Since the car came out, its been lambasted as overly technical and stupid. I have tried to defend the car, because I felt it was an evolution of the previous designs. The GTR has always been a high tech overweight madman, and I always felt that it was cool that there was an alternative approach to making a hyper fast car.

The Italians have loud and shouty cars, the Germans have cars that are steeped in tradition, and engineering, and the Americans have massive engines with wheels attached. So it's only appropriate that the Japanese produce a high tech gadget/car.

That is, until I started reading stuff about GPS linked nannys and black boxes on the car. These pieces are designed to keep the car from being driven in the way it is advertised. In the thread below, you can read about how Nissan treats the customers who paid a gargantuan premium to buy the self proclaimed 'Porsche beating supercar', and then drive it to achieve the numbers Nissan boasts about every chance they get.

If you can't use launch control, or drive the car hard then the GTR is no better than any car with a high tech transmission. There is nothing less cool than a person who brags all the time and can't deliver. Is the Nissan GTR the least cool car of all time?









These are just a few quick gems from the thread that spans 16 pages so far. Read it for yourself.

http://www.nagtroc.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=25361

This is a 2,000 tranny...
From the same forum.

to drive, i think the gt-r would be fun and i'm sure i would enjoy it very much. as for these issues, i don't really give a shit, because i'll probably never own one.

Since when did Strangelove turn into Mitlov? Not that it's a bad thing... but when I see thread titles, I try to guess who made em. For the last couple, I thought Mitlov and saw Strangelove?

For a performance car that's almost as bad as voiding the warranty when the key hits the start position....

Whether the Nissan GT-R sucks and whether Nissan's customer relations suck are two entirely different issues. The GT-R does not suck. It's two tons of badass. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, being so technology-oriented and all, but it rocks hard IMO. I love it.

Nissan voiding the warranty on a supercar because you drive it like a supercar, though, is pathetic.

As for reliability, that's not how I'd evaluate any car in a market dominated by Italians.

Think of it like the stealth fighter jet. It's inherently unstable and absolutely requires the electronic gizmos to function. If you're after all of the technological wizardry then this is the car for you. If you see it as just extra crap getting in the way of you and the tarmac, look elsewhere.

It's not bad, it' doesn't suck, it just is what it is.

The car has just been released, ofcourse there are going to be shit that malfunctions, maybe major things like a tranny shouldnt be expected from an $80K car, but hey its nissan... I do agree with mitlov and pretty much everyone else on how Nissan voids the warranty for shit its supposed to do. But thats Nissan just being a biatch. I dont think the GTR sucks either, I have a feeling that people really really want to have a reason to whine about the GTR not being everyone its hyped to be, this sounds like an example of that to me. I think nissan will go thru a phase where they will work out all the kinks, pretty much like they do with every car.

http://www.nagtroc.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=25361

Where is Nissan's PR bitch?

Edmunds' tranny also required replacement. It was done under warranty but would've cost $17,000 or so if they had had to pay.

"The GT-R Sucks" may not be fair but saying that "the GT-R's sticker price does not represent the potential liability of repairs" and "the way Nissan has marketed the GT-R and the way they oversee and treat GT-R owners is contradictory" would be totally, totally fair.

Basically this fulfills my prophecy of the GT-R...it lives on paper, not in the real world. Turns out to be even truer than I originally meant because I didn't expect the ownership experience to be so miserable.

I don't know how I feel about that.




I agree that what it does is fan-fucking-tastic, but only being able to do it for ~2,000 miles would be pretty damn sucky.

Good point on the Italian supercar segment, although I think the unreliable supercar stigma is becoming less and less true. Lambos are supposed to be really reliable, and there is a former Ferrari owner on that board that said his 430 was much more reliable than the GTR is shaping up to be. I don't know how this holds up for other owners, but this has been a trend I've noticed talking to many modern Ferrari owners.

Does that mean the GTR is a case of 'You get what you pay for'?





What a silly contribution to a conversation. Of course it is what it is. I am simply adding a new aspect to the concept of what it is, and asking if you think this new aspect makes it suck or not. I am not questioning Nissan's approach to building a supercar, I am just questioning the soundness of one of their gadgets, and how they responded to an apparent flaw.

The new gadget being the VCD which is required to be used to not void the warranty? However, using said control makes it impossible to reach their claimed performance numbers? If that's what you're getting at I don't see how that qualifies the GTR as sucking.

It's not just nissan that void the warrenty if you use the launch control.

I did read that some other companies will give you only a specific number of launches before they will cancel the warranty on the transmission, but I was under the impression that those were for the automated manual trannies, like Ferrari F1 and e-Gear. I though one of the advantages with a DSG like box was that they could handle as many launches as a customer could conceivably want.

Frankly I would take these stories under careful consideration if I were thinking about getting a GT-R. It's a scary thing to think that the company which sold you your car could arbitrarily cancel your warranty.

But I'm not a fan of the GT-R anyway, if it were my $80,000 a second hand GT3 would trump the GT-R every time.

In the McLaren F1, you had to sit in the middle. In the Ford GT (and many others), there was no rearwards visibility. I guess this is the price you pay for having one of the most mind-blowingly competent supercars ever made. Does that make it uncool? Fuck no. Mind you, I'll still have a Carrera S over it.

I think the things you list fall into the realm of annoying things, where a company which puts electronic safeguards and nannies on its product, and then voids the warranty when you drive it like they advertise is dead wrong IMO.

Nissan has taken so many totalitarian steps with this car that I would reconsider buying ANY new Nissan product because of them. From forcing dealerships to pay $300,000 to have the right to carry the GT-R, the electronic limitations on the car, the fact that it has to be serviced by a dealership every time you take it on a track to the most recent warranty issues some customers are having, I don't understand why anyone with the means to buy one (not fanboiz) would even consider one.

^ I guess you're right. However, I still don't think it makes the GT-R any less cool...it just makes Nissan very uncool.

Why anyone would get upset about having to wait an extra 0.6 seconds to get to 60 is beyond me.

Thats what you get when you buy a glorified rice burner. Domestic powaah!!!! Go Tim McGraw. Go country music.

Scenario: you race autocross. Do you get upset now?

Does the warrenty cover racing autocross?

They did originally say that post-raceday checkups are required for the GT-R, so possibly? I dunno. But still.

Im fairly sure it wouldn't be covered but I will check.

Why would anyone want to get to 60 in under 13 secs? Why don't we all just buy Ox carts?

What is VCD? Also, does it have to be off to make the run of the ring in the claimed 7.29 ?

Vehicle Dynamics Control and I expect it would have been off.

If the VCD has to be off to run the ring in 7:29, Porsche needs to tell Nissan to STFU. Who cares if the GTR runs the ring so fast on stock tires, and in stock trim, if you cant run the car in that manner as the owner. Its essentially false advertising if you ask me.

As far as the OP's question, is the GTR junk? No, its not junk, its trash.

If a company advertised a 0-60, and I later found out that I would void the warranty by trying to replicate that claim, I might be upset.

^ Throw in a 80k price tag with around 20k in markups, and I would be livid.

I agree, that it doesn't make the GTR shit, it makes Nissan dicks.



The difference between a car that does 0-100 in 5 secs and one that does it in 4.4, is quite a difference. Not hugely noticeable, but big nevertheless. And as was mentioned, if it is claimed, and the only way to get that time is to void your warranty, that would definitely piss on someones chips.

That GTR 0-100 time is probably bullshit. Cars never reach the claimed figures put down by manufacturers, be it 0-100, fuel consumption, etc.

The reason that electronic aids are turned off , is to achieve faster lap times. Running the car with some or other electronic aid on, would interfere, and cut power, and do all sorts of stupid shit, that would slow down the lap quite a bit.

Anyone think their systems might start showing up in other cars? What about the 370Z? What if I buy one (which might be on the table in a year's time), and track it a bit? Will Nissan still be a bitch about it...

The GT-R may still be cool as hell in my book, but I think Nissan has seriously tarnished their own image. I think how their handling this may seriously consider me to look elsewhere if I were buying a performance car from them.

Nissan will probably still be a bitch about anyone tracking their car and then expecting warranty to cover the repairs. Just like any other company, Nissan is going to try to pay as little out of pocket on warranty repairs as anyone else. I'm sure that if you took a Porsche Turbo or GT3 to a track and something broke, Porsche would highly question whether or not to honor a warranty repair. When you take the car to a track, there are so many things that could potentially go wrong, and so many ways that driver could ruin a car. How can Nissan, or any other manufacturer prevent itself from being accountable to the millions of scenarios that could happen on a race track? I'm by no means sticking up for Nissan, I mean I'd be pissed as well... spending that much money a car and then having to pay out of pocket to get it to perform correctly is a bitch. But I am offering a point of view that the enthusiast often overlooks, the cost of assuming this liability is far too great for Nissan and any other manufacturer. But take a look on the Ferrari forums... this happens all the time. "I just paid $200,000 for my F430 and the transmission burned up on the track." Or when the 348 was on sale, the transmission and wheels had a tendency to just drop off the car entirely. Do you think Ferrari just covered all these costs? Yeah right... they don't cover shit...




Nissan has certainly struggled with their image when it comes to GT-R servicing. They claim that there are "GT-R Certified Dealerships", but in truth, all it takes to be a certified GT-R store is to send a single mechanic to a class at the Smyrna plant. Again, I'm not sticking up for Nissan for having bad customer service, but you have to realize that companies such as Porsche have been dealing with clients purchasing high-end cars for something in the neighborhood of 60 years whereas for Nissan, this is a new game. People who are shopping for Porsche's but end up with the GT-R are still going to expect Porsche-level service, and realistically, thats probably something Nissan can't provide.

Just food for thought...

I just don't get why nissan doing this has suddenly got everyone up in arms when ferrari have been doing a similar thing since 2003.

Maybe it has to do with the type of people buying the GT-R? I'd imagine the vast majority of people who buy GT-Rs buy them because they're a HUGE performance bargain. And then to have the car break after just a little bit of use of this performance? It ruins the idea of owning a GT-R! Wheras so so so many Ferraris are purchased and completely babied their whole lives.

I guess but even BMW void the warranty in the M cars if you use the LC too many times.

I think the primary difference is that Porsche doesn't track you via GPS to figure out where you have been. Maybe if you tell them that you regularly take you car on a track they might be a bit suspicious of the how the damage occurred, but you would have to tell them. Even then, don't they expect the GT3 RS to be taken on a track? Isn't it casually referred to as a "track day special"? I can't imagine that tracking your "track day special" would void the warranty.

That being said, I do remember an issue Porsche had back when the original PCCB (Porsche Ceramic Composite Brakes) came out, where the discs would crack if you didn't let them cool enough between hard runs. Porsche originally refused to replace cracked discs, and I believe their argument was that the only way they would crack is if they were ABUSED on a track.

I can't remember how the first generation PCCB story ended now, but i think that Porsche ended up caving in a lot of cases, replacing the brakes at their cost.

Well Nissan is voiding the warranty if you use LC even once AND/OR if you turn off VDC for any purpose other than "except when rocking vehicle when stuck in mud or snow". Correct me if I'm wrong, but no company has been that restrictive before on a supercar.

I think there needs to be a poll whether if someone had 80k for a car whether or not they would buy a GT-R, when there are so many more "driver cars" out there that would honor their warrenty.

This is even worst than what Subaru did when the WRX first came to the states. They gave away free 1 year SCCA memberships with the new cars, then promptly voided your warranty on clutches and whatnot if you even once participated in an event.

I think that this is completely unacceptable. If Nissan can't make a "Porsche Beating Supercar" that lasts only 2,000 miles, then it doesn't really beat the 911TT. A car this hyped by Nissan needs to be able to keep up in performance and in terms of longevity.

I wonder how long the engines will last

^The engines warranty is voided if you go on boost. Stay below 1500rpm and your warranty will stay intact.

Casually referring to the GT3 as a "track day special" and then expecting Porsche to take all the liability when a driver destroys a car is ridiculous. Sorry that would never hold up in court... "Well the dealer called it the track day special, so I thought that the car was covered under warranty in these excruciating circumstances."




Wow, I forgot that Subaru did that on the WRX's... now thats funny.

Another thing that needs to be taken into consideration is that there are hundreds of cars out there that experience problems like this one. The GT-R has just barely penetrated the market yet, and is a low volume car with tons of hype, so these examples of course are going to be headlining. So just because there have been a few cases where drivers have destroyed their car doesn't mean that the car isn't engineered to last more than 2,000 miles! Plus, driving a car hard on the track will reduce the longevity of the car no matter what make or model. A Ferrari that cruises Rodeo Drive is probably going to last a lot longer than a Ferrari that spends most of its time on the track. Same goes for a Ford Focus, same goes for a Toyota Corolla, and so on.

Like I said before, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, etc has been failing to recognize warranties on tracked vehicles for years on end. This isn't a new concept by any means. In fact, when Honda first released the S2000, they appeared in court numerous times for warranty issues regarding both modification and track use.

I can see Nissan voiding warranties if you've been pounding the GT-R all day at Laguna Seca and you don't immediately take it in for service afterward.

But it sounds like Nissan will void your warranty if you use launch control, even once. Now, launch control isn't all that exclusive. It's even in the GTI now, and I think the Cobalt SS Turbo? Anyway, I've never heard of Volkswagen or Chevy voiding the warranties of their $23,000 sport compacts because the owner uses the launch control feature once or twice. Why on earth would Nissan have such a policy for a $70,000 no-compromises performance machine?

I have told my service adviser twice that i am taking my car to the track and he still hasn't voided my warranty AND he knows of all the stuff I have put on the car. Taking your car to the race track is not grounds for voiding warranty. Hell, Lambo of Dallas, Porsche of Dallas, Subaru of Dallas and a local mitsubhishi dealer arranged track days themselves with service tech present onsite to help out people with issues. And no they did not promptly void warranty if issues came up. It almost looks like Nissan reduced the safety margin that they built into the car to get better numbers. Basically, if your tranny breaks after just a couple of launches then you have A. a shitty product or B. a one off flaw that you need to fix.

Pfft I've pounded my car at Laguna Seca all day and it was fine. I've also done 2 other days at Buttonwillow (which, frankly, is harder on the car in a lot of ways that Laguna Seca) and I'm planning another trip there for december. You don't need a fucking service when you go to the track, at least not "immediately after". Sure check your tires before and after, check your oil before and after, and stick to your maintenance schedule. Also deal with any problems that may crop up as soon as possible. But if a GT-R's so fragile that it can't handle a day of pounding at the track then it's lamer than my car, sorry. Not cool.

I'd been thinking about that. If that's the case, the GT-R could be the lamest performance car in history.

Lamer than the DMC-12? That's a tall order.

^ No, that's cool because it was in Back to the Future. The only truly lame performance car I could come up with was the Mitsu 3000GT (too heavy, too much unnecessary tech, and not too much fun to drive). I think it's time for a lame performance cars thread...

Like a DS Lamest Performance Car of All time thread....that would be fun!

Sorry to bump an old thread, but this was on Edmunds.


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