2009 Nissan GT-R

Okay, we've strapped Japan's latest monster car to a four-wheel Dynojet dynamometer and tortured it into giving up a 430.6-horsepower rating at the wheels. That translates to between 507 and 574 horses at the crank depending on how much power one assumes the drivetrain is siphoning off in the form of mechanical friction (heat) and hydraulic pumping losses. Judging by the heroic acceleration numbers this two-ton Terminator has been credited with by various testers around the globe, it's tempting to peg power near the top end of that range, but a charge up the Angeles Crest Highway and numerous brief blasts along public roads suggest this is no 570-horse beast. Rather, we expect this car's performance will be explained by more than mere horsepower alone, and a day on the runways at El Toro Marine air station should tell us all we need to know.

INITIATING LAUNCH PROCEDURES

The sun is shining, the air is a comfortable 66.9 degrees, humidity is SoCal-low (30 percent), and the car has essentially been sitting still for about two hours when we line up for the first full-on acceleration run. Programming the GT-R's launch control mode requires toggling the transaxle and shock absorbers mode switches up for "R" race modes and the stability-control switch down for off, then engaging the manual shifting mode via the shifter lever. Hold the brake, floor the throttle, revs climb to 4500 rpm -- hold on, they're hovering at 2000. Hmmm. Somewhere in that sequence, the transmission has popped itself back to "normal." To make sure the driver never accidentally engages this mode, one of the switches always has to be reset upon completing the sequence. Ah, there's 4500 rpm. Then simply side-step the brake and...

WE HAVE IGNITION

BAM! The GT-R leaves the line like an arrow from a cross-bow. From the outside, the rear tires spin for a little over a foot, the fronts never visibly slip. The acceleration screen on the center dash confirms the test equipment's assertion that longitudinal acceleration of at least 1.0g persists for almost two seconds. No wonder the forged-aluminum rims have little knurled ridges to keep the tire beads from slipping. Despite the big gs, the car doesn't squat much (Launch Control does NOT loosen rear jounce control to induce squat like many such systems do). Comparatively little thrust is sent to the front wheels, at least according to the center-console display. The rear wheels spin, then 25 percent of the torque gets routed forward (just half the max available), front torque increases to 37 percent briefly during the 1-2 upshift, then trails off to the typical 2 percent. Speaking of the 1-2 shift, the car is accelerating so fast that the tachometer has trouble keeping up, and the driver has to signal for an upshift slightly before the needle kisses the redline to avoid a time-consuming bounce off the rev-limiter.