Jalopnik
UPDATE:Full gallery of shots here.
The quick-to-the-publish-trigger weekly writers at AutoWeek have lifted the skirt on the new Nissan GT-R even higher, releasing their own hot crop of shots of the little barn-stormer ahead of the Tokyo Auto Show next week. Their reason for doing it? Well, it's because Motor Trend already did it — so now it's their turn. To up the embargo-breaking ante, they've gone live with interior shots too. Oooh, those rebels! Full text of their reason below the jump. UPDATE: AutoWeek has asked us to take down their shots of the GT-R. Apparently if they're going to break the embargo and use their shots no one else had then — you know — no one else is allowed to do it.
UPDATE 2: Inside Line has given us the ok to use their gallery below. Aren't they nice?
Nissan's GT-R super coupe is set to be a star at next week's Tokyo motor show. So far, the best we've seen of the it are spy shots of prototype vehicles getting hammered around places such as Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca in Monterey, California, and along the famed Nurburgring race track in Germany.[via AutoWeek]That was then, this is now: Here's the new GT-R in all its un-disguised glory.
The reason you get to see it this week instead of next is simple—the embargo on information was broken by Motor Trend magazine which put the car on its December cover; an image of which was released to promote an award.
Comments
FAIL:
[jalopnik.com]
this is an EPIC DAY
@Mad_Science: Yup. Might as well be the new Focus.
Holy crapweasel! What's that thing in the center console where the stick-shift is supposed to go? Oh my eyes...
bleeding...
sombbbody hleppppppppp
thats a beautiful thing.
whats the tach go up to? I see 6K RPM and enough room to reach 10K.....
Might be fast but it is quite an ugly car.
The old Skyline looked as it did because it was derived from a range of 4-door sedans.
This not being a limitation or the new GT-R, why in the name of hell does it have to look like this? Or- is there a 4-door version on the way?
Or a Nissan Stagea wagon? Oooh, i came over all funny as I wrote that
@POLAR: I'm assuming this is a dual-clutch, flappy-paddle thing. If there's one car that should be using the latest technology, it's this one. Although I would prefer a third pedal.
@teargas: At least this one will probably be fun to drive. Like the WRX, I'm willing to put up with ugly if it shows me a good time (maybe that should be Cadillac's tag line).
@POLAR:
Is that an Easy button behind it?
I've done run out out of toilet paper...
Hm, those are big exhaust tips. That is a sexy engine bay though.
LOL.. no clutch pedal? no thanks..
Oh, you buff books! /'50s TV dad voice
Though the apparently flappy-paddle-only tranny selection is disappointing, it's good news for those of us who have to deal with SoCal traffic. And dig that engine pr0n!
That interior looks like junk. I know Nissan can do better than that. Looks like it was designed in 1992. The outside isn't much better, especially that front end. This could've been sooo much better.
I'm so sorry that this car doesn't come with manual transmission. But it is still a milestone considering it will be offered here in the states. If you don't like it just don't buy it. That's it. Quit whining.
I'm completely down with a dual-clutch, but if this thing has a torque converter as video at the 'Ring and these photo suggest... It's gone from valiant effort to laughingstock.
@IamZardoz: You're a heretic and I hate you. Pych! I totally agree with you. Just kidding. I hate you.
I believed for several years that BMW's were becoming the ugliest vehicles on the planet, but apparently Nissan is racing to the bottom.
Other than the sumptuous-looking rear seats for rapidly carting children to school in comfort, there's nothing appealing about the styling of this 2+2 GT.
fugly!
Interior styling is so disjointed it may as well be a Bristol. As for the exterior, thank god there are a lot of Japanese tuning firms because some needs to figure out how to replace that front end. Nissan has had a ton of great designs in the last few years, but something got lost in the translation from concept to production here.
@cyanics: A turbocharged road motor revving to 10K? Don't think so.
@my favorite car is a motorcycle: I assume you are kidding. The car looks like a rolling sex-sicle double dipped in fornication, with a little bit of evil sprinkled on top.
@mwood10: Two's company, three's a party, Whoohoo!
@SeanKHotay: Push button seat cleaner!
@reefer: Big enough pipes for dragons even!
Yes, motor bits sure are purdy, but eyes still ooze puss and blood ...
That's actually offensively ugly. Maybe it's better in person. And in all black.
Boo! Hiss to AutoWeek.
It'll be interesting to see the response to this by all the Skyline idolizing fan boys. Will it fail in their eyes or live up to the myth?
Anyone here a Skyline fan boy that wants to chip in?
@POLAR: Yeah! Sucking seats!
Was it Nissan who requested AutoWeek to request you take 'em down? Because that would be über-meta.
Ummm...I'm no Skyline fanboy, but I like the styling.
Maybe it's an age thing. I'm 25.
RE: interior. Yeah...it looks a little dated. I'll take a dated interior in a performance car any day. It's clearly missing a pedal, but aside from that it's nice to know all of your purchase dollars are going towards performance and not heated leather butt-massagers.
@TomAnderson: THAT would have been totally über-meta. Alas, it was merely Wes Raynal asking us to take them down.
As with very few previous companions I may request she keep the bra on...
@slostudent: Yep, definite paper bag job
Is that the interior from a '93 Nissan Hardbody pickup?
This thing better move like a hobo after a ham sandwich to make up for it.
@TomAnderson: I would make sweet sweet love to each and every one of those intake runners. That is a nasty-stinkin'-sexy engine bay.
Don't dismiss the lack of a clutch in this car out of habit or a yearning for the good ol' days. I too used to be on the manual transmission bandwagon, for the simple reason that for most driving enthusiasts it was the better choice; better performance, better gas mileage, better control, more fun.
Due to technological advances however the modern auto-manuals can be superior to a traditional clutch and stick arraignment. (Although we don't know about this car yet.) As long as I get to control when the gear change happens, I don't care if it's done with a pedal or with paddles; I'll take the consistently fastest option.
The time is coming when a manual stick transmission will be a 'poser' option, and the real enthusiasts will always opt for the more modern variants.
Autoweek should grow up and let the blogosphere do its thing.
As far as the car, is it 1984? I would swear that interior was in my Nissan SportTruck. Except I had nice brushed stainless trim and a real gearshift lever.
you can use E to the munds embargo broken images instead now. AW gets 2 hours of increased traffic for 100s of hours of PR headaches!
moltenik:You have some valid points, but where is the same connection you achieve when you become part of the process. Depressing the clutch pedal and snicking the shifter into the next gate with the utmost precision, pushing yourself to work the process better and faster, wringing out every ounce of power you can... instead of just flicking a paddle.
I can't wait for the day when I can watch Clarkson floggig this car around the track, while complaining that the center stack looks like it came out of a Ford cargo van...
@moltenik: Agreed. I was a hard headed supporter of the stick, until the day I test drove a VW DSG. That thing is friggin' sweet. I have probably matched it in shift speed OR smoothness once or twice (out of how many thousands of shifts in my lifetime?), but certainly never both at the same time.
The DSG does it perfectly EVERY SINGLE TIME.
@moltenik: Heretic!
@moltenik: The problem is most of the auto sticks out there are a 'poser' option at the moment. As hardcore manual as I am, I could probably live with a well executed SMG or equivalent. But the second a torque converter gets anywhere near your car its no replacement a all.
That's horrific! Why build up all that suspense for this? Even the interior looks awful. Given the choice, I'd rather have a fifth-hand road warrior R32.
Seriously, while the styling of the new STI may be questionable, it looks positively stunning next to this thing.
I don't know what y'all are complaining about. I think that's perfectly attractive for a modern car. If you hadn't noticed, modern cars pretty much suck. We knew it wasn't gonna look as good as the R8, but it's certainly better looking than most of the competition. I do think Nissan did better with this one than they did with the 350Z, which is a total butterface.
I think the performance numbers on this are scaring the lederhosen off of the Germans right now. This thing demolishes the R8, Gallardo and base Murcielago in performance and it's competitive with the LP640. It's also a helluva lot cheaper. It will trounce them all in sales. Plus you can afford to drive it every day.
The only supercar maker not shaking in their boots right now is probably Porsche, who knows that people who want a 911 are always going to want one, and that at will they can crank up the boost and displacement on their flat six and best any of these numbers, particularly if they base a future supercar on the Cayman platform.
I can't wait to see someone enter these in ALMS and watch them keep up with the Corvettes and Astons.
@slostudent: That would get my 1st ever COTD nomination. Well said.
To Autoweek:
Stop calling me.
I already own a subscription.
You've interrupted my eating enough thank you.
P.S.
Fire those new writers you hired. They're atrocious.
If I wanted to hear about PlayStation I'd talk to my little cousin.
@ClutchPlease: The DSG has no torque converter. When moltenik said:
"Due to technological advances however the modern auto-manuals can be superior to a traditional clutch and stick arraignment. (Although we don't know about this car yet.)
Note the "can be superior". What I assume he meant was that we don't know if the GT-R will have an "Autostick/Tiptronic" style slushbox, a slick but ridiculously complex SMG, or a slick and simple (and fabulous) DSG.
@Evander: They haven't really been the same since they lost Satch Carlson. That damned indescretion of his cold-cocked me in a way that hadn't been revisited until that dark day I learned Murilee was a man.
@Evander: Don't you read Dutch Mandel's columns? He's written at least twice that third-party magazine subscription sellers are the ones calling AutoWeek subscribers.
@Hyman Decent: Yeah I've gotten bills from that crap before. It's all lies. I called up Autoweek and they said just throw out the bills. How nice.
I've read Dutch's damn columns, I always do. The fact of the matter is that I now have to put up with these jerks bothering me all the time. That's just a hell of an excuse to allow Dutch to skirt the issue like that.
They're using Autoweek's name and Autoweek allows them to do it.
Autoweek is owned by Crain Publishing so it's not like they don't have the legal money to do what needs to be done in interest of the readers.
Instead, thanks to Autoweek, I get calls every weekend at all hours of the day asking me to renew my subscription.
So thank you AutoWEAK, for not protecting your own readers' rights.
Re slushboxes, tiptronics, DSG's, SMG's et al: I don't prefer a manual on the track because of shifting speed, but rather for the ability to control how smoothly or how roughly the shift occurs. When you hear people say the shifting with one of the above is perfect everytime, that won't work for me. There are plenty of times that a shift needs to be smooth enterin (or exiting) a turn. But there are also those times that you want to steer the car with the shift, a lot, a little, or somewhere in between. Until the DSG can read my mind, it ain't happenin'.
Also--Hey AutoWeak! Suck my M-barg-O!