Fantastic. I drive a 350Z and the GT-R is the car that I stupidly thought the 350 was going to be near to, but clearly the 350 is miles away. The 350 is a new Ford Capri with lots more torque, nothing more, and the with the GT-R Nissan have nailed the price/performance argument for this decade, much like the did with the R34 some years earlier.
Trouble is the badge brigade won't like it 'cos Fred nextdoor doesn't know what it is and might even think you've fallen on hard times, changing an (old) 996 for a (new) Nissan and all that, shameful. If you're cute of course you can just smile and wait in a side road for Fred to drive by in his Aston in a side road sometime.
I have been sent a pack from Nissan that gets me a test drive when it's here, quite how they think I can raise the extra £30k over what I paid for the 350 new beats me, but drive it I will. I expect I'll be immediately smitten, but I also hope Nissan have built in some excitement. That's why I didn't buy a Boxster, it's far too benign to be fun. If the GT-R is as much fun as it is dramatic, I might just mortgage the kids.
Best of all, it's likley you could buy it new, do an intergallactic mileage, and nothing will ever break.
As for another poster's comment about Lewis hamilton and Joe Bloggs, I reckon Steve is not far off right, and I think the comments originated from an article I read 15 years ago in Car magazine, when they got an ordinary Joe, and from memory Roland Ratzenberger, to drive round a circuit in an R32 V-Spec. Joe got with a couple of seconds of the now departed ace. The most interesting line I remember about that article was something like "To do the best time you need to keep the throttle nailed because the electronics can always give you less (than you ask for) but not more". Now electronics can play dances with engine torque and performance, and all the clever yaw and roll rate stuff has to be brilliance inscrutably excuted as only the Japanese seem to know how to do.
I bet Joe would get closer in a GT-R.