It was a performance bargain at launch, but the rest of the automotive world has been catching up. You can now get nearly the same track performance at almost half the price.
The R35 will always retain a special place in the automotive world for being an AWD turbo platform with a lot of modification headroom. I’m not too surprised they’re discontinuing it after 15 years though.
Automakers need to take the stance that their cars are to be operated as-is. Claiming it’s not tuneable is important for appearances.
Nissan simply could’ve never acknowledged it. Instead made a point that the GT-R was untuneable, which to my knowledge, is the only time a car company has claimed such a thing.
Heat exchangers don’t modify emissions performance. It’s ECU tuning that they’re worried about.
Toyota has actually gone to extremes to lock down the Supra ECU to prevent tuning. Last I checked, only one company in the world had figured out how to unlock the ECU and you have to ship your ECU around the world to have them unlock it.
This seems more likely to be warranty-related since it's very easy to break mechanical parts by adjusting things like boost pressure and ignition timing.
Modifying modern cars for high performance impacts the emissions systems. In many cases the ECU modifications will actively defeat certain emission control measures to allow the higher power output without check engine lights, for example.
Showing a good faith effort that you've designed the emission compliance systems to be reliable and hard to defeat is part of the process.
There's a similar thing that happens with WiFi access points: You have to show that you've made an effort to prevent the end user from trivially modifying it for higher power output or other changes that would deviate from the way it was compliance tested.
Unfortunately also discontinued.
Base C8 Corvette models are surprisingly close at a fraction of the price. The top tier C8 models are even faster.
Are those 4wd ?
The GT-R appears three times, at 75, 76, and 93. The Mustang Dark Horse, Audi RS3, and Supra are all about $60K.
You have to read it with some context in mind, though. The Audi RS3 only scores that high because they had a factory option to ship it with 60 Treadwear track day tires.
On the more standard performance tires it dropped to around the ~150 mark on the chart.
Fun car, but I wouldn't put it in the same league for track performance. Put those same 60 Treadwear trackday tires on the GT-R, Mustang, or Supra and they'd all jump up the list too.
there's more to a car than price and performance benchmarks.
They're both fantastic cars on the track from all reports. I'm not sure whether you're denigrating the R35 ("just a sports coupe") or the Mustang ("just a muscle car") in that comment.
Also, price and performance benchmarks seem pretty darned important in the worlds these cars play in. We're not talking about minivans or even sport sedans here.
Your concept of a muscle car is probably outdated if you don’t think they play in the same space. The American sports cars are very formidable
> there's more to a car than price and performance benchmarks.
Those of us who actually get on track do care about this stuff. I’d happily drive an ugly tin can from some obscure country if it performed well, was the right price, and was reliable.
The whole muscle car versus imports debate is more for the armchair car enthusiast and people who hang out in parking lots with their hoods up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_N%C3%BCrburgring_Nords...