Now, although there were no fewer than three versions of Midnight Purple for the subsequent R34 generation, when I came to spec my new R35 GT-R I was disappointed to find there was no purple at all on the colour chart. The body was a colour called Midnight Purple, the only shade I ever seriously considered, and I continued to love the dark metallic aubergine paint even when the rest of my R33 was grenading around me. That said, now the GT-R is back home, I’m planning the first of several modifications for it.Long-term evo readers may remember Godzilla 1, my 1997 R33 Nissan Skyline GT-R V-spec. It’s surreally capable on track, but equally happy on the road, making for great transport to and from the Ring. In fact GO02 LLA behaved impeccably for more than a dozen laps over the weekend. Nissan is wary of gearbox failures, and if the oil goes above 120deg C you’re obliged to take your car to your dealer for an early (and expensive) fluid change. Strange.Īlthough the car felt totally at home on the Nordschleife, I never drove more than two consecutive laps because I was keeping an eye on the transmission oil temperature. What is curious, though, is that while the GT-R felt extremely flat through the corners from the driver’s seat, a glance at pictures of it in action reveals that this 2010 European-spec car rolls a lot more than the earlier Japanese versions that set (very slightly) slower lap times than this model last year. It almost seemed to know its own way around the 70-odd corners, and the damping in particular felt quite perfect. I have never seen so many pictures taken of one car!Īs the track dried and I started learning what the car could do, it soon became very obvious that it was here where the GT-R was honed. Now, I’ve owned some ostentatious machinery in my time, but the level of attention the Nissan attracted in the Nordschleife car park was off the scale. The next morning the rain had eased off and it was time to point the GT-R towards the legendary one-way toll road. After an 8am ferry crossing from Dover to Dunkerque, we travelled in a mini-convoy through torrential rain to our hotel in Adenau, and after checking-in we were straight off to an informative ‘track walk’ with Nordschleife race specialists RSR to prepare us for the following day. My mate Dino Lazarides has recently taken over a Nürburgring tour company (so it seemed sensible to join one of his trips. Nissan GT-R review - The GT-R has never been more usable, yet it's still blisteringly fast.
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