Over the years, the topic of car handling has fascinated me. That interest became far more than academic when I leased an Australian-delivered R32 Skyline GT-R. The deal was done in the days before the importation of grey market used Japanese cars became widespread - so the lease had a financial impact about three times the cost of buying the same car now. In short, I could only just afford it by scrimping on other things. However, I was prepared to do so because I thought that I was getting amongst the best cars in the world.
I was distraught to find, after I had financially committed myself, that the car was terribly disappointing. Although immensely smooth and tractable, the standard RB26DETT twin turbo six was no faster than my mildly modified Liberty RS - even worse, the GT-R was an absolute handful around corners. Any large cornering throttle application in first or second gear would cause the rear to step out - in most driving conditions, the GT-R is actually a rear wheel drive car. When the rears are slipping, the fronts are supposed to be automatically fed some torque, in turn pulling the car straight. However, in my car, I was so sideways before this started to happen that it was simply ridiculous.
I had the car exhaustively checked for mechanical defects (in terms of distance travelled, the car was nearly brand new), talked to many experts about the car (including those who had raced GT-R's), and then finally came to the reluctant conclusion that my car was handling just the way Nissan engineers had wanted it to handle. This was untenable, and so I developed a torque split controller that made the front wheels far more active in transferring torque while the car while cornering. (You can see the full story on this system at "Godzilla Tamed" ).
With an adjustable cornering torque split able to be dialled-up with a knob on the dash (0 = standard; 10 = lots and lots of front drive), I was very happy with the car. I usually left the knob set to '5'; that position gave a touch of power-oversteer on corner exits - but nothing like the lurid tail slides of my standard car.
I wrote about all of this and was as a result subjected to a lot of criticism by those who believed the car to be so good that any deficiencies were in the driver, not the GT-R. However, all of my friends who travelled in the car knew full well how oversteery it had originally been - although even many of them had difficulties in reconciling the driving reality with the adulation that surrounds the Skyline.
Time passed; I ended the Nissan's five year lease after two years, and moved onto my current car - a constant four wheel drive turbo Audi S4. In that whole time, I had never driven another R32 GT-R. No one had ever offered me one to drive, and I had never pursued the matter anyway. But I always had a niggling doubt in the back of my mind that perhaps my GT-R had had something a little wrong with it - despite the fact that every mechanical and electronic inspection (including substituting the four wheel drive computer with another, etc, etc) could find nothing different from factory specs.
So when Japanese importer Bob Dunn recently lent AutoSpeed not only an R32 GT-R but also an R33 GT-R, I was particularly interested. Would this second R32 GT-R be the stunning handler that people had always claimed these cars to be? Would this car show that in fact my GT-R had been atypical of the breed?
A day behind the wheel - including dozens of corners taken at speed for photography and exploration - gave me the answers. My car had been pretty typical - the R32 GT-R is set up to oversteer almost instantly a lot of power is applied in lower gears while negotiating a corner. What the second GT-R did show, however, is the speed with which the torque is then fed to the front wheels does vary a little from car to car. The latter car - a V-Spec wearing larger tyres - had the front wheels working slightly earlier than in my car. In fact, Bob's GT-R handled as my car had done with my torque split control knob set to 2, or perhaps 3.
So am I persuaded? Do I believe that in general my comments have been wrong? Do I think that the R32 GT-R is actually the wonderful handler some would have you believe? The answer to that is: no, I still don't.
And I'd like to tell you why.
One of the aspects that used to unbearably frustrate me when I talked to people about my GT-R's handling woes was that they would often say something like, "Well, you need to understand that there's a lot of power there. It's an incredibly quick car." This annoyed the hell out of me because my previous car - the tweaked Subaru Liberty RS - had just the same performance. But the Liberty had one huge difference to the GT-R - it had all four wheels driving, not two (plus an occasional extra two). As a result, it was far better than my standard GT-R around corners up to about 100 km/h. (The high speed handling of my GT-R I never had any complaints with.)
Bob's R32 GT-R had a good exhaust on it and so was quick - with a 3000 rpm dump, it sprinted to 100 in about 5.7 seconds. (Sure, it'd be faster with a higher rpm launch, but that's not the point here.) It also did a rolling 60-90 in a very fast 1.7 seconds. I mention these times because the constant four wheel drive Subaru Impeza WRX STi that I drove just the week before had identical on-road performance to this GT-R. It was as quick - but its handling was very different indeed.
In the R32 GT-R (either mine or Bob's!) the merest twitch of your foot in first gear will cause wheelspin of the rears. You'll feel the backs slip, then almost straight away you'll see the torque split gauge on the dash flicker and the front wheels start to work, quelling the slippage. So, for example, you exit the greasy forecourt of a petrol station and give it a few berries. The back wheels slip (if you've turned the steering wheel, that slippage will be sideways), the standard torque split control computer sends some power to the front wheels, and you're on your way.
I'm sure that many people get pretty excited by this. In fact, they probably turn to their passenger and make some comment about the immense power that the car has available - just a movement of the foot and it's sideways! But a constant four wheel drive car (like that STi) with just the same performance, and driven just as hard out of the same service station, would have simply moved off down the road. No drama, no action, no slippage - just gripping and going.
But does the slip-then-grip approach of the GT-R matter? It still grips in the end, after all. It doesn't matter much in that example, but here's a more important one. When I was driving Bob's R32, I exited a corner at full throttle in second gear at about 80 km/h. The back powered sideways, but I kept the throttle nailed and steered to correct the tailslide. With a moderate dollop of opposite lock dialled in, the front wheels came into action, torquing their way forwards. The car exited fast and controlled, the slide maintained for perhaps 20 metres. But in just the same corner, and with just the same exit acceleration, the STi would have been utterly unfussed, requiring no steering correction at all. It would simply have been getting the power down and rocketing out of the corner. (As would my 1600kg turbo 4WD Audi.)
So, two equally appropriate ways to the same end? No, I don't think so. These are road cars, being driven on public roads. What happens, for example, if an emergency braking manoeuvre is required in the hard-cornering GT-R? A child runs out, a branch drops from a tree, a car suddenly appears where it has no right to be? The part-time four wheel drive GT-R will be already sliding, having quite early overcome the traction of its rear tyres. Brake hard and you'll spin off the road. The constant four wheel drive STi will be stable, in shape, parallel with the long axis of the road. In an emergency it will brake to a halt with relatively little drama.
You can replace the need for sudden braking with a corner that unexpectedly tightens. Or with oil on the road. If the unexpected occurs, look out!
In the R32 you need to be on top of it the whole time. When driving hard you need to be alert - whoops, there she goes! - and expectant of powerslides that vary, in both severity and length, on apparently random whims of the control system. There is little linear progression, none of the feeling that the car is seamlessly working at both ends to your maximum benefit. In fact, during some of the cornering photography (second gear, about 60-70 km/h) the fronts pulled the car out of the oversteer slide in one huge jerk of torque, while at other times the front-end power came on much more smoothly.
The R32 GT-R is about extravagant, showy driving. Tossing it in and power oversteering out. Or, entering very fast and tiptoeing out. The rear roll stiffness is huge; oversteer under power occurs so early that it's astonishing. (This is a car that oversteers far more readily than an IRS V8 5.7 Commodore, for example.) That the GT-R's power oversteer is then counteracted by the front wheels being sent into action (to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the individual car) is to me not particularly meritorious. Maybe Nissan agree with me, because the (next model) R33 GT-R that we also borrowed from Bob behaved utterly differently.
The R33 GT-R always had at least a little torque going through the front wheels. When you entered a slow corner (understeering in a bit if pushing hard) it got the power down, went neutral, then progressed into power oversteer. In the end a similar amount of opposite lock may have been needed to the R32, but the way in which it could be applied was delightful. There was none of the sudden there-goes-the-back-end characteristic of the R32; the change in handling stance was progressive, fluid, a continuum from understeer (or neutral) to oversteer. The R33 was proactive, rather than reactive - it didn't wait until slides were happening and then try to do something about them. The R33 may still have the same basic 2+2 four wheel drive mechanicals, but the electronics are so much smarter that the handling is like chalk and cheese. In fact, I thought that the R33 probably was just a little better than my old R32 with the torque split controller in it - in these dry conditions, it seemed a shade more progressive. (In the wet? - who knows!)
But what about a comparison of the part-time (but with intelligent electronics) four wheel drive of the R33 GT-R, with the permanent four wheel drive of the STi?
Which is better?
That's a much harder call, and one I could make only after the driving the R33 GT-R a lot longer. Under full power is it better to have the gradual progress into oversteer of the R33 GT-R, or the gradual progress into understeer of the WRX STi? I can think of conditions where I'd like one, and conditions where I'd like the other.
But I know one thing for sure - I prefer either approach to that taken by the R32 GT-R.....
