In the now far-too-long-running Porsche-Nissan slap-fight, it appears that much of the conflict is being stirred up by outside forces -- in this case, some company out of Britain nobody has heard of, talking about their predictions of what a car will be worth in the future. We remain skeptical of anyone who claims to be able to see into the future, ever since that fortune teller emphatically assured us that Tracy Johnstone would be only too happy to go to senior prom with us if we mustered up the courage to ask, even insisting that it was a virtual certainty that we'd end up half-naked and 'rocking the boat' in the back of our Biscayne. Suffice to say, that fortune teller was incorrect. We're also not sure how that fortune teller didn't see our black eye in the future, because we certainly predicted it, the moment we found out about Tracy Johnstone's large boyfriend. Unfortunately, while we saw it coming, we still couldn't avoid it.

But we digress. After the onslaught of press releases back and forth over the past few days, we can't exactly say the security forces at the entrance to the PorscheBunker were happy to see us. While we didn't actually get shot at, the threat did seem to be lingering in the air like passed gas in an elevator. It required two bottles of Crown Royal -- and the soul of my photographer, Jerry, accepted by an excessively-friendly guard named Hans... sorry, Jerry -- before they'd even let us in.

Once inside, the news caused a great deal of amusement among representatives in the PorscheBunker. "Residual value for next year?" one chortled, "That's wonderful. Now tell us, whose will be higher 50 years from now? Once you've got that one worked out, come back and let us know. Residual value. That's a good one. Now, that's a percentage of the sticker price, right? So how does that percentage work out when you factor in the $40k worth of dealer markup on the car? Or how about that $160k SpecV hilarity?"

Another spokesman jumped in at that point, to add, "Look, we've been doing this for a long time. There have been a whole lot of flash-in-the-pan 911 killers over the years. But, somehow, we're still here. The GT-R can have its day in the sun. We're just going to keep doing what we do best. Kicking the shit out of 99% of the other cars out there."

Meanwhile, for the first time, we received a call from a member of the Corvette team before we could even try and contact them for comment. The representative was tremendously amused by the news of the GT-R's projected value, and wanted to share his thoughts: "Shit, son, they're talkin' bout Nissans retaining their value? Apparently them sumbitches ain't heard of the Barrett-Jackson auction. You wanna start a pissing match on retained value of all fuckin' things? Tell me, how many fuckin' Nissans you seen up on an auction block, bein' sold for well over a million fuckin' dollars? How many fuckin' 50-year-old Datsuns make yer average man weak in the knees? Shit, boy, you wanna talk fuckin' value, I could sell my dad's Bel Air and buy two fuckin' GT-Rs. Retained fucking value. Gimme a break. Hey, you're gonna take all my swearin' out before you print that, right? I don't wanna sound, you know, un-cultured or nothin'."