Nissan to stop promoting GT-R’s 0-100km/h time

Ambitious performance claims for Japan’s fastest supercar are no longer, with Nissan shelving the often fanciful 0-100km/h times for its GT-R.

At the launch of the 2017 Nissan GT-R, due in Australia in September 2016, senior members of the development team for what’s claimed to be the biggest change to the R35 model since it went on sale in 2007, claimed the 0-100km/h time is no longer important.

“We haven’t measured the 0-100 or overall top speed,” said MY17 R35 program director, Bob Laishley. “We just don’t think we need to worry too much [about 0-100km/h claims]. We haven’t done anything to improve on that situation or make it worse.”

Despite an extra 15kW and 9Nm Nissan claims off-the-line acceleration hasn’t changed for the MY17 GT-R.

Yet in the past Nissan has been eager to make bold claims about the pace of its fastest model, even linking it to a global advertising campaign with Olympic gold medal sprinter Usain Bolt.

The original R35 GT-R had a 0-100km/h claim of 3.2 seconds but changes to launch control software and tweaks to the transmission resulted in a more aggressive launch and Nissan lowered the 0-100km/h time firstly to 2.8 seconds and, later, to 2.7 seconds.

When Wheels tested the most recent iteration of the GT-R late in 2013, we clocked a 0-100km/h time of 3.2 seconds – a full 19 percent worse than Nissan’s claimed time.

The GT-R is no stranger to controversy. Years ago claims of record-breaking Nurburgring lap times were disputed by Porsche, the maker of the 911 Turbo that is often put up as the benchmark by which the GT-R is measured.