Nismo GT-R

Storming Bathurst in Japan's most feral production R35 yet.

- David Morley

GIVEN Australian consumers’ well documented penchant for high-performance, high end sub-brands, it seems a bit odd that Nissan's Nismo warriors haven’t been seen here before now. That said, Nissan is making up for lost time by bringing us the biggest, baddest Nismo-branded car there is – the GT-R Nismo. It comes complete with GT3 customer race car boost-tech and a price tag with more compression (probably chest compressions when you hear what the number is). Forget that it’s been available in the US, Europe and Japan since its MY14… it’s here now and that’s what matters.

In Nismo form, the GT-R, already a supercar by any standards, is launched into the performance stratosphere. Godzilla has grown an extra bollock. That starts under the bonnet where the standard 3.8litre V6’s turbochargers have been replaced by larger units with the same part number as those on the GT3 competition car we saw running in the Bathurst 12-hour and other global GT3 events. Throw in individual spark timing for each cylinder and an upgraded fuel pump, and you’re looking at a 22kW increase to 441kW at 6800rpm and 652Nm (up 20Nm) between 3600 and 5600rpm.

Preventing all that torque from turning the GT-R inside out is a revised body shell that uses a bonding process as well as the standard car’s spot-welds. And it really does need it because the spring rate of the Nismo version is somewhere between 2.5 and three times the stocker’s already tightly-wound coils.

Downforce is the body’s other big job, and to see to that, the Nismo gets a bunch of carbon-fibre doo-dads including a widened front bumper, tapered rear bumper, side skirts and a monster rear wing.