, the car's tires are the biggest turnoff. Quick! Name a single benefit to run-flats. They're noisy, expensive, difficult to repair and can only dismount with special machinery. ...The Bridgestones on the GT-R are so loud they negate the Bose sound system; a Costco Kenwood would have sufficed amid the din.

...

There's a lot to like about this car, but is it the ultimate, the Godzilla, the Nurburgring killa?

Who cares? Acquiring a supercar, rather than fantasizing about one, faces the buyer with a decision with vastly more to do with real-world attributes than with video games, bad movies and teen fetishes. It fascinated me that nobody in Nevada or California noticed the GT-R, other than carwash attendants, 14-year-olds with mullets and every parking valet in Vegas. The rest of the world walked on by, assuming they’d encountered a new Toyota Supra.

Seventeen years ago, the first Japanese supercar arrived in the States: the Acura NSX. Fabulous numbers, a half-price Ferrari, buff-book craziness, slavering car writers, rumored to be the benchmark for the McLaren F1, development work by Ayrton Senna… So where did the NSX go? Ultimately, it became the orthodontist's car, when the world went back to buying Porsches and real Ferraris. Care to take bets on what will happen to the GT-R?

Bottom line: the car world may have gone cuckoo for Coco Puffs over the GT-R but it’s ultimately a pointless, nerdy, twin-turbo, electronics-laden technological curiosity.

That author nailed it! I like that author. A lot.

**Redwood** · 05-07-2008, 04:09 PM

Re: May 7, 2008

Originally posted by Fair!

This was the best article this week in RCN!

2008 Nissan GT-R Review
By Stephan Wilkinson
May 7, 2008
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/200...n-gt-r-review/

That author nailed it! I like that author. A lot.

I don't like most of the TTAC reviewers. They are trying to be negative for negative's sake. Like wanna-be Jeremy Clarksons, but without the breadth of experience driving just about every car around, nor the writing talent. Also, anybody that complains about a car being video-game inspired and hasn't played a game since Space Invaders is a) old as hell, b) a luddite that shouldn't get to review anything with technology in it. Also, you shouldn't be pointing out the video game part since you like to use the DL-1 data logger.

**Paul** · 05-07-2008, 04:34 PM

Re: May 7, 2008

Originally posted by Fair!

This was the best article this week in RCN!

2008 Nissan GT-R Review
By Stephan Wilkinson
May 7, 2008
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/200...n-gt-r-review/

That author nailed it! I like that author. A lot.

That guy is an idiot.

-Paul

**Redwood** · 05-07-2008, 06:22 PM

Re: May 7, 2008

If you want an alternate viewpoint to the GT-R gushing, try this 2nd opinion at Edmunds:

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do.../pageId=138537

**hancheyb** · 05-08-2008, 09:48 AM

Re: May 7, 2008

Originally posted by Redwood

Also, you shouldn't be pointing out the video game part since you like to use the DL-1 data logger.

I don't get it. Someone explain how data logging and video games gimicks are remotely the same.

**Redwood** · 05-08-2008, 10:13 AM

Re: May 7, 2008

Originally posted by hancheyb

I don't get it. Someone explain how data logging and video games gimicks are remotely the same.

Because you're tracking some of the same stuff as the GT-R's computer.

**Fair!** · 05-08-2008, 10:31 AM

Re: May 7, 2008

Originally Posted by Stephan Wilkinson
:
May 7th, 2008 at 10:40 pm

My point is simply that there are six GT-Rs in the U.S. right now–six, that’s all–but that there is enough second-, third- and ninth-hand expertise created from myth, legend, gamer experience, PR, buff-magazine hysteria and blogger hyperventilating that it would seem there are 60,000 of them. There are assumptions and there are guesses and there are massaging of the numbers, but it’s all pointless until you have actually driven the car. Otherwise, we’re just playing video games. Oh, wait, that’s where this all started…

He's not just a TTAC author, he has also written a lot of airplane and car related books. "A former editor of Flying magazine, as well as Car & Driver, Mr. Wilkinson works as a freelance aviation and automobile writer..." The guy even built his own airplane. From scratch. In his garage. Made a transatlantic flight and cross country flights regularly. Builds and drives race cars. So... he's not just a tool journalist.

After I posted that link on another forum, Dean's friend Andi ("the Z06 guy") had this to say about him: "Do a little research on Stephan Wilkinson... He's a badass. I had the honor of meeting him and co-piloting a pre-production 997TT with him at the press launch in Spain a couple years ago. He was very down to earth and humble, didn't mention anything about his status in the press biz. I found it all later."

**Fair!** · 05-08-2008, 10:34 AM

Re: May 7, 2008

Originally posted by Redwood

Because you're tracking some of the same stuff as the GT-R's computer.

Read up on the GTR's computer some more - most of what the GTR tracks is nonsense like "Steering wheel angle" and angle to the horzon. That's really just Gran Turismo nonsense that is meaningless for real data acquisition. Not the same. Again, the car's designers admit its mostly videogame based fluff, not real data...

edit: I drove a guy's 2008 R32 Volkswagon on about a dozen autocross runs at a practice this year. It had this huge onboard computer with "data acquisition", too. It was 95% junk. I had to search through 5 screens to get to something that made sense, but even then it only stored a peak value in memory and you couldn't play the run back to see yoru lines, average lateral gs, etc. Just a bunch of blips and static arrows. Useless.

The "data acquistion" units that car makers and stereo manufacturers have made so far are a far cry from a real, useful tuning tool. They are just... video games.

**hancheyb** · 05-08-2008, 10:38 AM

Re: May 7, 2008

Originally posted by Fair!

Read up on the GTR's computer some more - most of what the GTR tracks is nonsense like "Steering wheel angle" and angle to the horzon. That's really just Gran Turismo nonsense that is meaningless for real data acquisition. Not the same. Again, the car's designers admit its mostly videogame based fluff, not real data...

Does it record on a flash drive to review later? Uh no.

**Paul** · 05-08-2008, 10:38 AM

Re: May 7, 2008

Next time I will read the article itself and not Terry's limited quotes. Reads much better than the broken hateraid Terry posted.

**Redwood** · 05-08-2008, 11:19 AM

Re: May 7, 2008

Originally posted by hancheyb

Does it record on a flash drive to review later? Uh no.

"There’s even a supercar-like proliferation of gadgets in the cockpit. The multifunction display can display nearly every detail of the engine’s function, including turbo boost pressure, engine and transmission oil pressure, steering angle, and longitudinal and lateral G-force. And it gets even better - the computer doesn’t just display all this data, it can log it as well, and be analyzed later to help improve driver performance, just as it did in the R34 Skyline GT-R."

Your DL-1 is sounding more like a "video game".

**Redwood** · 05-08-2008, 11:23 AM

Re: May 7, 2008

Originally posted by Fair!

He's not just a TTAC author, he has also written a lot of airplane and car related books. "A former editor of Flying magazine, as well as Car & Driver, Mr. Wilkinson works as a freelance aviation and automobile writer..." The guy even built his own airplane. From scratch. In his garage. Made a transatlantic flight and cross country flights regularly. Builds and drives race cars. So... he's not just a tool journalist.

After I posted that link on another forum, Dean's friend Andi ("the Z06 guy") had this to say about him: "Do a little research on Stephan Wilkinson... He's a badass. I had the honor of meeting him and co-piloting a pre-production 997TT with him at the press launch in Spain a couple years ago. He was very down to earth and humble, didn't mention anything about his status in the press biz. I found it all later."

It still doesn't mean his writing in that article is good. Maybe he's written better when he's not trying to write in "TTAC style". It makes him sound like a newb. At least I didn't see any WRONG information like I have in some other articles (I've actually told them about it). I've seen very few well written articles on TTAC (including the founder), but I like to be "fair & balanced" and show negative reviews.

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