Nissan’s GT-R is a supercar designed specifically to be enjoyed on the racetrack. The GT-R is ideally suited to those owners who wish to either track their car regularly or give the appearance of a person who does. Our team has had a chance to drive the GT-R on the track numerous times (Thank you, Nissan!), but we wish to make clear our driving impressions are from prior model years. The GT-R has been in production for nearly a decade with minor tweaks and updates. It was off the North American market for a span during the pandemic.

If your aim is to head to a racetrack on a regular basis, the Nissan GT-R is a fantastic choice. If you plan to buy this race car and drive it on public roads and use it for grand touring, it is not. The GT-R is a legit track-capable car. That comes at the expense of public road comfort and real-world usability.

What the GT-R offers is an unusual package. If you are setting up your racing team or garage, own a trailer and tow vehicle, and have a budget for either racing or track club days, the GT-R is an excellent vehicle to consider.

Our opinion is that the Chevrolet Corvette is the perfect comparison car to the Nissan GT-R. Like the GT-R, the Corvette is perfectly happy living out its life as a track-day car. The ‘Vette is also a car that you will grow into as you learn how to drive it. Unlike the GT-R, the Corvette is a legitimate grand touring car as well and even comes as a convertible if you wish. The E-Ray has AWD and electric boost. It is hard to ignore the fact that you could buy a Stingray convertible and a ZO6 for the price of one NISMO GT-R. In terms of wow factor, the Corvette wins this matchup hands-down.

We are big fans of the Nissan Z. The GT-R has much more capability on a racetrack than the Z, but will it be more fun on a track if you only drive it for a few hours per month? We don't think so. On public roads, there is no performance gap between these vehicles. You can’t use the full capabilities of either car anywhere in this country on a public road. You can buy a Nissan Z with a stick shift if you wish, and the sticker price tops out at around $70K. Four Zs or one GT-R NISMO? That’s a hard comparison to get past.

The Porsche 911 and BMW M3 and M4 both share the price range of the GT-R. These are cars that can tear up a racetrack as well as a GT-R, and maybe better. It is hard to ignore these options if one is shopping in the $125K to $225K price range.

Nissan now offers three GT-R trims. The base is called Premium, with a sticker price in the neighborhood of $125,000. The T-Spec adds some goodies that one can find in the top trim, but keeps the cost reasonable at around $145,000. The NISMO GT-R nearly doubles the price to around $225,000. Dealer participation and markups may play a role in your out-the-door pricing. Do not expect these cars to be sitting in a dealer showroom awaiting your arrival on Presidents’ Day. Nissan has only delivered about 10 per month over the past few years in America. In its 2024 press update, Nisan said that the “NISMO and T-spec will be highly exclusive and offered in low volumes.” That means that the couple dozen or so Nissan plans to make could already be sold out to customers who worked with dealers well in advance of the new year’s production plan.

The GT-R does have model years, but the changes between the models have been mostly tweaks for many years. Nissan says that for 2024, the mid-trim T-Spec returns. Also, the huge rear ironing board, excuse us, wing, now offers 10% more surface area than prior iterations. Color changes and some minor body tweaks intended to add more downforce are the rest of what will differentiate a 2024 GT-R from prior builds.

Car Talk’s testing staff was fortunate enough to drive the GT-R more than once on the Monticello Motor Club’s amazing road course. In anticipation of our first drive, we expected the GT-R to behave more or less like a Z, Mustang, or Camaro. We were mistaken - big time. The GT-R was one of the first dedicated race cars in daily driver clothing we experienced. It was more akin to the top-trim Corvettes and cars like the Dodge Vipers we had driven but with a smidge of exotic BMW thrown into the formula.

Acceleration in the GT-R is like being shot out of a cannon. The GT-R offers between 565 and 600 hp, but it is the torque from the twin-turbo V6 that leaves the most lasting impression. Delivered through Nissan’s ATTESA E-TS all-wheel drive and rear-transaxle system, we launched the GT-R hard and experienced a tenth of a second of hesitation followed by what felt like many Gs instantaneously pushing us back in the seat. It feels like being rear-ended in traffic. My helmet bounced off the headrest.

Once underway, the automatic dual-clutch transmission can do everything for you, if you wish. It has multiple settings, including one we would call “win the race.” Personally, I don't care about lap times. In fact, the more time I am on the track, the better, so I used the paddle shifters to tell the transmission what to do. With six gears from which to choose, this isn’t that tricky. However, once off the mark, the GT-R can cover the whole course in third gear if you let it. Our memory of the GT-R was that the transmission was race-optimized, not street-optimized.

The handling left a lasting impression on us. We remember the GT-R being so stiff we could not imagine using it as a touring car in New England. Our skills are limited, so we cannot find the limits of a GT-R in a corner. The GT-R is one of those cars that feels like it will simply hang on forever. It won’t, of course, and in the interests of seeing our children again, all the journos drove it at 9/10ths or less.

There is a driving contrast to the Z that is important. I have found the cornering limits of Z cars on that course, and I felt like I could predict that limit, surpass it, and recover control. By contrast, I felt like if I slid the GT-R, I might be upside down with grass in my mouth.

For the right buyer, the GT-R is ideal. It is a car that you can grow into over a period of time. Perhaps years. As your skills improve and you become more familiar with the car, you will go faster and drive it better.

We also remember the brakes of the GT-R being outstanding. Like all great track cars, we felt no fade, and the brakes, along with the tires and suspension, allowed us to dive deeper and deeper into corners as our time with the car passed and our confidence grew.

Nissan had a team of experts on hand to manage the car's needs during our track day. Unlike the Z, it required a bit of TLC to keep it safe and happy on the track. This is more evidence to us that this is a true race car barely disguised as a road car.

Safety is relative. The GT-R is a high-performance track car, and on a track, we would expect it to be outfitted with a multi-point harness and the driver to be helmeted. No safety agency has tested the Nissan GT-R, nor would we expect them to.

With absolutely no model-specific data to back up this claim, we would say that the Nissan GT-R would not prove to be as reliable as a BMW M3 or Chevrolet Corvette. We could cite Nissan’s higher-than-average score on the J.D. Power 2023 Dependability study, which gauges three-year-old models on a brand-by-brand basis, but the GT-R has nothing in common with a Nissan Rogue or Altima.

The GT-R seems like a race car to us. If you are really planning to head to the track, the one option that caught our eye was the T-Spec’s addition of the brake upgrade to “16.14-inch front/15.35-inch rear carbon ceramic two-piece floating-rotors with diamond-pattern internal ventilation.” You also get the “super-rigid 6-piston front/4-piston rear monoblock calipers with race car-inspired 3-point radial mounting.” You can never have too much brake on a race car.

Nissan covers the GT-R with a three-year/36,000-mile limited warranty and a five-year/60,000-mile powertrain warranty. That sounds great, but once you go to a racetrack, don’t expect Nissan to cover the car if you damage it. We read Nissan’s warranty fine print and found the warranty is voided if you use your GT-R for “Racing and/or competitive driving of any sort whatsoever, and/or use on a track or driving on any airstrip.” Nissan also has some special maintenance requirements for the GT-R, which it covers at no charge for a period of 36 months. You need to possess proof of completion of those particular services to use the warranty. Read more details on the GT-R’s special warranty here.

• Basic: 3 years / 36k miles
• Powertrain: 5 years / 60k miles

Our advice would be not to buy a GT-R used unless you employ a racing mechanic who could check the vehicle over closely.

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