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Last week I got to so spend some time with the chief engineer of the Nissan GT-R, Kazutoshi Mizuno. He’s clearly a proud bloke, and rightfully so.

After all he’s been in charge of the program to bring back one of the most eagerly anticipated sports cars in years.

The Nissan GT-R is a cult car that’s admired the world over, but particularly in Australia where the R32 model dominated the local motor racing scene almost 20 years ago. It was so good it was effectively banned as the rulemakers reverted to a V8-only formula, ousting the twin-turbocharged six-cylinder all-wheel-drive that was nicknamed Godzilla.

The new GT-R is a cracker, something I experienced with three laps to really test it at the Estoril race track in Portugal.

There’s 358kW and 582Nm from the 3.8-litre, twin turbocharged V6, which is nothing to be sneezed at. The GT-R is supremely quick - and does it so easily.

Outright acceleration isn’t quite as brutal as the new Porsche 911 GT2, which has incredible mid-range urge thanks to its prodigious torque delivery.

But the GT-R compensates with all-wheel-drive traction (the 911 GT2 – the fastest Porsche on the market – drives only the rear wheels and can struggle for grip in lower gears due to the immense grunt of the twin-turbo engine). Its double clutch semi-automatic gearbox also punches through the gears extremely quickly helping shave precious tenths of a second off acceleration times.

The all-wheel-drive system does a brilliant job of clawing what is a reasonably heavy car (1.7 tonnes) out of corners, while still allowing keener drivers to slide the rear-end with the sort of controllability cars like this need.

The Brembo brakes bite hard, although the three hot laps were enough to leave the fronts smoking by the time I arrived back in the pits (Nissan was replacing the brake pads every day of the test drive program and each car was doing about 70 laps a day).

The result is an extremely capable and potently fast car. Plus it has a character of its own – the digital display brings a little bit of computer game to the dash, for example.

Still, there’s little doubt the GT-R is one of those cars that needs a race track to fully appreciate its potential.

And it’s a race track where the GT-R recently earned its best accolade – a scorching lap time around the Nurburgring race track in Germany. The 21-kilometre undulating track is used by car makers all over the world for testing and development and as a benchmark of performance.

The GT-R’s 7 minute, 29 second time is quicker than any production Porsche sold here, something Nissan is – understandably – eager to point out.

There are already mutterings that some think Nissan went to extreme lengths to achieve the blistering time. And they did.

Then again, the likes of Porsche has renowned test driver – and former world rally champion – Walter Rohrl.

In 2007 Nissan set a time of 7 minutes, 38 seconds in 2007 in the GT-R at Nurburgring, but Mizuno says two parts of the track were wet. Hence the second attempt to better that time.

Mizuno is also adamant the time was achieved in exactly the same car customers will be able to buy, right down to the road legal Bridgestone tyres. The passionate chief engineer even showed journalists detailed data, overlaying the data from the 2007 run with the data for the 2008 run.

There’s little doubt Porsche will have a tilt at beating the GT-R benchmark, be it in one of their existing cars or an upcoming car (the updated 911 isn’t far away). Then again, the marketing message doesn’t work quite as well for Porsche because people expect a Porsche to beat a Nissan.

Toby Hagon