Nissan GT-R R35 | The End Complete

the 2020

nissan

gtr r35 in this video you can expect some things in extreme detail, the history and history of this car, including the engineering we have worked with

nissan

usa, nissan japan and ams performance to give you everything you probably want to know. about this so get ready when the r35 was launched in japan in 2007 the world was a very different place and nissan was a very different company. They were emerging from a serious crisis and with positive cash flow. The Nissan GTR was a rebirth for the company. Setting new standards and driving new levels of performance we hadn't seen before in 2009, North America got its first look at this car.

Now the GTR has a long lineage in Japan, in North America not so much, in fact most of our introduction. It was from a game called Gran Turismo created by Polyfoni or Digital Polyphony at the time its creator had a relationship with some of the engineers and people within Nissan which led to the development of the infotainment screen or the gauges they placed on the infotainment and nissan pioneered onboard telemetry for the average person what you have is customizable gauges if you want oil temperature or transmission temperature you can have this here and this was really mind blowing at the time and this is the Nissan's fundamental idea: make all of this performance and technology accessible to the average person now that the accessibility philosophy is carried over to the cabin design, the previous gtrs had a very simple approach, they didn't try to surprise you with exotic materials, it was just functional , pure sports car feeling now in 2017.

They made some important revisions in the materials, in the way the center console is laid out and in the technology in general, which aligns it more with the current Nissan line, but the important thing Here is that you can have virtually any body type and fit in these seats. great front space in the cabin with minimal sacrifice adjustability is good the rear seats are good for small children or things like that the trunk makes it usable seven days a week and not one day a week like many super cars , so again we're trying to find this balance between price, choice of materials and usability, but I think it's a good time to get into the workshop and really talk about the history and the engineering behind this nissan gtr r35 car and, like the most cool cars like this, there is a story, so in the late 90's nissan was almost bankrupt and their new executive got them out of the financial mess they were in, then he gave the green light to this project and in 2001 The first concept car came out and they called it TM or trendsetter because they believed in the core philosophy behind this car.

It would catch on with other car manufacturers and there were two main objectives behind this product. The first: drive this or be able to drive it at 300 kilometers per hour or almost 200 miles per hour and have a conversation with your passenger. The second philosophy or goal with this car is that you need to be able to dominate the race track, however, they wanted it to be accessible and Tamara-san, who Nissan internally calls Mr GTR, paints a pretty interesting picture of what he believes. It's a sports car like this. I should be sorry to say your opinion, I don't think so because the complex meaning is if you drive, it's a complex feeling because driving is difficult, Excel breaks, it's difficult, complex, it means complex, but some system is complex and if you don't do it, do you know him. look above to see if there is someone on the court that you can't see above because it's complex, an Olympic player or a human runs from 0 to 100 meters maybe 100 years ago 10.2 seconds a hundred years later, now how much does it cost to run 200 meters for a human to reach them five seconds six seconds Yes, you are right nine point five eight by Usain Bolt only in a second or maybe less, this was a hundred years ago of the differentiation of human physical things, but the car is different, you know, 100 miles or even a quarter mile, drug race, all pretty top speed. different power quite different but human is almost the same how can you connect to this human connection connection capacity so first step abs and brake system lock sorry sir customer your brake is very strong but your brake is bad when you swung please release up for a brake pedal people I can't do that, people couldn't do that, can you protect him in a dangerous area?

We have to control above to break the oil pressure directly by a complex electronic system, okay, so vdc or attraction control, all the system level, maybe 0.1 is a boring car I don't want. Driving around in this boring car, yeah, that's right, on track day, I want to drive alone, but once again, you know, far from knowing, 500 miles from this, I'm not sure, uh, dry lagoon for you, dry lagoon for you, right? If you want to drive a boring Interstate 5 by yourself, maybe a car, please drive yourself or some kind of support at level three, four, five, something like that, okay, that's why this complex system, sorry to come back to history, the complex someday is not. complex, but the first starting point maybe seems like a complex change of opinion for the client's point of view, not as a geek journalist, you better understand the attitude of the real client, that is my approach stance as explained .

The nissan the gtr pampers you, it holds you in its arms when you reach that limit, it takes you back to a safe place and it doesn't matter what driving mode you are in between the all-wheel drive system, the safety systems and its overall design of how it reduces the power, you always feel like the car is there to protect you and this was one of the most controversial things when it came out, it was the first car that was more of a driving simulator than a driver's car. and this was by design, I wasn't trying to be so nervous on the edge, you know, I was always behind and chasing the car and keeping it under control, I was there to keep you under control while you kept delivering all that madness.

The high-performance power that a supercar would have. The excitement of this vehicle came from the fact that you, as a mortal man or woman who didn't necessarily have the driving aptitude of a racing driver, could reach the next level of performance that you couldn't. jump on one of the competitors and as you can clearly see with modern cars here in 2020 2021, this philosophy carried over to brands like bmw porsche chevrolet, this core concept of technology helping you and making you faster while keeping you safe It has moved on and really become the trend in the automotive industry, however, as Mark said, it was controversial when it first appeared and remains controversial.

If you are someone who loves to drive, there will always be an ongoing debate with sports cars, at what point should you take driver? control where the car does more than the driver there are two other core philosophies behind this product, the pursuit of perfection is the first this car has been around in 13 years and they didn't really have an end goal or an end goal when they made it. When designing this car they wanted to get as close to perfection as humanly possible and since then in every model year from 2007 to 2020 they made changes and the other philosophy is accessibility to performance in every part of this car as far as to suspension technology.

The bodywork philosophy was to make this car usable every day for a normal person, so the mass of this car was very, very heavy and was a point of contention when it first came out, however, Mizuno- San, the chief engineer, believed that dough was important to make. This thing drives right and has the traction it needed and with the traction needed came a new design principle for architecture. This was the first Nissan car ever designed with a dual-clutch transaxle, meaning the gearbox and transmission are right behind the driver. the rear differential and they did it for weight distribution.

He believed that weight on the right parts of this vehicle in the right corners helped drive this car into the ground and you can't really argue with the reality of this, this thing puts power down tremendously well. Yes, and the weight is relative to what you are trying to achieve. If you're trying to achieve speed, you overcome weight with power. Yes, and that's the modern way of doing things. Reducing weight or adding lightness costs money and when this came out of a From the perspective of history, this was between 70 and 80 thousand dollars and with inflation you are talking about a hundred thousand dollars.

The thing is, you can't do everything on a development budget when you're pricing, that's one part of it. The car was built to a certain price to ensure that maybe someone, the average man, could afford this as an aspirational car, so let's talk about it knowing that they couldn't go crazy and exotic here nor did they really want to, So this. It was never actually designed as a supercar. Tomorrow's son calls this a supercar and with that the manufacturing process reflects that, so the core parts of this vehicle, the transmission, really the transmission, the heart of this car, are handmade with Takumi.

What the Takumi are is an overused phrase. and is often used in a marketing term, but they are highly skilled Japanese craftsmen who have developed or dedicated their lives to their craft, so the engine that has each takumi's name stamped on it is built in the Yokohama facility. There are four takumi currently working for Nissan. at the Yokohama facility and each engine is built by a single man over a period of many hours, the gearbox is also built by Takumi at the Aichi facility, so the dual clutch that was jointly developed with Borg Warner is build in a separate facility and Just like the engine sits after completion in an essentially engine or transmission mount, part of the charm of this is that you get that half and half, you get the hand-built part of the things that matter with the gtr and then everything.

Otherwise it is sent to a traditional assembly line with other normal cars, if there are a lot of orders for the GTR they can simply build more. This is built at the Tochigi plant, which is where all other premium Nissan Infiniti products are already manufactured. One thing to mention is the very fast body structure, so the body in white is basically largely steel. However, when they paint this car, unlike the other vehicles at the Tochigi plant, they take it off the line to be hand polished, however, wait. The panels on this car, apart from the rear quarters, are aluminum, talking about the hood fenders and some other components, so the next part is the suspension technology, so before we get into the nuts and bolts, I'll quickly guide you through the driving modes. and that's really one of the reasons why this car is so impressive by today's standards.

You have three different types of drive modes, you have your traction modes, so your stability control modes you have r, which is normal race and everything off, esc off, so when it's in normal mode, it won't send any torque to the front of the car and has maximum stability control intervention when you put it in R mode, it allows you greater slip which they detect through yaw sensors, G sensors and steering angle sensors. It also sends more power or torque to the front differential of this car to help straighten the vehicle, so when you drive this and put it in the middle of the corner, the rear end will come out and then after about 0.15 of a second , they will send power to the front of the car to straighten the vehicle, that delay is necessary for this car to feel propelled backwards and that is one of the main things about the all-wheel drive system and then of course you can turn it all off and try to drift car like chris harris, you also have three drivetrain modes, you have r normal and save, save as economy mode, normal as normal, and r open the rear exhaust flaps and try to get this gearbox to downshift as quickly as possible and add a little. more brutality or ferocity to the gearbox itself and then of course you have your three suspension modes, normal comfort and r, so at the front you have a double wishbone suspension with a steel front subframe and some arms aluminum control and its bilstein damtronic nismo shock absorbers.

You get carbon ceramic but in the normal variants of this car you get steel as you move to the rear, you get a multi-link rear suspension with a torque vectoring rear differential that can send torque to either wheel individually depending on how it is driven. move all four wheels. The powertrain receives information from all of the car's various sensors. The rear is also largely made of steel.The bottom is covered with panels. Now this is part of the aerodynamic discussion topic, so let's get into that, so this car was at least initially designed to look. Like a Gundam, however, it may look chunky due to its unique styling, but its goal was to reduce its drag coefficient when this car first appeared as one of the most aero-efficient vehicles on the market.

I think it's like a .26 drag coefficient and then In 2017, they did a pretty substantial update to the front and rear fascias, so again I think they increased their aerodynamic efficiency by about five percent and also made other changes to this car, which I'm about to talk about again about its suspension. mentioned above evolved each model year and there is a philosophy behind it that is the scale of performance to maturity that the sound of tomorrow showed us, so when you look at this on your x axis you have the performance that makes it feel like a supercar and the maturity side.

It's their y axis and this whole product belief for the normal gtr, not the nismo, is to move it up right in the middle to make it more mature, more comfortable, a better gt car and I'm sure some of that has to do . the fact that he is getting older, he has been working on this project for almost 20 years, the other part is also that he wants to make it faster and the suspension changes also reflect the changes in tire technology, so yes, you have wheels knurled ones that are built. by lightning but in 13 years the tires have become a lot stickier so they had to make the necessary suspension changes to reflect the spring rates and damper valving in 2020 with a new tire compound, also had changes in their transmission programming and also had changes to the brake programming or brake boost and the overall feel of the brake pedal and what they wanted to do was make the steel brake system here feel similar to modern brake systems carbon composites that were outside of high-end sports cars, so it's a full body approach to improving all of these subsystems and goes back to the original philosophy of pursuing perfection through incremental improvements with the reserved budget they have for R&D and that's the other thing to mention: they didn't necessarily have the resources to Nissan will continue to do massive redesigns on the car, so something that I think is a bit controversial is the gearbox.

They continually made changes. The gearbox came to your Tesla all-wheel drive system, so I'll give you a quick overview. how the gearbox and all-wheel drive system works before talking about the engine, at the rear you have a dual clutch gearbox with a rear differential that allows torque vectoring, then you have two drive shafts, you have a driveshaft that comes from the engine at the front of the vehicle that sends power to the rear differential and gearbox and then you have a separate driveshaft that sends power to the front differential that comes out of the rear of the car, as I mentioned earlier , when the car detects a slip after 0.15 of a second it sends power to the front of the vehicle, so it seems very very interesting, but the trans logic changed every year when this car first came out and we are about to Talk to Martin at ams performance, we'll talk more about this, but the gearboxes were known to basically explode due to abuse, so they had to make software changes and some slight mechanical changes to the gearbox to make it evolve and make that it felt better to survive the abuse, everything I expected from the continuous engineering changes and I think it's a good time to talk about the mechanical changes.

The biggest update was in 2017. So tomorrow Sun called it one of the biggest changes or such a big change in the R35 as there was a jump in engineering from the R32 to the r33 so they changed the crash structure front of the car, they essentially opted for a stiffer setup. They received that feedback from their race drivers who believed the front suspension should be stiffer, allowing for better front-end feel than a bear again. and the other thing they added was more structural adhesives so there are things about increasing the stiffness and I think they increase the overall stiffness of the front and rear and it may seem like a little bit but again it's all these little adjustment points I think it's like five to ten percent between the front and the rear, so there are massive changes to the car overall, it just doesn't feel like it in particular, but it makes a big difference in drivability and a lot. that has to do with the software tuning and some of the engine tuning that we're going to talk about now, Jack, so I'm not going to go into the engine tuning too much because martin will walk you through this, but in 2020 they changed the turbochargers and the trans logic, so they allowed the transmission to go down harder but go up more smoothly and with that and their changes to its stability control logic, they allowed it to enter and exit a corner faster, allowing the car to turn. with the gearbox and also prevent the car from rolling over mid-drive. -corner, so now you can shift mid-corner and it won't break traction like you would say on a 458 gearbox where it's like bang bang bang bang bang.

They also updated the turbocharger technology for this car, decreased the number of vanes and decreased the internal mass of the turbos to allow them to spin faster and that translates to the car being faster, not just faster in a straight line, but when you compare the 2020 to the 2017 after about a quarter mile this car will pull basically a car length and a half ahead of the 2017 model just with the upgraded turbochargers so again incremental improvements exactly so with that let's get to it ams and explain to you what this is like, tune in and live it, we have done it. to ams performance in west chicago illinois and we have this charming gentleman here.

Hello, I'm martin from ams performance and we have been working on nissan gtrs since 2009, maintaining them, building them and racing them, that's a long time and when we usually talk about new cars like this we don't have the perspective of history, we don't know the evolution of them or even how they have held up in terms of reliability, so we have that image here, we have a new product that is also extremely old at the same time, so take me through your past with this and move us to the present, okay , so this is the uh vr38dt uh twin turbo v6 uh port injection uh motor um, you know, some of the basics are that it's a sand cast aluminum. block, same with sand cast aluminum heads, has variable cam timing on the intake side and is actually very powerful, a very capable original engine that has had minor issues over the years and not many changes, very few changes, actually internally the engine, just turbos that extend externally and the intakes and things like that, the transmission, I guess the rest of the driveline, uh, that's probably been a little more problematic than the engine, especially the earlier their cars were, a lot of that had to do with, um, I would say the components themselves, but the launch strategy.

So when this came out, we had a really aggressive launch, we were talking about a 4000 rpm clutch drop, you know, and spinning all four tires, and you know, some people do it over and over and eventually break things like that. way, so they revised their release. control strategies over the years and they became aggressively on the conservative side after that and then it wasn't fun to launch the car and they kind of backed off, you know, and made some changes over the years and it's become quite reliable so far. as that goes and we iron out those bugs for the most part, you know, we built a lot of track cars, a lot of race cars, um, we've pushed, you know, not in this obviously original form, but with over 3000 horsepower of strength, this platform in endurance racing, but the The original engine is very capable, in any case, the weak point of the original components is the connecting rods above a certain level of torque that is still under pressure.

You can bend the cranks, in fact you can take the thing quite far. We will make connecting rods and pistons the factory pistons are cast we make connecting rods and pistons and we will make 12 1300 horsepower yeah I'm thankful they made this car because when it came out I mean it was way ahead and above everything else and already you know the threshold of everything else was so high it wasn't like oh it's just a little bit better it was actually really good and it's still good it took them a long time to recoup the money and the investment so you know um you know of course it's been available. for so long, a lot of the new things that are coming out have caught up, that's the biggest difference, you know, they've obviously made changes, much needed improvements like the interior and 17, you know the look of the car, but a lot of of cars have caught up to it and it says a lot about how above and beyond everything else was when it first came out and I'm looking forward to seeing what they do next jack gtr r35 no launch control but regular launch we have some snow tires on their 36 degree angle let's see how it goes Jesus Christ I have no doubt what I perceived this car to be and it was on the first generation car and now we fast forward.

This time I'm really surprised at how remarkably fast it is and I'm not even exaggerating, this thing is still just as capable and impressive in terms of straight line speed as it was when it came out, if not even more so. now, even though this all-wheel drive system is essentially like 15 years old, the way it puts down power is, I mean, it's not over the top, over the top at all, it's incredible, we talked about this briefly, more than briefly, the mentality behind how they wanted this to feel like As a driver, it's extremely difficult to get my brain out of all the technical parts now, but I'm going to try to explain it when you get behind the wheel of this if you don't have a great aptitude for driving or don't have a You have a lot of experience behind the wheel and you want to know what it's like to drive a missile.

This is the best type of car you can get into because it combines like eliminating the fear factor, like you're driving a video game, like a simulator. go through a corner, you could hit an old wall, keep driving, I have the same feeling driving this, that no matter what I do, some part of the all-wheel drive system or some part of the transmission or the electronic adjustment will always get the power. that I'm putting my right foot on, I could just mash it, turn the wheel in any direction and it just stays where you expect, you can drive this thing like a total mid-corner, give it full throttle and the car will take a step. and then you feel like the car is sending power to the front and it solves the slide even though it feels pushed backwards but the way this gives confidence to the driver is mind blowing and when you're about to show me launch control like Well, hold down the brake, you're in manual mode, just hit the floor, wow, wow, wow, dude, so I know you know we've talked to Nissan and they call it a super sports car and that's a very Japanese name for something like this and I understand why what because in many ways it doesn't feel like a supercar inside and out, it's very suitable for the person who doesn't want all the flash of a supercar, but when you get down to the straight line performance and not I don't want to mention other brands, but the capability This thing of putting all that power into winter tires in any type of condition is what makes freezing conditions freezing conditions and I hate being here in these conditions because you can't.

I really explore traction and handling and all that, but the fact that we can be in the middle of winter going through snow, surfaces like slick with salt and having to be able to use everything this car has is what makes it so special to me. and when you look at some of its core driving characteristics, suspension tuning, trans tuning and steering, it's a very livable package, it's got really good ride control for a car like this, yeah, and they've smoothed it out too and we talked about that , but I think now you know we're driving in comfort mode and it's a little too firm, but I think again with this power you need body control with all the pitch and yaw and all the movements you still need body control to drive. all the power the braking like the dive you couldn't have this like you couldn't have it like a boat or a luxury car and still handle all the weight so I think they did a good job with the suspension and then you know .

We have the transmission and this is kind of a sticking point with this car, Pete, and I've read about it a lot. The transmission is not good, it's outdated, I don't know what the hell the thing is talking aboutpeople about this. I mean, I don't know what you expect, I mean, we talk about revisions every year, they updated the logic of this gearbox and now it's at the point where upshifts don't upset the car mid-corner, it's very similar. a pdk in that sense, you can be in a curve of increasing or decreasing radius, give it a shift mid-corner and it won't let go of the rear, however the downshifts when you are entering a corner are very fierce I think that it's an ignition has some advantage, but I mean it gives you an element of excitement and you know, when you take away the manual transmission and you have an automatic, we've been in cars where they've refined every advantage of the transmission. the speed setting change impacts to the point where it's like why do you care?

It's so boring and I feel like there's enough edge to this to make it fun, you feel like, um, it's fast enough to drive on the street and then when you put it like save or r or normal I feel like there's just a subtle gradation of how it goes up from soft to fast and harder and all of this matches the character of what this car is trying to do, I think about it again since the date of this. The start and design of the car to where it is now is

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ly unchanged if you don't compare the transmission handling with an engine that is exactly what you want from a turbocharged v6, it revs and makes power up to 7000.

This thing is constantly making power and it's also a power generating car because you know there's some delay to start like any turbocharged car of this type, but once it starts it doesn't seem to drop off after 100 miles per hour. hour and part of that, as we discussed, is having the aerodynamics to ensure that you can continually reach high speeds. It's just a

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package for someone who wants an everyday car that you can drive like a complete madman, that's totally safe and that you can go. Totally like you're in a supercar and I think again that's what sets it apart from a lot of the more esoteric, purpose-built one-trick pony sports cars, but all I'll say is that it took me by surprise.

It's the steering to me like it's the weakest point, I don't know what you know, like we were kidding when we were trying to tilt this thing sideways just to be idiots and I don't know what's going on, I feel like I'm literally driving a simulator steering wheel and I know we have power steering. I know I have all these things but I don't know what's going on, I mean I feel like the body is moving but essentially my arms are like digitally up, like the part of my brain is trying to match what's going on around me, but I don't feel anything and the steering isn't particularly natural either, it feels very driven, it has this really unnaturally fast off center feeling, I think also the part that makes it amazing is also the part that makes it not for everyone at all and I think Jack, we've covered a lot of ground on this, let's get to the final thoughts and close this out nicely, final thoughts on the nissan gtr.

Many thanks to wendy dan jonathan and tamara sun for helping us on the nissan. Build this project and tell the story also thanks to ams performance, who has seen the evolution of this car and supported it long after the car left the dealership. Now let's talk about the pros and cons. The gtr is a product of the generation it was designed and even though they made these incremental improvements it still looks a lot like a car from the 2000s which is a big plus because there is nothing left in terms of sports cars Japanese that feel like that, apart from maybe like the sti that feels old in certain ways, but that's part of its charm, that's why people love it, they also love the fact that you can wear it all days, it has four-wheel drive or all-wheel drive and, like this video, we filmed it at the wrong time in the dead half. of the winter with snow tires, so we don't really have a good idea of ​​everything it can do, but we do have an idea of ​​what the practicality and real-world use is when you're not alone on a super sunny day at 70 degrees. in California you can use it this year and the trunk is incredible, it also handles great all the changes to the suspension, all the things they have done to evolve the platform are also because its original creators understood that not everyone is 16 forever or 20 forever so that that maturity that has been built in is very appreciated in terms of that super car feeling, that sports car feeling that you can really enjoy and put people in it and not feel like you're in a crazy car , so That's also its shortcoming because they designed it so that everyone's car loses some of the specialness that some of the more modern sports cars get;

It doesn't have that strident nature like the GT500 or this one. It doesn't have the high-end refinement or high-tech feel like the C8, so if you love this car, you know it's expensive now, it's a lot more expensive than it used to be, but if you're a collector and you want stuff from the way I would do it or on the used market, I mean, it's crazy what you can do with this car and I think it's been a real pleasure to drive it and experience it, and if you're someone who's watching these videos, I'm going to tell you this directly please subscribe because there is absolutely no return on investment for us to make videos like this we don't get paid and I feel like we should get paid to make some of these types of videos but at least please subscribe so we can keep making projects like this.

Thanks for watching. See you next time. What does gtr mean to you? Life work. Simple answer for you.