hey, that is the one color that I have yet to see in the GTR in person. Deep Blue or similar?

. Scott you looking to do this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvOxJ...eature=related

 

Its not like you can lose choosing either one of these cars. The performance is so close it really does come down to personal preference. Sure there is a huge gap in price, but the few GTR owners I personally know have enough money to purchase anything they want. I asked one why he chose the GTR and he said because he has had Porsches, Ferraris, and Lambos so he just wanted something different.

As for badge envy, coming from a Porsche owner I can tell you know one notices my 911s and I mean know one. The shape has been around for so long that it is just common place now. I would assume the majority of the general public can not tell a 911 from a boxster. After driving a GTR for a week it gets noticed every where I go. I would say the car actually gets as much attention as my Lambo, although the attention is a bit different. People actually tend to talk to you in the GTR, they just take pictures in the lambo. I have no idea why.

As a 31 year old man I would assume I was nissans target audience. I grew up on the GT video games, knew what the car was for many years before it came this country and my major concern buying a car was performance.
Unfortunately Nissan dealers made it impossible for me to purchase one. Without going on a long rant, I was not even allowed to sit in the car that the dealers wanted me to pay a 25k premium on let along hear or drive the car.

I now have some experience with the GTR, and NO ONE can question its out of the box performance. Its amazing. I personally would chose it over a 911 turbo S, although my decision would be based more on money than anything else. Once you get into 911 Turbo S money I just think your other options are so numerous that I would pick something else such as a pre owned LP 560. On the other hand at 100k I don't think I would have swayed from my decision to purchase a 911S but my reasons for that could fill up a whole other thread

 

Wouldn't this be the best thread to list those reasons?

But about your purchasing experience... I imagine this was back near '08 (or early release date for your area, when cars being delivered were pre-ordered). Everybody wanted to sit in the thing, pretending to be a buyer, just to touch it. It got to the point where some dealers put up a sticker that read $150k, just to shut people up, and keep them from bothering their salesmen over a car they are not going to purchase.

I was given the EXACT same treatment when I asked to test drive an E46 M3 back in '06, and a TT back in'07. It kind'a turned me off as well. But I can't fault the dealer for dealing with crappy customers (I know, redundant - "The customer is always right" philosophy must have been started by the world's most annoying customer, who thought they were better than the employee).

 

Excellent post.

 

Ya, something like that.

 

Haha...touché.

 

I'd be more concerned with WHERE the Mustang is listed, rather than how many times it showed up.

 

at some point I will put my thoughts together on my experience with the GTR and do a bit of a compare / contrast trying not to be biased. You are correct that when I was interested in purchasing the car it was fairly early, but anyone that was not blind could most likely tell that I was a qualified buyer as I drove a Lamborghini in to look at the car. I understand as a sales person it had to get annoying to get a million people asking questions about a car they had no real intention of purchasing, let alone everyone that I'm sure asked to drive it. But any good sales person can normally qualify a customer in a polite way fairly easily and then address that customers needs. Unfortunately for me this did not happen. I believe the sales people actually got a kick out of telling me I could not even sit in the car (that was available at a 25k premium) . I had no issue with the price. This is purely supply and demand. My business is driven on the exact same principal. You have to pay to play if you want to be the first on the block. But to actually make it hard for a real customer make an informed decision on something they has a real interest in buying and the means to do so is just pure stupidity in my personal opinion.

This is actually the only time this has happened to me at any car dealership, although I'm sure that could just be purely luck as I've heard horror stories at porsche dealers on the 997 forum.

I can tell you that the two dealers local to me still have an attitude about the car. After driving it I have actually thought about trading my 911 in for a 12 GTR. I drove to both dealers. One dealer actually tried to talk me out of the car because it was approaching 100k and did not even want to look to see if he had an allocation for one, and the other dealer was just stand offish and acted like I was wasting his time.

Eventually I will buy a GTR. I will either buy it used or travel out of my area because I refuse ever walk into either of these dealerships again.

 

Your (attempted) purchasing experience echos why many owners wish the car had been sold at Infiniti dealerships here in the USA. Nissan dealers simply don't have the experience to supply the GT-R customer with the level of service that this halo car deserves and its customers expect. My experience with my local 'GT-R certified' Nissan dealership's service dept.was uniformly poor. I was treated like an Ultima owner frankly and imho the GT-R techs didn't see enough of these cars to fully understand them. For example I had three attempts to align the car locally; all failed. Eventually I had the alignment performed at a large Dallas dealership whilst having tuning work done at Jotech. Being treated with the level of support one receives at an Infiniti dealer would have been a big plus imho and would certainly have instilled a much higher level of confidence that required/requested service was performed correctly.
Just my experience of course, ymmv.
Bish

 

Being fairly new to the GTR forum I just did not want to go over a topic that I'm sure has been beaten to death. When I mentioned to a friend of mine that I was thinking of trading in my Porsche for the GTR his exact words were "what a cool car, but do you really want to deal with sitting at a nissan dealership to have it serviced" ?

Its a shame that a company like Nissan can make such a great car and than be let down by the very nature of the company that has built its self on making affordable reliable cars.

I think eventually independants will end up taking up this slack and make the GTR experience what Nissan can't, at least thats what I hope happens in my area.

 

Interesting, my local dealer makes me feel like royalty whenever I show up. However, my dealer did say that he has some GT-R owners coming to his dealership from almost 250 miles away for service because they like the quality they receive! So you may be right.

 

You may well be lucky and find a local dealership who actually cares about supplying the kind of service that the car deserves. As to the independent issue: once you start to mod the car you'll find that the very best tuners handle pretty much all of your needs re: regular servicing also, and do a damn good job of it for far less money than you'd be charged at the Nissan shop.

Bish

 

Agreed. I never wait for anything. There are a lot of misconceptions that went around about the car:

All techs who work on Versas work on GT-R's.
You sit and wait around like everybody else.
You get a crappy loaner (not unlike some Porsche dealerships now).
You have to pay for nitrogen.
Etc...

A lot of rumors (and unfortunately, some dealers who need to be straightened out).

 

Actually I think this may be what keeps me from getting a GT-R. I think its a great car and a fair price, but I don't think I have ever had a car that doesn't require at least an occasional trip to the authorized dealer. You can't believe the runaround and misinformation I have received the last few days from Nissan dealers, including those far away from me who are 'equipped' to sell these cars. Its really like they have no motivation at all to sell them.
Jim

 

Some of them don't even put forth an effort to sell them, because of the small allocations they may get (only 2-3 per year), adding that the car practically sells itself to those who know what it is.