In what is turning out to be a cracking week for Japanese hot rods (first the Civic Type R, now this...), Nissan has unveiled a monstrously powerful version of the GT-R supercar, tweaked by its in-house turning company Nismo (a portmanteau of Nissan Motorsports).
The Nismo GT-R uses the same 3.8-litre V6 twin-turbo engine (type number VR38DETT, fact fans) as the standard GT-R but it gets new, bigger turbochargers similar to those used on the race-prepped Nürburgring 24hrs GT-Rs, which boost the grunt to a whopping 600hp. Torque is up to 652Nm, which should be interesting when you push the launch control button.
Underneath, the adaptive dampers, supplied by Bilstein, have been uprated for improved handling and response while Dunlop has developed specific tyres (255/40 R20 at the front, 285/35 R20 at the rear) for the car.
The suspension geometry has been altered slightly to keep the tyres more upright during hard cornering, while there are new, hollowed-out 17.3mm anti-roll bars.
The exterior styling has been updated, slightly, too with new aerodynamic devices, which are designed to both improve high-speed efficiency and which add a significant 100kg of extra downforce (at 300km/h) compared with a standard GT-R.
Inside, there are few changes other than the addition of lots of Alcantara trim, lots of carbon fibre and new carbon-backed Recaro bucket seats.
Anything else?
Here is a tuned, tweaked supercar so impressive, that it's even inspired normally taciturn Renault-Nissan Alliance boss Carlos Ghosn to state that this is the fastest Nissan GT-R ever. "With a 7:08.679 lap time, we can authoritatively say that the Nissan GT-R Nismo holds the volume production car lap record at the Nürburgring Nordschleife, which is the gold standard of high performance achievement."