New Nissan GT-R Nismo becomes Japan’s fastest sports car

Adolescent video game addicts, strident fanboys and curdled automotive journalists like to complain about the Nissan GT-R. They say it is too Brobdingnagian, too rattly and unrefined, too carousing and inelegant, too focused on trick technological solutions that make driving it impossibly quick far too simple.

They’re right.

It is also monumentally, stupendously, idiotically fun, and a lark from which you’ll never forget soaring. Driving a GT-R is like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. If the barrel were a padded rubber ball the size of the Astrodome. And filled with fuzzy puppies. And laughing gas. And jelly beans.

Now seven years old, and having reached maturity — or what passes for maturity —Nissan has decided to inject a bit more amusement into its behemoth amusement park. Today it unveiled the NISMO GT-R, an upgraded, up-powered iteration of this endorphin IV, with bigger turbos, custom Bilstein suspension components, custom Dunlop tires and an assortment of gilled, straked, and unwrinkled carbon trim bits hovering around the vehicle’s peripheries to create the downforce necessary to prevent it from becoming an unmanageable airborne event.