We’d hoped for an upset when we decided to pit the Mercedes E63 S and Audi RS7 against the Nissan GT-R. Maybe, we thought, a supersaloon will finally have the measure of the Nissan GT-R. If you’ve watched the film already, you’ll know it was a close run thing, but this time round the GT-R managed to hold its head high (you might remember it was a different story when we pitched it against the Audi R8 V10 Plus, McLaren 570S and Porsche 911 Turbo S).
In essence there are a lot of commonalities between these cars. All are 4WD, feature twin turbos and heavy kerbweights. If we’d bothered to work out the stats before we would probably have predicted the right result. Although we think of the Nissan as a weighty coupe, at 1,752kg, it’s still the best part of 200kg lighter than the 1,955kg Mercedes and 1,930kg Audi. So it’s 321bhp/tonne power-to-weight ratio gives it the edge over the Merc (308bhp/tonne) and Audi (309bhp/tonne).
Look at the torque figures and it’s a different story, the German V8s developing far more twist. It’s one of the reasons that at higher speeds both E63 and RS7 were starting to claw back time. Look at the 100-120mph interval: The GT-R did that in 3.99secs, the Audi in 3.35, the Merc in 3.46. Each came out of the quarter mile faster than the Nissan, too. If the race had been half a mile long, I suspect we might have been looking at a different result…
What’s more, I reckon if the Audi had a faster twin clutch gearbox, rather than an eight speed auto, it would have been right back in the mix, probably ahead of the new E63 S, which would have been a turn up for the books. The auto didn’t seem to hold it back when it went off the line either, did it? As you can tell from my reaction in the Merc, I was staggered how quickly the Audi got away. Neither of the other two were exactly laggardly and it was then the GT-R made its move.

Wish I was there!!!!
autosmithcar.com

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