NISMO Z-Tune Skyline

Tear that McLaren poster off your wall. And the Enzo lithograph. And the Porsche calendar. Strip the Speed Racer sheets off your twin, mama's boy. There's a new king in town. BMW likes to think it makes "the ultimate driving machine," but NISMO, even more brazenly, titled its R34 GT-R Z-tune the "ultimate road-going car in the world."

Using the quarter-mile dash as a partial indicator, NISMO might be right. It's probably the quickest. Chat room disciples, you may proceed to whip each other into a foaming, flaming frenzy. Ah, you say, what about the Enzo? Slow. The McLaren F1? Fancy pants Hyundai Excel. Saleen S7R Twin Turbo, quickest car on the planet? Turdlike. If numbers whispered by NISMO staff in the halls of the Tokyo Auto Salon are to be believed, the Z-tune ran 0-400 meters (a little shorter than a quarter mile) in 10.06 seconds during development. That's more than 6/10 of a second faster than any production car ever tested. And this is no drag car.

NISMO is handcrafting 20 Z-tune GT-Rs to mark the 20th anniversary of the birthdate of Nissan's racing arm. Ah, you argue, Nissan hasn't made the GT-R since 2003. That's true. The 20 very lucky and rich people whom we want to say bad things about are actually buying used GT-Rs. NISMO bought used GT-R V-Specs, each with less than 18K miles on the clock, and stripped them to bare shells. The Z-tune is built at the NISMO facility by the same NISMO engineers who sculpt the factory racecars, using the same techniques, the same tools and the same expertise. To build an all-conquering Skyline GT-R is no challenge to NISMO engineers, but building one that is truly a street car presents a challenge: total supremacy, taking into account emissions, crash friendliness, potholes, rain, hot days and traffic.

Upper: Z-tune-specific Sachs coil-overs are three-way adjustable to handle any number of track and street setups. The 782 lb/in. springs, however, are an indicator that supercar handling comes with a supercar ride.
Lower: Working jointly with engineers from Brembo, NISMO created a brake package for the Z-tune with the goal of producing 1.6g of decelerative force on R-compound tires. The front mono-block calipers house six pistons and squeeze two-piece, 14.3-inch rotors. The rear four-piston calipers clamp one-piece 13.9-inch rotors developed with KIRYU. The ABS computer was reprogrammed to take advantage of the greater available braking force.

The NISMO Z2 engine package is a complete strategy rather than an amalgam of trick parts. In typical Japanese fashion, components are understressed and the iron lump should last forever. Despite the fact that this engine makes more than 178 hp per liter, it is not an exoticar grenade. What is essentially the same engine has made this tremendous specific output for 24 hours straight, winning its class at the Nrburgring 24-Hour Endurance Race and coming in fifth overall in 2004. NISMO claims more than 500 hp and 400 lb-ft of torque; judging from the acceleration claim, these numbers are more conservative than Jesse Helms.

Spent fuel lucky enough to have served in the Z-tune's combustion chamber drops down stainless-steel downpipes, through catalytic converters and into twin titanium pipes that converge into a single titanium can. The rear limited-slip differential receives its own heat exchanger seen behind the large oil pump. The electronic wizardry responsible for so much of the GT-R's magic is the ATTESA ET-S all-wheel-drive system. A front mechanical limited-slip differential, ET-S-controlled active torque-sensing center differential and ET-S-controlled active electronic rear differential provide the driving experience and tossability of a rear-wheel-drive car and awesome grip of an all-wheel-drive machine. All three differentials are tweaked to accommodate the extra power and grip.

At $170K each, the Z-tune is a tremendous bargain. In addition to it being a hand-built, obsessively finished and technologically saturated supercar, you get absolute exclusivity and rarified performance-for less than the cost of the cheapest Ferrari. If Nissan's PR flacks wanted a means of reinjecting "GT-R" into our brains to build toward the upcoming launch of the R35 GT-R, they have succeeded.