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"My time with Nissan&amp;#039;s hard-edged 2015 GT-R Nismo strained the output of my adrenal glands: Four laps of Sodegaura Raceway, a track I&amp;#039;d never driven, in a car packing handily more than 600 hp. With right-hand-drive. On cold tires. My endocrine system will never forgive me. Despite the brevity of my drive, the car left enough of an impression to take a few notes; just as soon as my hands stopped shaking. The power. It&amp;#039;s abundant. If unleashed all at once it&amp;#039;ll take you for a ride. That much power rolling out of the pit lane feels loud and brash and confined until you mat the gas and aim at the end of the blend lines. From that moment onward your only thoughts are obscene and directed at your own ineptitude. Stared in the eye by Nissan&amp;#039;s turbocharged 3.8-liter V6, radiuses open, straight-aways shorten, and any knowledge you had of the track before you set forth in the Nismo is made irrelevant. It takes 600+ horsepower to compete in the big leagues these days. The GT-R Nismo can cash that check and have change left over. Officially, for the US, Nissan is using the nice, round number of 600. They&amp;#039;re also using the number 600 for countries that measure their horsepower using metric figures, even though there&amp;#039;s about 9 hp left on the table after the conversion. It&amp;#039;s the same engine, so we&amp;#039;ll call those 600 horsepower a ballpark figure. A low one. Credit turbochargers plucked from Nissan&amp;#039;s GT3 effort. Sodegaura&amp;#039;s small straightaway and downhill chutes only gave a glimpse of the potential of the new turbos and refined engine tuning. When we test this car, and we will, it&amp;#039;s going to produce some staggering 0-60 numbers.  It&amp;#039;ll rotate. It&amp;#039;ll rotate on the throttle, and it&amp;#039;ll rotate on the brakes. The Nismo GT-R is the most lively AWD street car I&amp;#039;ve ever driven. It&amp;#039;s fast and responsive, exactly like it should be. Nismo&amp;#039;s development gurus told me that with the toggles in &amp;quot;R&amp;quot; mode, the Nismo&amp;#039;s stability control systems won&amp;#039;t insert themselves into your livelier moments, just so long as long as you stay on the gas. The car is exactly as wild as you want it to be. Any jabs at the character of the GT-R can officially end here. The 2015 GT-R Nismo takes some talent to drive quickly, and more than I&amp;#039;ve got to drive at its limit. PHOTOS: 2015 Nissan GT-R Nismo It makes you want to work. There&amp;#039;s a little rough section that follows a quick S-curve at Sodegaura. Rather than lift slightly and float comfortably through the cobby patch, I mashed the throttle and let the car shimmy back into line. With just a little hiccup to the right we were instantly back on course. The ability to toss and catch a vehicle going at absurd speeds makes a fast car into a fun car. Chassis stiffness, suspension tuning, great tires, it takes all of that to make a road-going ride satisfying on the track. To that end, the Nismo gets a larger hollow rear anti-roll bar, new spring rates that match revalved Bilstein Damp-Tronic shocks, and a body that is adhesive bonded as well as welded for additional stiffness. It all matters, and it all comes together.  It&amp;#039;s not too shabby inside. Continuous refinement of the base GT-R has served Nissan well. The right-hand-drive version of the Nismo was equipped with Recaro buckets with decent bolsters and a nicely fit together interior. New instrument trim adds some impression of expensiveness. It&amp;#039;s not luxurious, but it is sporty, and certainly a nice place to spend a few hours. Alas, I had only minutes. It&amp;#039;s spoiling for a fight. There&amp;#039;s a subtext to all the numbers we&amp;#039;re seeing from Nissan&amp;#039;s record lap at the Nordschleife. Nissan wants to let the wind out of Porsche&amp;#039;s sails. The Japanese brand might have started by successfully taking on the Germans in their own back yard, but Porsche&amp;#039;s problems are bigger than that. The GT-R Nismo is engaging in a way that Porsche&amp;#039;s 911 Turbo isn&amp;#039;t. Its paddle shifters beg to be flicked, not ignored like the Porsche&amp;#039;s. The richness of data plucked from the cars sensors is useful, sure, but it&amp;#039;s also handsomely presented. The NISMO is still coarse, but it feels honest. A track pack appearing later next year will even add all the aerodynamic bits and pieces missing from the time trial car. While the 911 Turbo&amp;#039;s biggest trick might be an incredible breadth of purpose, the Nismo succeeds simply by being purposeful. The appropriate competition for the Nismo should be Porsche&amp;#039;s GT3, but at 475 hp, the GT3 isn&amp;#039;t going to put up too much of a fight. Left to tussle with the more powerful but less focused 911 Turbo, this GT-R might truly prove to be a giant killer. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/first-drives/reviews/a6135/2015-nismo-gt-r-first-drive/>