🏎️ Max Gets Carried Away Talking About the HOLY GRAIL of JDM Sports Cars

GM. I trust we all had a responsible weekend?

I pray nobody is nursing a 2-day hangover while reading this. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

And I definitely wouldn’t make an attempt at making you hurl by finding a puke green car for today’s newsletter.

I would never do that.

Anyways,

TODAY’S CAR IS THE SWAN SONG OF THE GOLDEN ERA OF JAPANESE SPORTS CARS

And one I am going to try my best not to get carried away talking about.

Here it is: A 2002 Nissan Skyline GT-R M-Spec Nür (in glorious ‘Jade’ Green)

• 🌏️ Driven around the world: 3x

• 🎸 Sounds to get in the right headspace: Ludacris - Act A Fool

• 🏇 Can beat 316* horses in a fight

  • *316hp is the approximate STOCK power of this glorious engine, but it has been modified a good bit. I have no idea what the current horsepower of this beauty is, but these cars are famous for being able to get 500-800hp out of them VERY easily.

• 💰️ Predicted Price: $334,000

  • BIG price tag, I know, but check this one out from January with less miles and in better shape that took home $455k!

• 📆 Auction Ends: Saturday, March 25th, 2023

And the OFFICIAL paint color is called ‘Millenium Jade’, not puke, and I (personally) think it looks SICK (pun intended, obviously).

Admittedly, I recently found out I am mildly color blind - specifically with shades of pale greens and yellows.

So, IF you do hurl and attempt to sue, know that my color-blindness gives me a rock solid defense. This car is grey for all I know.

What Makes The GT-R M-Spec Nür So Cool?

• It is the SWAN SONG of Fast & Furious era cars

• It has ALL THE ACRONYMS and they all stand for cool shit

IT IS THE SWAN SONG OF THE FAST & FURIOUS ERA

Please watch this for context if you have not already been baptized in the glory that is the ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ GT-R.

Even if you just watch the first 30 seconds or so when the car SPITS FLAMES FROM ITS EXHAUST you’ll see why this car piqued the interest of every kid who who saw this movie…

BUT if you make it all the way to the end (bonus points if you count every ‘shift’ shot and send me the number) and see the GT-R piloted by Paul Walker ABSOLUTELY POSTERIZE the Supra for the W, you will begin to understand why this is a Holy Grail vehicle for many a millennial.

My point of calling this the ‘Swan Song’ of the Fast and Furious era might be a little confusing though, as ‘Fast’ movies are still being released.

But IMO their bread and butter is everything up to the Tokyo Drift and 2009 ‘Fast & Furious’ movies.

Clearly the newer ones are struggling for ideas, I discovered recently that Khal Drogo is co-starring in Fast X.

Scraping the cross-dimensional timeline buckets now, eh Vinny?

I digress though.

These movies are a big part of what brought the Japanese street racing culture of the late 80’s and 90’s over to the US.

It popularized tuner culture, and made kids across the country DREAM of owning cars like the Toyota Supra, the Mazda RX-7 (for those of us that like rebuilding our engines every 30k miles), or the GT-R.

2002 was around the end of this golden era, as Japanese automakers started to get boring (sensible) and move into things like SUV’s or building luxury brands (like Lexus).

Japanese automakers still will make the errant sports car; but many tend to be more watered down due to partnering with other brands (like BMW) to build them affordably.

Is it too much to ask automakers to build cool cars at a profit loss so I have more vehicles to ogle?

IT HAS ALL THE ACRONYMS

Even more acronyms than the ones in the name!

DONT STOP READING BECAUSE I AM WRITING A SECTION ABOUT ACRONYMS

THEY’RE ALL COOL AND INTERESTING

~deep breath~

Great. Which acronyms specifically?

• The Ones in the Name (M-Spec & Nür)

• The Ones NOT in the Name

We are very specific in our bullet-pointed summaries here as you can see.

WTF is M-Spec?

First I’ll give you a hint: there’s another trim of the GT-R called the V-Spec. The V stands for Victory. Great hint, right?

So, what’s your guess for what the M stands for?

Majesty?

Magnificent?

WRONG

It stands for Kazutoshi Mizuno. Obviously. Why would Nissan name one trim after a strong word like ‘Victory’, and another very similarly trimmed trim after a person…?

The V-Spec is the hardo race trim for the GT-R. It has stronger engine internals (so shit doesn’t blow up when you’re ripping it on the track), stiff race suspension, an upgraded oil pump, and a bunch of other modifications from the base GT-R to make it faster over one lap.

The M-Spec has basically ALL of the same modifications, BUT has a little bit more luxury in the interior and a softer suspension tuned for the street (and for endurance racing). This suspension was new at the time and designed by Mizuno, which apparently means he gets his name is immortalized via the ‘M-Spec’ badging forever 🤷 

WTF is Nür?

This one is easier! It’s just short for Nürburgring: a famous German racetrack where many performance cars are tested / tuned. Everybody loves the Nürburgring.

Okay, what about the OTHER acronyms I was so excited about?

The big one is, I’m not shitting you, ATTESA E-TS Pro and I am NOT going to ask you to guess wtf that means.

If you could guess that right you would be on the level of Rain Man and we should go to the Casino together sometime soon.

ATTESA E-TS Pro stands for Advanced Total Traction Engineering System for All-Terrain, Electronic Torque Split… Pro. It was the name Nissan gave to its All-Wheel-Drive system at the time.

I don’t bring this up only because the acronym is hilariously long, I bring it up because its an opportunity to talk about just how technologically advanced this car was for its time.

This AWD system could measure the speed and G’s with which you were trying to take a corner, and dictate the % of power going to the rear & front wheels accordingly and SPECIFICALLY TO PROMOTE OVERSTEER which is long for SICK DRIFTS.

Not only was the AWD system smart, the steering ITSELF was super advanced. THE REAR WHEELS TURNED left and right in addition to the fronts when you turned the steering wheel. To be clear, the GT-R HAD REAR WHEEL STEERING.

At low speed, the rear wheels would turn opposite the fronts to make your turning radius more tight. At high speeds, the rears would turn in the SAME DIRECTION as the fronts to help with rapid/stable lane changing on the highway.

If you’ve ever seen a manic Altima driving splitting lanes and speeding through a congested highway at rush hour, know that THIS GT-R is the car they WISH THEY WERE DRIVING.

There’s a ton of other cool tech and fancy engineering in this car too that might start to change around any stereotypes you may hold about old Japanese cars being simple, economical, cheap, etc etc etc. All wrong!

For example, the monitor in the front of the car was HIGHLY programmable, and could monitor things like boost pressure, oil temps, g-forces, water temps, and lap times all in REAL TIME. IN TWO THOUSAND AND TWO.

On top of that, all of the control electronics are stored behind this panel in the trunk to make the weight balance of the car more even:

Okay I got completely carried away with this one…

I’ll leave you with two more things:

1. GT-R Turbo Sounds - LIKE… HOLY SHIT

2. This cute little cartoon character in your GT-R handbook helping you figure out when you can expect your satellite GPS to work 🙂 

That's a wrap for today. New Editions come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday! While you wait, go out and drive! And if you want more, be sure to follow Max’s Twitter (@maxjzin)

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