Not So Fast! Chevy Could Shorten Nissan’s Nurburgring Celebration
DETROIT — Nissan was so proud of the GT-R’s production-car lap-record run of 7:29 on the Nürburgring Nordschleife that CEO Carlos Ghosn personally delivered the news to journalists gathered in Portugal.
It must be sweet for Ghosn who championed the GT-R when Nissan was in dire financial trouble. And trumping Chevrolet’s double-barrel announcements last week regarding the Corvette ZR1’s outrageous 638-hp output and its 205-mph top speed, doesn’t hurt either.
But wait, didn’t we quote Corvette Chief Engineer Tadge Juechter as saying that the ZR1 “will be able to take the production-car track record at any racetrack”? Yes, we did. What we didn’t mention was that in the same interview, Juechter said that, while the company didn’t yet have a full-production ZR1 to test at Nürburgring’s old track, he confidently predicted the super-Vette would do the deed in “Seven minutes, twenty-something seconds.”
Hey, is that a gauntlet we see there on the ground? Anyone care to pick that up? (We’re looking directly at you, Chevy.)
What this means to you: In the grand scheme, a car’s lap time of a wicked, old German racetrack might not mean much. Except that we all know it does. — Daniel Pund, Senior Editor, Detroit