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After reading about the GT-R, I've decided to stick to my 'Vette. As said above, I can go to a regular GM dealer to get all my scheduled maintenance at a very reasonable price versus 3X the cost of maintenance for a GT-R.
I really think I'm going to look for a Z06, I think this may be exactly what the doctor prescribed. Any opinions on certain years better than others? Any certain options I need to look for? I don't want a bunch of technological junk weighing down the car either.
The 2012 GTR fixed a lot of the issues with the first gen model, but you won't be buying one for $50k. With that said, there is nothing wrong with the first gen until we are talking about using the car as it was intended. I think the first gen can be a great daily driver "supercar" arguably better than even the Vette.
The difference is that the Vette will take anything you throw at it and you have a solid powertrain warranty and the ability to have it serviced at any dealership. GM is also not in the habit of denying warranty claims for people who drive their Vette's as intended. The same can't be said for the GTR.
I know of two GTR owners from NJ who ended up with denied and cancelled warranties. One for using the launch control feature and breaking the transmission. The other for tracking the car where the computer had recorded "sustained high RPM driving consistent with racing". Nissan went back to the drawing board on the 2012 model and made a lot of changes so that owners could use the car as intended. No word yet on whether or not actual racing could still void the warranty.
That is really my only gripe with the GTR and one shared by countless owners whose stories are posted all over forums. Basically, they loudly boasted about the performance the car was capable of, then took the ability of the owners away to replicate that performance without voiding the warranty. Outside of that, the biggest PITA is finding a GTR certified Nissan dealer as not all of them are equipped to work on the car.
These are fair criticisms. Nissan made adjustments to the 1st gen car after release to ease the stress on the transmission during hard launches.
The funny thing about this is that almost no one takes their supercar to a drag strip. And who really does stoplight drag racing? Mostly kids. For the person who simply enjoys the rush of acceleration in street driving, the 1st gen GTR is probably perfectly reliable and won't break the tranny.
What is undeniable is just how fast the GTR is, both in a straight line and on the track. It even seems faster than it should be considering its weight (~3800 lbs). The hp/wt for both the Z06 and ZR1 is better, yet both cars are slower than the GTR.
There are only a handful of very expensive cars quicker to 60 or in the 1/4 mile than the 2012 GTR.
My brother just bought one of these. It list for 100,000.00 when new. It is a 2003 model convertible with 32,000 one owner miles and mint condition. It has a 8 cylinder don't know what size and its an automatic and fast. He paid 26,000.00 for it and drives it only during warm days and is covered in his garage rest of time.
If you want something "different" in your price range, consider a Lotus Esprit V8. (Heck, even the 4-cylinders from the early 90s on moved along quite nicely.) You can get a good, low-mileage version for well under 50 grand. Unfortunately, while they have a Corvette buy-in price, you have to pay Ferrari-like dues to keep one running.
These are fair criticisms. Nissan made adjustments to the 1st gen car after release to ease the stress on the transmission during hard launches.
The funny thing about this is that almost no one takes their supercar to a drag strip. And who really does stoplight drag racing? Mostly kids. For the person who simply enjoys the rush of acceleration in street driving, the 1st gen GTR is probably perfectly reliable and won't break the tranny.
What is undeniable is just how fast the GTR is, both in a straight line and on the track. It even seems faster than it should be considering its weight (~3800 lbs). The hp/wt for both the Z06 and ZR1 is better, yet both cars are slower than the GTR.
There are only a handful of very expensive cars quicker to 60 or in the 1/4 mile than the 2012 GTR.
I think most of my criticism of the car stems from the performance numbers spit out by Nissan that many people felt were inaccurate given the power and weight of the car. Their original claimed 'Ring time is still disputed and has yet to be replicated by anyone in a production GTR, heck even Porsche tried to do it and couldn't. Most "best efforts" with pro-drivers net times that are a full 12 seconds or more slower than the Nissan time. Yet fans of the car still stick to the numbers reported by Nissan.
Add to that the claimed 0-60 times that were based on launch control, that was an essentially broken feature at launch and it just becomes more of a mess. Though they did retune the launch control, doing so lowered the acceleration times of the car. However, Nissan still stuck with the original claims for 0-60 which were 3.2 seconds with launch control. It raised to 3.8 without it and they have since gotten it down to 3.5 with the revised tune, which also included adding more power.
None of that changes the fact that it is still a very fast car, but in its market, 12 seconds on the 'Ring and .6 tenths for 0-60 is major. FWIW, the ZR1 is faster around the 'Ring (though the new 2012 GTR appears to have beaten it by half a second) and is faster 0-60 than the car with revised launch control. The Z06 is slower than the new model GTR around the 'Ring, but again faster in 0-60 time. The Vette's also don't have the advantage of AWD and launch control.
I think the GTR is a good car and it's certainly fast (even if not as fast as Nissan claimed), but all the controversy around it has left a sour taste in my mouth.
SpeedyAZ ... while I recognize that you have a substantial amount of discretionary money to spend on this project ... I'm still not clear on what you mean by "bang for the buck".
Every one of the cars you've had under consideration is a very powerful, strong performer ... no question about that. But outside of a track, where are you going to drive this where you tap anything more than a fraction of it's available capabilities?
I'm speaking from the perspective of having driven many "sports" cars in the 1300 cc to 2 liter range, with years of driving 1300-1500 cc Alfa's and Porsche's, MG's, BMW's ... and a host of other marques. Most fun driving was in sub 2 liter Porsche's and a Morgan +4 ...
My point here is that I drive the Rocky Mountain area quite a bit, so I'm out on back country roads, twisties, mountain 2-lane roads .... for example, I just went to Vail CO for the last few days, and I drove (because of needing to haul materials for a remodeling project) my 2001 Subaru Outback wagon. Now we all know that the Subie is no sporting car, by any stretch of an imagination ... but it was fully able to maintain posted road speeds on the roads I took and in the traffic that presented late Sunday afternoon and this AM for the return trip. I made a point of taking the back roads instead of the interstate highway for as much of the trip as reasonably possible.
With any one of the cars you've mentioned, I doubt you would have been any quicker than 10-15 minutes than I did it ... and that would have been by pushing the realm of aggressive, if not flat out rude driving as far as where you'd have passed people on the grades or been pushing pretty much over the posted limits 10-15-20 mph. Yes, I know that those cars are fully capable of much faster/quicker progress down the road, but there's the complication that speed limit enforcement is a revenue source which is aggressively pursued in much of the area now. Case in point, having driven some of these roads many times over the last 50 years ... I know the prime locations for the patrols to hang out and tag people over the limit, and you'd discover them, too. They were out in force on Sunday PM in the reverse direction of prevailing traffic, and surprisingly for a weekday late morning, out again busily writing tickets for speeders. The first encounter you'd have would be the first of a string, because these guys love to communicate with each other that there's a specific vehicle which is enroute to the next area ... so you've got a bunch of patrol out there just waiting for you to enter their jurisdiction. You'll either be very much in compliance with the posted limits or you'll make a trip into the hills and get a glove box full of momento's of the trip.
Not only that, but Colorado has a wonderful reporting system for aggressive drivers these days. Simply dialing *CSP and reporting a license plate number and vehicle description in a stretch of road may result in a local or the CSP responding by actively looking for that vehicle. Even if the officer doesn't see you committing a violation, they've got a road report and may yet pull you over to have a little visit about road rage and safe driving and observing speed limits.
One of the reasons I quit driving Ferrari's/Maserati's/AstonMartin's/and a favorite 300SL MB roadster was because every one of these vehicles became an attention getter everywhere I drove. Didn't matter if I was under the speed limit, leaving plenty of distance between me and the next vehicle, signaling every move ... in short, driving like granny heading to church with a package shelf full of food for the meeting, which defeated the entire purpose of having a performance capable car. Even 356 Porsche's got more attention than they should have.
So, my question to you is: What's your definition of "bang for the buck"?
Is it having the fastest, quickest, biggest/baddest performing car on the road? Do you want all the unneeded attention?
Or is it simply having driving fun and pushing a car through it's paces?
I'd mention that I went through this process with a number of street road racer motorcycles in the 1960's ... long before all the crotch rocket and "look at me" performance bikes hit the streets. With machines like a dustbin fairing on a G15CSR Matchless with clip-ons and rear-sets and racing exhaust system ... it registered in every officer's mind that it was going wayy tooo fast, whenever it was on the street. Got me stopped many times to check all my paperwork and to give me a word of caution. I sold the thing and bought a 750 Ambassador Moto Guzzi ... which gave a sedate mental image to the officers and they even used to wave back at me as I passed them running 15-20 mph over the speed limits on the mountain roads in Colorado. Image was everything, and I had to push the 'guzzi a little bit to go through turns like the race prepp'ed Matchless. The funniest one of these was riding a Royal Enfield 250 GT Continental Clipper ... all the fancy looks of a road racer and a whole 22 HP in a 300+ lb bike, all show, not much go and certainly unable to maintain freeway speeds at altitude or in a climb.
After reading about the GT-R, I've decided to stick to my 'Vette. As said above, I can go to a regular GM dealer to get all my scheduled maintenance at a very reasonable price versus 3X the cost of maintenance for a GT-R.
I really think I'm going to look for a Z06, I think this may be exactly what the doctor prescribed. Any opinions on certain years better than others? Any certain options I need to look for? I don't want a bunch of technological junk weighing down the car either.
2006 was the first model year for the C6 Z06 so you are likely looking at an 06 or 07 personally I like to avoid the first model years. They are generally pretty bare on features, the newer ones have a bit more of the "tech junk".
The only really "techy" feature in my 2007 is the heads up display but that is really really really cool and nice to have. Otherwise the interior is relatively spartan and is generally the only thing about the car that is criticized.
Every one of the cars you've had under consideration is a very powerful, strong performer ... no question about that. But outside of a track, where are you going to drive this where you tap anything more than a fraction of it's available capabilities?
I'm speaking from the perspective of having driven many "sports" cars in the 1300 cc to 2 liter range, with years of driving 1300-1500 cc Alfa's and Porsche's, MG's, BMW's ... and a host of other marques. Most fun driving was in sub 2 liter Porsche's and a Morgan +4 .
..snip...
Outstanding post, and one that everyone can learn from. I'd also add that if you ARE going to get a powerful performance car or a fast sports car, do not get red or yellow, as red sports cars have a useable top speed of approx. 1mph under the posted limit before every cop in the state arrives on your rear bumper waiting for that tiniest of indescretions. A black or grey car can slide by without attracting that attention.
Also, the point about a slower small car is a valid one. I remember an article about Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith selling off their Ferari Testarossas and buying Lotus Super 7s, as they were getting too many tickets in the Ferraris. As they said, "it's more fun to drive a car at 70 that feels like it's going 140 than drive a car at 140 that feels like it's going 70."
A good choice in the fun, bang for the buck car is a Caterham 7 (Lotus 7 clone), like the one I drove across Scotland last spring:
Almost telepathic response, felt fast as hell, and fun at ANY speed, even in town.
Outstanding post, and one that everyone can learn from. I'd also add that if you ARE going to get a powerful performance car or a fast sports car, do not get red or yellow, as red sports cars have a useable top speed of approx. 1mph under the posted limit before every cop in the state arrives on your rear bumper waiting for that tiniest of indescretions. A black or grey car can slide by without attracting that attention.
This is a myth. I used to have a red Gallardo and right now I have a black LP560, and there's no difference in the amount of attention they attract, either from bystanders or police. I've never been pulled over in either car, despite the fact there were reasons for them to pull me over. And we are talking about a couple of the most attention-attracting vehicles out there. But I have been pulled over in a silver Honda. It's how you drive that attracts the attention.
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And we are talking about a couple of the most attention-attracting vehicles out there. But I have been pulled over in a silver Honda. It's how you drive that attracts the attention.
