I don't think anyone has denied that putting a sticky tire on a 10-bolt F-body at stock power levels could/would grenade it. I run a 12-bolt for a reason... although I never blew mine up.

Note the "sticky tires" part...


What we are talking about here is a car with a feature touted by Nissan's executives as super-uber... that if you use it in the manner they themselves are shown using it... it voids your warranty on an EIGHTEEN THOUSAND DOLLAR transmission.



Just a little note:
Eighteen thousand dollars? Holy buckets... you can build a heckuva T-56 or 4L80E/6L for a whole lot less than that...

 

Not exactly a minor mistake.

You quoted the Lightning Lap (which has been discussed in other threads, by the way) in which they tested the slowest variant of the Corvette, the LS3 equipped base car. OK, technically, if you get the LS3 base car without the Z51 package, it would be a bit slower. But you mistakenly thought the 436 hp Z51 was representing the 638 hp ZR1, leapfrogging right past the 505 hp Z06.

I'm sure that 200 hp wouldn't have helped lap times much. Not to mention the super sticky tires (the ones the Z06 should use but does not), better suspension, and monstrous 15"+ carbon ceramic brakes...

The truth is that the GT-R ran times a few seconds quicker than the Z06 did in a previous test (not included this time for some reason). However, since their times have come down every year (track familiarity?), who knows how the Z06 would have done this year...For reference, the 2008 436 hp Z51 ran within a tenth of a second of the 2006 505 hp Z06's time.

Not that this has anything to do with Nissan cheating at the 'Ring and Porsche calling them out on it.

 

And I'm not saying that this is the case - but there seem to be a few people in this thread who think that their sh*t doesn't stink.

There seem to be a whole lotta folks out there with whining differentials that haven't exactly received a loving embrace from the manufacturer.

I'm not trying to "draw equivalance". It does seem that some perspective is required, though, as there's a lot of high-and-mighty attitudes over one broken transmission.

Nissan's warranty stance on the VDC sucks. There's no excuse for that. I also think that they've got themselves into quite a pickle with regards to transmission calibration, as I mentioned several pages ago - if a DCT is tuned to protect itself under any conditions, then it'll probably be unsatisfying to the "1-percentile" consumer. However, if the transmission offers a functional mode that emulates the way that a few of us treat our manual gearboxes, then it almost assuredly will end up scattering parts once in a while. Offering the second mode to the customer and then leaving them hanging when something breaks ain't cool.

 

Excellent.

We agree.

 

Well, then - isn't that special? Gimme a shout when it's time for the group hug. I'll bring along my collection of T56 parts that demonstrate how a real man breaks transmissions. It doesn't involve launch control software or any fufu crap like that.

 

Can I join too? To quote the person in your avatar "I sometimes fake like I need the Heimlich maneuver, just so I can get a hug."

 

Well, one of the big 3 car magazines (R&T, or C&D, or MT) once had a pre-production GTR run really amazing numbers, something in the mid-11 seconds, IIRC.

Then they tested a production GTR which was about 1 second slower - it was in the 12s.

It was brushed off lightly, more along the lines "This one didn't perform as well as the first one we tested" but oh well, what a great machine.

To me, this gives further weight to the argument that the car Nissan tested at Nurburgring as well as the pre-production cars were tweaked to perform significantly better than the production vehicles.

So what are you trying to dispute? I'm still not clear what your position is and why. You are basically of the opinion that a factory-spec Nissan GTR is capable of 7.29 sec time at Nurburgring? And are you basing that strictly from Nissan's claims, or is there more?

 

I like the idea of the lightning lap. The reason they didn't test the Z06 again is because they only test vehicles that have undergone "significant changes" since the last time they were tested. Apparently the Z06 didn't qualify. I believe in the second LL they retested a car that they didn't feel got a fair shake the first time. It might have been a Vette. Other than that they don't really retest stuff. I was very surprised that the viper beat the GT-R.

 

Could be Nissan discovered they overtuned the car for the hardware. They discovered at the car's current power levels, the driveline would scattered all across world. They probably detuned it enough to help prevent some breakage. That's just my theory, as I wasn't involved on the GT-R development team, so we are all just left to speculate.

 

That was Car and Driver, and in this month's issue, Aaron Robinson goes through some track times and dyno results from the five GT-Rs that C&D has tested. #2 and #3 of 5 were indeed substantially slower and weaker than the rest.

Interestingly enough, cars #4 and #5 are are quick through the quarter as #1, but trap 4 MPH slower.

 

I saw that. I think that is one of the most telling pieces on the GT-R. Whether the faster GT-R's were ringers or not could be argued, but at the very least it shows that potentially not all GT-Rs are created equal. Kind of reminds me of the 99 Cobra issue on a grander scale.

 

When did people start being so concerned w/ 'ring lap times? Before all this happened, you rarely heard about these lap times. What gives?

 

I'm catching up to the thread, I'm so far on page 8, and I apologize if this has been answered already...

but. I do remember, distinctly, that the initial accusation was that Nissan was using cut tires.

 

Forget if you hate the Nissan or love it. It's a simple law of physics. No 3850 lbs car with 480 HP can run 1/4 mile in mid-11s. Period. There should be no debate about this.

The pre-production cars tested by magazines did exactly that, with claimed 480HP.

This should raise a red flag to everyone.

 

You must've been hiding somewhere... There were posts on performance numbers posted here regularly, specifically by Cadillac CTS-V, Cobalt SS, Corvette, and other cars. There was a list of other cars provided for comparison purposes.